Confessional poet

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A confessional poet traffics in intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about him or herself, in poems about illness, sexuality, despondence and the like. The Confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the 1950s and 1960s. John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and William De Witt Snodgrass have all been called "Confessional Poets." As fresh and different as the work of these poets appeared at the time, it is also true that several poets prominent in the canon of Western literature, perhaps most notably Sextus Propertius and Petrarch, could easily share the label of "confessional" with the confessional poets of the fifties and sixties.

[edit] Development of definition

Allen Ginsberg, explained his interpretation of confessional poetry with the following quote from the poem “Howl”

[To] stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, . .

The "I" used in confessional poems has often been construed as personal and autobiographical — as the poet herself or himself speaking directly to the reader. When M. L. Rosenthal coined the term "confessional" in a review of Robert Lowell'sLife Studies in "Poetry as Confession" (The Nation, September 19, 1959), he interpreted the confessional "I" in this way. Again discussing Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1959), Rosenthal wrote:

“Lowell’s poetry has been a long struggle to remove the mask, to make the speaker unequivocally himself. […] it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal" (M. L. Rosenthal, The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 226, 231). [1]

However, more recent criticism of the confessional poets (such as that of Diana Hume George or Jacqueline Rose) has troubled the association of the confessional 'I' with the poet. In The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (1991), Rose begins with the assumption that "Plath is a fantasy": her life and poetry have been constructed in such a way as to perpetuate a particular fiction about her marriage, mental illness, and "autobiographic" writing (5). Rose argues against the mythologizing tendency among Plath's critics by showing how Plath fictionalizes herself in her writing.

Later developments in confessional poetry begin to blur the distinctions between a public and a private activism. Authors like Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde present personal difficulties in a socio-political context. Lorde's poem, "Coal" reflects on such personal problems within a given cultural context. Also in Levertov's, "Life at War" there is something inextricably personal bound in the conflict of the age.

What defines poetry as confessional is not the themes/subject matter, but how the issue represented is explored. Confessional poetry explores personal details about the authors' life without meekness, modesty, or discretion. Because of this, confessional poetry is a popular form of creative writing that many people enjoy not only to read but to embark upon. Another element that is specific to this poetry is self-revelation achieved through creating the poem. This passes on to the reader, and a connection is made.

[edit] Reasons behind writing confessional poetry

Poets whose writing is classified as confessional (it has been argued) use writing as an outlet for their demons. Writing and then re-reading one's work changes the cognitive processes with which one's brain processes this information - it offers perspective. Anne Sexton famously said, "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness." But she also argued against this perception in her interviews. In an interview with Patricia Marx, Sexton denies that writing “cured her”:

“I don’t think [that writing cured my mental illness] particularly. It certainly did not create mental health. It isn’t as simple as my poetry makes it, because I simplified everything to make it more dramatic. I have written poems in a mental institution, but only later, not at the beginning” (“Interview with Patricia Marx,” Hudson Review 18, no. 4, Winter, 1965/66).

Since, by definition, confessional poetry is brutally honest, it is usually very emotional. This honesty is boundless and can even be directed at the reader.

Honesty, little slut, must you insist

On hearing every dirty word I know

And all my worst affairs? Are impotence,

Insanity, and lying what you lust for?

Your hands are cold, feeling me in the dark.

—Edgar Bowers, "To the Contemporary Muse"

Some have argued that confessional free verse poetry has become the dominant approach in contemporary poetry, and that it has sparked both a reaction toward the more avant garde LANGUAGE poetry and the more traditional New Formalism.

..............Downtrodden MFA's

Denounce the Audenesque as obsolete

Oppression by your dead-white-male elite

But then go on to become depressed

Because there's nothing left to be confessed.

-A. M. Juster "Letter to Auden"