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Confessional Poets
Circa 1960s - 70s
Elizabeth Bishop
|
Anne Sexton |
Sylvia Plath |
Terms | Life | Times | Class Discussion | Group Questions | Links | Pictures | Quotes from Critics
Terms to KnowConfessional Poetry: Confessional poetry is verse in which the author describes parts of his or her life that would not ordinarily be in the public domain. The prime characteristic is the reduction of distance between the persona displayed in a poem and the author who writes it.
This genre of verse derives from the romantics, who put a high premium on the exploration of personal feeling. Poems such as Nutting by William Wordsworth, Dejection by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ode to the West Wind—“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed”—by Percy Bysshe Shelley would seem to be precursors. More immediately, confessional poetry relates to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot and also Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and The Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound, where intimate references to friends are worked into the verse:
Lordly men are to earth O'ergiven
these the companions:
Fordie that wrote of giants
and William who dreamed of nobility
and Jim the comedian singing:
“Blarrney castle me darlin'
you're nothing now but a StOWne.”
(Canto LXXIV)
It would be an astute reader who could identify the figures to whom this refers as, respectively, Ford Madox Ford, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce.
Remainder of essay (which includes commentary on Plath and Sexton) is accessible here.
Hobsbaum, Philip. "Confessional Poetry." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Ed. Jay Parini. Oxford University Press 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College Library. 3 May 2009.
Psychoanalysis: Therapy for treating behaviour disorders, particularly neurosis, based on the work of Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis emphasises unconscious mental processes and the determination of personality by instinct, chiefly sexual development in childhood. Psychoanalytic techniques include free association and the analysis and interpretation of dreams. The patient expresses repressed conflicts through transference to the analyst.
"psychoanalysis." World Encyclopedia. 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College Library. 3 May 2009.
villanelle: A poem composed of an uneven number (usually five) of tercets rhyming aba, with a final quatrain rhyming abaa. In this French fixed form , the first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the third lines of the succeeding tercets, and together as the final couplet of the quatrain. Representing these repeated lines in capitals, with the second of them given in italic, the rhyme scheme may be displayed thus: AbA abA abA abA abA abAA. The form was established in France in the 16th century, and used chiefly for pastoral songs. In English, it was used for light vers de société by some minor poets of the late 19th century; but it has been adopted for more serious use by W. H. Auden , William Empson , and Derek Mahon . The best-known villanelle in English, however, is Dylan Thomas's ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ ( 1951 )
"villanelle" The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College. 5 May 2009.
The Life
While some of their lives are manifest in their poems, remember that writers generally create personas when writing about themselves: thus the "I" or the "Elizabeth" in a poem by Elizabeth Bishop may not necessarily be the same as the person that writes the poem. This is true even in confessional poetry.
See the textbook introductions for brief biographies and the links below for longer biographies.
Elizabeth Bishop. Ashley Brown. American Poets Since World War II . Ed. Donald J. Greiner. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 5 . Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. From Literature Resource Center.
Anne Sexton. Diane Wood Middlebrook. American Poets Since World War II: Fifth Series. Ed. Joseph Mark Conte. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 169 . Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. From Literature Resource Center.
Sylvia Plath. Thomas McClanahan. American Poets Since World War II. Ed. Donald J. Greiner. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 5 . Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. From Literature Resource Center .
The Times
We move here from the 50s of Ginsberg to the 60s and 70s, a time when poets no longer had worry about being arrested for their work -- and when it was more difficult to create transgressive art.
Given the interest in reality TV and talk shows, not sure if we've moved from the voyeurism inherent in confessional poetry.
The biographies of each of the authors above mention Robert Lowell, whose works are included in our textbook. Functioning as a kind of 60s era Ezra Pound, he furthered the careers of many poets (close friends with Bishop -- and taught Sexton and Plath), and wrote many fine poems, yet his own work is often overshadowed by those in his circle.
Class Discussion
Elizabeth Bishop
“The Fish”
- How is the fish personified?
- Why is it personified?
- Whose victory is referenced at the end of the poem?
- Why does does speaker let him go?
“One Art”
- A villanelle: see above.
- What's the speaker worried the most about losing in this poem?
- Why call it an "art"
- How does the form of the poem add to its meaning?
“In the Waiting Room”
- What does the speaker discover here?
- What has she been waiting for?
- Why are the breasts "horrifying"?
“The Moose”
- Worked on the poem for twenty years
- Why a poem about a moose? What could it symbolize?
- Why a bus and a moose? (note the last lines)
Anne Sexton
“The Truth the Dead Know”
- What is the truth the dead know?
- How does he "cultivate" herself?
- What do "Men kill for" (line 12)?
“The Starry Night”
- How does the biography of Van Gogh fit with one of the themes of the painting?
- Why the repeated line "Oh, starry starry night! This is how I want to die."?
“Sylvia's Death”
Sylvia Plath
“Lady Lazarus”
- Note how the enjambment keeps the poem moving
enjambment: The running over of the sense and grammatical structure from one verse line or couplet to the next without a punctuated pause. In an enjambed line (also called a ‘run-on line'), the completion of a phrase, clause, or sentence is held over to the following line so that the line ending is not emphasized as it is in an end-stopped line. Enjambment is one of the resources available to poets in English blank verse , but it appears in other verse forms too, even in heroic couplets : Keats rejected the 18th-century closed couplet by using frequent enjambment in Endymion ( 1818 ), of which the first and fifth lines are end-stopped while the lines in between are enjambed.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
"enjambment." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College Library. 5 May 2009 .
- Why is her face, at first, featureless, fine Jew linen"? And what's the "napkin"?
- Why does the flesh seem to come back to her? (lines 16-18)
- Who's "Herr Doktor" (line 65)
“Ariel”
“Daddy”
- What are some of the things she accuses her father of?
- Is it her literal father she's attacking? How can you tell?
- Why does she mention becoming a jew?
- What's "the model" she makes (line 64) -- the "I do, I do" is a clue.
- Is she really through by the end of the poem? Is the poem an act of exorcism or is it a sign that she's still controlled/connected to him?
Group Questions
We'll be talking through these poems -- I'm particularly interested here in these last poems we read for the semester -- in your own readings.
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
Click to enlarge
The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
Quotes from Critics
© David Bordelon 2009