Confessional poetry represents a deeply personal, autobiographical portrayal of the poet’s inner self, which is characterized by a highly emotional tone of the speaker, whose first person voice does not create a distance between the poet and the speaker, but actually fuses the two into one and the same self. This confessional label was applied to a number of poets creating during the post-war period of 1950s and 1960s, including ground-breaking names in the field of poetry such as Robert Lowell, Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman and others. Their personal narratives of their inner turmoil, their secluded, true selves and the painful experiences which shaped their lives introduced emotions lacking in the pre-war poetry, taking an entirely different route to that of their poetic predecessors, such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
Confessional poetry came as an outraged answer to the so called “tranquilized Fifties,” a term coined by Robert Lowell, where the traumatic experiences and taboo issues, such as divorce, adultery, neglect of children and mental disorders, are brought out in the open (Beach 155). Historically, the critics trace the beginnings of confessional poetry to the poems of Robert Lowell written in the 1950s, with his poem “Skunk Hour” being considered as “the quintessential poem of the confessional movement” (Beach 155-156). His frequent breakdowns and the influence of poets such as Ginsberg and Snodgrass, made him begin to move further away from the conventional form, and to find sources of his poetry in his own personal life experiences.
In addition, confessional poets were largely influenced by psychoanalysis, in their urge to transform traumatic and haunting experiences into paths of self-discovery and catharsis (Karp and Sutcliffe 243). This is especially prominent in the case of Ann Sexton, whose psychoanalyst advised her to write poetry in order to be able to deal with her issues of being trapped in a loveless marriage, depression and other psychological problems, which eventually ended in her suicide. According to many critics, the doctor, especially the psychoanalyst, is said to have provoked confessional poetry (Nelson 117). One of Sexton’s most powerful poems is “The Truth the Dead Know,” which represents a pungent elegy for the death of her parents. The poem is clearly autobiographical, yet it does not restrain itself from raising fundamental questions about the nature of death. She commences with “Gone, I say and walk from church,” emphasizing the term “gone,” which represents not only her parents being gone, but how she herself feels gone, physically present, yet mentally absent, gone just like them (Beach 162). The poem echoes in refusal: the poet’s to ride in the procession, and the dead to be blessed, while the question of the final stanza offers no solace: “And what of the dead? They lie without shoes/ in their stone boats” (Beach 162). These stone boats reminisce of the transportation to the realm of the dead, with no shoes, with no other possibility. Just like this one, Sexton’s other poems convey a sense of low self-esteem, frightful shyness, of love lingering inside herself with no one to give it to, and the subsequent frustration and anger, culminating in her suicide.
An unavoidable figure of confessional poetry would most certainly be Sylvia Plath, whose entire life has been one long attempt at a suicide, and she bravely speaks of it in her poetry. In “Lady Lazarus” she evokes the memory of these failed attempts, but fervently states that her resurrection is far less miraculous than the one of Biblical Lazarus. She survives her suicide attempts, but she continues to linger in a state between life and death, never really belonging to either side. She identifies herself with the victims of Nazi camps, whose skin was transformed into lifeless objects: “A sort of walking miracle, my skin/ Bright as a Nazi lampshade/My right foot/ A paperweight” (Karp and Sutcliffe 248). Her opus is usually singled out from that of other confessional poets due to its vicious and disconcerting imagery and an almost mischievous use of alliteration and rhyme. Despite the fact that her depression gnawed on her throughout her entire life, it actually emphasized her connection with her own inner self and the people and the world around her. As it was the case with most confessional poets, her poetry possesses a sense of artistic perfection, whose form refuses the rigidity of the past, offering liberation in the face of convention. She feels proud to be the vaudeville comedian of her own tragic destiny.
John Berryman’s The Dream Songs serve as a kind of “mock epic,” where the speaker is bored by everything, including literature, society, even himself (Beach 166). His Dream Song 14 is characterized by rapid changes in tone, loose syntax and self-important proclamations, such as “Life, friends, is boring,” which may well be explained by the mentioning of the sedative effects of gin in the last stanza, making the entire poem resemble an intoxicated man’s philosophy on life (Beach 167). As with confessional poets, Berryman also does not offer any answers to the questions his poems raise. Life offers little, if any, consolation, and so does their poetry.
The confessional poets dared to deal with subject matter that had not been previously discussed openly and had been shunned as inappropriate for poetic expression, such as trauma, death, depression and the reality of human relationships. Their poetry resembles a personal diary of emotions and experiences, but not at the cost of prosody. They paid special attention to the minutest of details, retaining the artistic perfection of rhythm and verse, simultaneously taking aesthetic and moral risks, which pioneered their poetry.
References:
Beach, Christopher. The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-century American Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
Karp, Jonathan and Adam Sutcliffe. Philosemitism in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
Nelson, Deborah. Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2002. Print.
