Confessional poetry Flashcards
Confessional poetry
Origins
Characteristics (7)
Origins
M.L. Rosenthal coined “confessional poetry” in his review of Robet Lowell’s “Life Studies” in “The Nation”.
Characteristics
- Intense personal style wherein the “I” is essential to the inception, construction, and resonance of a poem
- “Confessional” came to be attached to poems more frankly autobiographical.
- John Berriman, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass.
- Firsts to write with such candor about what might be perceived as “rather shameful” personal subjects.
- Revolutionary (compared to modernist predecessors’ impersonal poetry)
- Autobiographical insight written in a frank, colloquial tone.
- Everyday occurrences, daily day life.
Confessional poetry
First person “I” in poetry
After 1950s: turn to personal in poetry.
- Rejecting formalism, turning to autobiography.
- POETRY AS A REINVENTION OF THE PERSONAL
Confessional poetry
Anne Sexton
- Characteristics (3)
- Subjects and themes
- Work (3)
- Poems evoke strong feelings, often, without the goal of analyzing or explaining behaviour.
- Poetry = shock to senses, should hurt
- Powerful images through which the poet redefines experiences to gain understanding, absolution or revenge.
Subjects and themes: sex,illegitimacy, guilt, madness, suicide.
“To Bedlam and Part Way Back” : breakdown, mental hospital, efforts at reconciliation with daughter and husband.
“All My Pretty Ones”: death of both her parents within three months.
“The Stormy Night”
Confessional poetry
Sylvia Plath
- Characteristics (3)
- Work (2)
- Kinship to Lowell’s and Sexton’s poetry.
- Extremism of feeling with melodic cunningness of expression.
- Personal experience + fabrication of larger historical meanings + imaginative myth out of personal horror.
“Ariel”
“Daddy”
