Confessional Poetry

Confessional Poetry

Introduction

Confessional poetry is a genre of poetry, became popular in America in the decades immediately following the Second World War. The movement   initiated with the publication of Robert Lowell‘s volume of poetry ‘’Life Studies’ in 1959.That book was critically reviewed by M.L Rosenthal, who was an American poet and the 20th century critic of poetry. He coined the term ‘’Confessional Poetry’’ which contained ‘’personal poetry or poetry of I’’.

The confessional poetry of the mid twentieth century dealt with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in the American poetry. Confessional poets were:

1. Robert Lowell.

2. W.D Snodgrass.

3. Sylvia Plath

4. Anne Sexton.

 They depicted private and personal experiences and feelings about issues like death, trauma, depression, sexuality, gender roles and relationships in an autobiographical manner. These poets not only shocked their readers but also made them very uncomfortable with the subject matter and content of the poetry. According to ‘’A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE’’ (2008) confessional poetry ‘’feature a public and sometimes painful display of private and personal matters’’

Subjective poetry was not   something new in the 1950’s. Although some poets of the poets like Shelley, Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson and some others used to expose their personal reflections to the readers. The ideas and the themes which they mused about were universal but the Confessional poets changed the content of the poetry. The content of the poems became autobiographical. It was marked by its exceptional subject matter that was considered a taboo at that time. They rejected the standards for the appropriate content which was demanded by the American Academia during the middle of the 20^thcentury.  Brendan Galvin discusses the autobiographical elements in confessional poetry   in his unique essay "The Contemporary Poet and the Natural World": 

’ In the work of Lowell and other confessional poets, the twentieth century persona is replaced by a speaker who more closely represents the author, and the poem's circumstances can usually be verified as more or less the author's own’’.

Confessional poetry emerged as a reaction to impersonal and indifferent poetry of the modernist poets like T.S Eliot and W.H Auden in 1920’s and 1930’s. Modernist poets believe that there was no room for the self in the poetry. The confessional poets broke away with modernist poetic tradition and instead of writing impersonally, they wrote intimate and controversial details from their private lives. Mary A. Murphy says about the confessional poets ‘’their work is a crafted response to the overwhelming emotional impulses. They use the sharply defined sensory prompts and the everyday language of the common person learnt from the imagist school.’’

Characteristics of confessional poetry

Characteristics of confessional poetry can be seen in term of style and themes .Thematically and stylistically confessional poetry is different from conventional or traditional poetry.

·         Thematic characteristics of confessional poetry:

Confessional poetry is marked by its intimate autobiographical subject matter.  Masturbation, depression, suicidal thought, alcoholism, drug abuse is openly discussed. Confessional poetry is defined by the content that its poets chose to write about, notably family life, infidelity, mental disorders gender roles, suicide, and sexuality. The speaker is almost always referring to real events. The choice to focus on “the shameful” however, does not overshadow the technical merits of these poems. Aims of confessional poets were not about the catharsis of confession. Poets of this movement wrote unflinchingly about difficult topics. Most of the confessional poets adopt the same mindset. Overcoming traumatic experiences and mental illness is also one of major characteristic of confessional poetry. Other major thematic characteristics of confessional are Poem usually concerned the subjects of: Love affairs, Fear of failure, Violent thoughts toward family members, Poems expressed their personal experiences and pains and Most of the poets suffered from “psychological illnesses”.

·         Stylistic characteristics of confessional poetry:

Confessional poetry is most often written in free verse, first person point of view, though it doesn’t have to be. Due to shared contract between poet and reader it seems authentic and truthful expression of the poet. Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or “I”. Their poetry is most of the time difficult to interpret because these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of prosody.

Confessional Poems usually use the following devices:

Diction – Usage of careful words.

Imagery – Vivid details to make a clear picture

Rhyme – As part of their craftsmanship (free verse, couplet, etc.) differ from a journal entry

Simile and Metaphors – comparing two things as indirectly mentioning something.

Symbolism – Gives key words some symbol for the message of the poem

Repetition and Alliteration – the use for emphasizing an idea.

Irony – Shows contradiction over their personal feelings to general statements.

Poets and works

W. D. Snodgrass

William De Witt Snodgrass (1926 – 2009), who was also called “De” (pronounced Dee) by his friends, was born in Pennsylvania. He got his degrees from the University of Iowa. He is the author of more than 20 books but his first book, Heart's Needle (1959) is considered to be the first volume of confessional poetry. Snodgrass personally did not like the term confessional poetry. He wrote Heart's Needle when his marriage with first wife ended in 1953. He explored his feelings about being separated from his daughter.

World War II and its aftermath carved itself into his memory and he would draw material from this experience. Two events were important in his development as a poet: his marriage and his transfer to the University of Iowa to join the Writers’ Workshop. At the workshop, he found a group of talented students and skilled teachers who encouraged him to perfect his technique. His poems also present beyond the direct statement and sentimentality common to confessional poetry, an inclusiveness of detail and variety of technique aimed to impact the reader’s subconscious as well as conscious mind.

