Confessional poetry, its significance and merits, has held a focal place in English literary criticism. It is a term primarily given to the self-disclosure mode of writing and “use of intimate subject matter adopted and pioneered in America by Robert Lowell” in the late 1950s. (Drabble, M. and Stringer, J. 2003) My thesis proposes to evaluate the confessional poetry of both Robert Lowell and one of his students, Anne Sexton, by comparing and contrasting recurring universal themes adopted by both poets.
It was M. L. Rosenthal who ‘first applied the term confession to Robert Lowell’s work’ (Rosenblatt, Jon 1998, p.14). Robert Lowell was considered by countless people to be the most eminent American poet of the late twentieth century; he focused on an “association of the speaker or protagonist with an image of debasement” with which he was able to record his “damaged psyche onto the outside world.” (Beach, C. 2003, p.159) Thus confessional poetry grew out of real life struggles and tensions and spoke of personal issues of depression, suffering, associations and death – topics not tackled within earlier poetry – and frequently written and read like an autobiography of the poet.
Anne Sexton was best known for this autobiographical writing style; in fact many people believed that all she wrote about had happened or was happening to her. She herself however, preferred the term ‘personal.’ Gill, J. (2004, p.1) tells us that Sexton explained “my poetry is very personal. I don’t think I write public poems. I write very personal poems.” This reference by Sexton to a personal rather than a confessional writing style raises questions on the appropriacy of the label ‘confessional poetry.’
Perhaps the term ‘confessional’ poetry is over simplistic and fails to appreciate the quality of Lowell’s and Sexton’s poetry, and in so doing neglects to appreciate their capability and talent to write in such a way as to persuade their readers to believe they are the subjects of their poetry and everything is true and real.
A thorough reading and interpretation of the poems, prose and anthologies of Lowell and Sexton, together with an extensive literature revue(see intended list below) will provide a perspective for investigation into the means by which they so cleverly balance the idea of what is real, what is not and what actually refers to their own lives.
The rationale for the research lies in the fact that “confessionalism is a question of degree” (Yezzi, D. 1998, p.1) and a close study to identify and appreciate the similarities and differences between Lowell and Sexton’s work will help to ascertain the degree to which are adequately regarded as confessional.
It is known from literary criticism that both Lowell and Sexton deal with topics that are veiled and suppressed; even though they focus on universal themes previously ignored, this study will try to determine to what extent that universal vein really does include personal experience.
Reference
- Beach, Christopher, (2003) The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American
- Drabble, Margaret and Stringer, Jenny. (2003) ‘confessional poetry’ The Concise Oxford
- Companion to English Literature. Retrieved 28 Jul. 2009
- Gill, Joanna, (2004) My Sweeney, Mr Eliot: Ann Sexton and the “Impersonal Theory of Poetry” Journal of Modern Literature, 27:1/2, pp.36-66.
- Rosenblatt, Jon (1998) Sylvia Plath: the Poetry of Initiation Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
- Yezzi, David, (1998) Confessional poetry and the artifice of honesty. New Criterion, Vol.16, June. Retrieved 1 August, 2009.