He has also produced two books of literary criticism, “To sound like yourself: Essays on poetry” (2003) and “In Radical Pursuit” (1975) and six volumes of translation, including Selected Translations (BOA Editions, (1998) which won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

Snodgrass’s honors include an Ingram Merril Foundation Award and a special citation from the poetry society of America and fellowships from The Academy of American poets, The Ford Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, The National Institute of Arts and Letters and The National Endowment for Arts. He lived in upstate New York and died on January 13, 2009.

The following are a few verses from the poem "Heart's Needle":

No one can tell you why
the season will not wait;
the night I told you I
must leave, you wept a fearful rate
to stay up late.

Now that it's turning Fan,
we go to take our walk
among municipal
flowers, to steal one off its stalk,
to try and talk.

We huff like windy giants
scattering with our breath
gray-headed dandelions;
Spring is the cold wind's aftermath.
The poet saith.

Robert Lowell

Robert "Cal" Traill Spence Lowell IV (1917 – 1977) is considered by some to be the most influential poet of the 20th century. Lowell was born in Boston. In high school, Lowell decided to become a poet. From 1950 to 1953, Lowell was one of three instructors at the well-regarded Iowa Writers' Workshop. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were among his students. Plath was greatly influenced by Lowell's book Life Studies (1959), which she saw as a breakthrough in raising taboo subject matter in poetry.

Before Life Studies, Lowell's work could be described as formal and tightly patterned. In contrast, Life Studies combines metered verse, free verse, and informal language. In Life Studies, Lowell talks about his upbringing, family interrelationships, and his own mental illness. Literary critic M.L. Rosenthal was the first to use the term "confessional poetry" to describe the poems in this book. Lowell's later poetry would continue to incorporate a relaxed style, as well as experimentation with free verse and formalism.

Here's an excerpt from Life Studies' "Waking in the Blue":

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) was born in Boston on October 27, 1932. Plath showed an early aptitude for poetry, with a poem of hers appearing in a local newspaper at age 8. In addition to poetry, Plath wrote one novel, The Bell Jar, a story about a young woman in college whose experiences closely match Plath's real-life circumstances. She kept a journal from the age of 11 and published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers. Her first national publication was in the Christian Science Monitor in 1950, just after graduating from high school.

Plath went to Smith College on a scholarship. Plath's first documented suicide attempt occurred when at college a guest editorship at Mademoiselle Magazine did not turned out as she had expected. Afterwards she recovered and managed to complete her graduate. She received a Fulbright Scholarship at Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, where she met and fell in love with poet Ted Hughes. It was during her marriage that Plath took the poetry workshops with Robert Lowell. Plath’s final, and successful, suicide attempt occurred at age 30.

Plath’s poetry is often associated with the Confessional movement, and compared to poets such as her teacher, Robert Lowell, and fellow student Anne Sexton. Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme.

In 1950, Plath was published in a handful of national periodicals. The March issue of Christian Science Monitor featured an article titled “Youth’s appeal for World Peace,” the August issue of Christian Science Monitor printed a poem titled “Bitter Strawberries,” and the August issue of Seventeen Magazine featured a short story titled “And Summer Will Not Come Again.” Over the next decade, she would continue to be published in many popular magazines and periodicals. In 1960, her first book was published in England, The Colossus, which was composed of formal, tight, precise poems. Two years after her unfortunate death, a collection of her last poems was published, titled Ariel. This volume was followed in publication by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971 and also by The Collected Poems in 1981 which was edited by her former husband Ted Hughes.

Although only Colossus was published while she was alive, Plath was a prolific poet, and in addition to Ariel, Hughes published three other volumes of her work posthumously, including The Collected Poems, which was the recipient of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize. She was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.

The life and works of Sylvia Plath are considered to be a significant contribution to the genre of Confessional Poetry. Many of Plath’s poems are characterized by a strong, personal, emotion-fueled voice as they capture the bleak, grotesque side of life.

The poems with which Plath is most associated were written in the six months before her death. These poems were published in the collection Ariel (1965). The following is an excerpt from the poem "Daddy" from Ariel, which is a reflection of Plath's feelings toward her father and his death when she was a child:

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

Plath’s father: German by birth and nationalistic, but NOT literally a Nazi. He died when Plath was young as result of an infection that originated in his foot. He is said to have suffered profoundly.

Ann Sexton

Ann Sexton (1928-1974) was born Massachusetts. Sexton, who suffered from bipolar disorder, took up poetry at the suggestion of her therapist. Like Plath, Sexton studied under Robert Lowell, and like Lowell, Sexton was deeply affected by W. D. Snodgrass's Heart's Needle collection.

In 1954 she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, suffered her first mental breakdown, and was admitted to Westwood Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital she would repeatedly return to for help. In 1955, following the birth of her second daughter, Sexton suffered another breakdown and was hospitalized again; her children were sent to live with her husband's parents. That same year, on her birthday, she attempted suicide.

Sexton’s poetry explored themes of depression and isolation, as well as abortion, menstruation, and female sexuality. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. She helped to redraw the boundaries of poetry. Transformations, published in 1972, featured her most feminist works which spoke to the reader in a raw, believable way that made the audience believe that they were not alone in their fear and angst.

Sexton attempted suicide many times during her life and finally succeeded at age 46.

The following is an excerpt from the poem "The Abortion":

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Theodore Roethke

Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1908. He spent much of his childhood exploring the greenhouses owned by his family, which influenced his use of natural imagery throughout his poetry. His first literary success was a speech he wrote in high school on the Junior Red Cross, which was later published in twenty-six languages.

Roethke's father died suddenly from cancer in 1923, and his uncle committed suicide around the same time. In 1925, Roethke enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, becoming the first member of his family to do so. He graduated magna cum laude in 1929, and attempted to go on to study law, but quickly gave up that attempt and took graduate courses at the University of Michigan, and then Harvard University, studying there with the poet Robert Hillyer.

The Great Depression forced Roethke to move from studying to teaching, and he taught at Lafayette College from 1931 to 1935, then moved to Michigan State College at Lansing. However, soon after he began teaching there, he was hospitalized because of "recurring bouts of mental illness" (Kalaidjian). In 1936, Roethke began teaching at Pennsylvania State University, and his work began to be published in journals - Poetry, the New Republic, the Saturday Review, and the Sewanee Review, to name a few. In 1963, Roethke suffered from a fatal heart attack while swimming in the pool of a friend on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Roethke's first book of poetry was published in 1941 - titled Open House, it was favorably reviewed by several major publications, and gave him much more prestige as a writer. The following year, Harvard University invited Roethke to deliver "one of the prestigious Morris Gray lectures" (Kalaidjian), and in 1943, he moved to teaching at Bennington College.

His next volume of poetry, titled The Lost Son and Other Poems, was published in 1948, and contained poems written about the greenhouses of his childhood. He married a former student in 1953, Beatrice O'Connell, and from this point on, Roethke continued to win awards for his published work. His next volume was Praise to the End! in 1951, and then The Waking in 1953, which won him the Pulitzer Prize. He published several other volumes, and his wife ensured that his last volume was published after his death in 1963.

Roethke's recurring bouts of depression throughout his life helped him fuel his poetry, and gave him what he considered to be a different perspective on the world. Combined with his use of traditional, fixed forms of poetry, and his use of natural imagery and human psychology throughout the personal confessions of his poetry, Roethke helped influence the development of what we think of as confessional poetry.

Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski (Heinrich Karl Bukowski; 1920 —1994) was born in Germany but grew up in California. He explored themes such as sex, violence, destitution, and the lives of ordinary people, the writing life, alcohol abuse, and the drudgery of work.

Bukowski suggested in his autobiographical novel Ham on Rye and during interviews that his father was physically and mentally abusive to him. Bukowski himself was said to be shy and withdrawn growing up, and that he began drinking, and eventually abusing, alcohol in his teens. Two of his short stories were published during his 20s. He stopped writing for nearly a decade and instead drank heavily, traveled around the country more or less as a drifter, and worked a wide range of jobs, including in a factory and as a postal carrier. Bukowski published more than 45 books during his lifetime.

The following is an excerpt from the poem "Fingernails, Nostrils, Shoelaces":

The gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures;
Benny finally got off the stuff and Betty now has a job
as a waitress; and
the chimney sweep was quite delicate as he
giggled up through the
soot.
I walked miles through the city and recognized
nothing as a giant claw ate at my
stomach while the inside of my head felt
airy as if I was about to go
mad.
it's not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing,
there's no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is
to say

Works cited

·         Anja Beckmann, Leipzig. 'Sylvia Plath Homepage'. Sylviaplath.de. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Famouspoetsandpoems.com,. 'Robert Lowell Biography'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Famouspoetsandpoems.com,. 'Theodore Roethke Biography'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Poemhunter.com,. 'The Biography Of Anne Sexton'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Poetryfoundation.org,. 'Robert Lowell : The Poetry Foundation'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Poets.org,. 'A Brief Guide To Confessional Poetry | Academy Of American Poets'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Sylviaplath.info,. 'A Celebration, This Is'. N. p., 2014. Web. 4 May. 2014.

·         Gill, Jo. Modern Confessional Writing. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

·         Holman, C. Hugh, William Harmon, and William Flint Thrall. A Handbook To Literature. 1st ed. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Print.

·         Kennedy, X. J, and Dana Gioia. Literature. 1st ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.

·         Parini, Jay, and Brett Candlish Millier. The Columbia History Of American Poetry. 1st ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Print.