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| Poet Sylvia Plath |
1.) Read all the Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton poems in the Google Drive folder.
2.) Search for analysis and interpretations of these poems.
3.) Search "Confessional poets" and "Confessional poetry" and read about this important era in poetry topics and the poetic form.
4.) Read 5 more poems (not in the Google Drive folder) by Confessional poets, including 1 by Sylvia Plath.
5.) Search images of the Confessional poets. Find and observe at least 15.
6.) Summarize and react to what you learn today in 300+ words (or as many words as you can before I begin discussing my background/experience with Confessional poetry).
I'll tell you what I know/think in a little while.
81 comments:
I learned today what exactly confessional poetry is. I do not know much about poetry and I am not an avid poetry reader. I find confessional poetry really interesting in that it talks about subjects that people would not normally want to talk about. It is especially interesting to see when it was becoming popular (the 1950’s and 60’s). I would not have expected such poetry to develop in an era when the public was hell bent on being ‘proper’. However, while being proper they often engaged in immoral acts such as dealing with prostitutes, drugs, and drink. For these poets to openly discuss these unmentionable things was quite interesting. I will admit that when I first read these poems I had no idea what was happening, especially since I am not well learned in poetry. It took having to look up the analysis and explanation of the poems to truly ‘get it’. I found that Sexton’s poems were the easiest to understand without looking it up but Bishop took the most analysis to understand. I did think that it was fairly moving words though that each of the author’s used. I especially found Sexton’s poem “The Addict” to be moving. She talks about suicide and death in such a poetic, sing-song way as to make it an art. She denies people telling her that it is bad, but she says that it is an exercise. A poet I looked up was W.D. Snodgrass. One poem of his that I found extremely interesting was “Magda Goebbels”. He writes about the Nazi Goebbels and his killing of jews like that of Mary. He writes it as if it is a prayer from Goebbels to a child. He is giving the child relief and death in such a poetic way that it makes you want to cry.
Confessional poetry is the style of poetry that draws from the poet’s personal experiences or emotions. It is poetry of “I” and accounts extremely personal tales. Anne Sexton was a confessional poet who seems to have written many poems about death; namely, suicide. She discussed death like an old friend and a timeless foe, that both awaits to welcome you and pulls you impatiently into its clutches. The poem “Addict” is about addiction and the emotions an addict feels in a very personal way that conveys the emotions to the reader. She wrote in a open way and brought her feelings to light, especially anguish. She referred to her writing as therapy, especially as she underwent psychoanalysis. Other noted confessional poets drew from other aspects of life; Robert Lowell, for example, wrote often of family ties and other relationships in his poetry. He talked about marriage, family, and struggles within both. Sylvia Plath, another famous confessional poet, wrote a poem called “Daddy” that gave me chills, in which she talked about her father’s death and venomously tells him she is through. She wrote often of her feelings, struggles in her marriage to a fellow poet, relationship with her parents, and her own view of herself. A lot of the confessional poetry I read through seems to be focused on a lot of negatives, as opposed to happy occasions and optimism. It came as no surprise to me, then, that both Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath took their own lives; it appeared clear that they faced many struggles mentally and emotionally. What really surprised me was how young many of these poets were.
Chmela 2
Confessional poets write about their own private lives. What is different about these poets is what they write about. They tend to write about taboos, traumatic events, and drugs. The writers write in a very straightforward way that uses well thought out craftsmanship to become an art. Some of these authors are looked at negatively because of the things they have done and the embarrassing facts they are revealing. Others like their work because it is relatable and quite passionate. My favorite is by Sexton called “The Addict”, because it shows how drugs only mask what is really happening and although she knows this she continues because it became her lifestyle.
These poems are very interesting because they are not only stories but stories of tragic and memorable events in people’s lives that have changes them for either the better or the worse. That’s what makes these stories amazing, the amount of change the author succumbs to based on one life event no matter how terrible. The original confessional poets will always be the best, but there are still modern confessional poets to take over when these aging artists pass away. These authors still use amazing craftsmanship putting in literary devices and sticking to certain rhyming patterns, however they offered the reader a new genre of poetry to read. These poets will always be remembered for their work because of how memorable and life changing it is.
Greg Lundberg 2
Okay, wow. This poetry style is incredible. It really speaks to me because it is so relatable. Everyone has gone through something traumatic or at least unpleasant/embarrassing. This poetry style seems to cleanse the audience's mind. To read about something you have grown through makes you feel like you are not alone. It is comforting and intriguing.
In the poem "The Man-Moth" the moon is what causes all the trouble for the Man-Moth. Our hands are one of the things that set us apart from apes, they can create and manipulate to an amazing degree but many of us choose not to bother. The tear is what all the gloom and tension leads up to and it will always end up where it started. The Moose is about a journey throughout Nova Scotia and how the group of passengers aboard a bus see a moose. The Moose is ultimately about the human need to be purged and, if possible, cure of self-hood. "After Auschwitz" is describing how passive death is about what is occurring around him. He doesn't have to do his job because it is being done already. The "Man" in the poem is representative of humans. Man must have no power and cannot even raise an eye. She wants the Lord to see what she wrote. since he is the one who created man. "I beg the Lord not to hear." "The Addict" is Sexton's inner self coming through with the means of poetry. She has an addiction and the reader receives the feeling that she's not completely serious as she writes this; almost ironic. The pills can be seen in a religious context; she feels the same way about them just as someone might feel about their God and church, and "chemical kisses" shows this, her addiction has replaced real intimacy with another person. "Goodnights" are symbolic of sleeping/passing out from drugs and also death. "Mr.Edwards and the Spider" is the describing Jonathan Edwards who gave the speech, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God." Where the spiders are dangling over the fire the same way that God dangles us over the fires of hell, that at any moment the string could snap. "To Speak of Woe That is Marriage" has a powerful phrase, "Our blossoms. Life begins to happens". This is showing there was something existent but eventually faded and turned into longing for someone that is not there.
2 Williams
Bishop “The Moose”
Describes how the power of nature and natural things can leak into our modern lives and still fascinate us.
Bishop “The Man-Moth”
Talks about a man trying to escape his loneliness and then reverts back to how he was before.
Lowell “Mr. Edward and the Spider”
This is an interesting story about sinning and death. I think it is saying that all sinners will be punished by God and there is no use trying to escape it because you deserve it.
Sexton “After Auschwitz”
I assume this is told from a Jew or prisoner’s point of view. They absolutely hate man kind and think none of them deserve to ever be happy for what they have done to the prisoners. He someone feels bad for what he’s saying because he says he hopes the Lord does not hear him talk so badly about these people.
Sexton “The Addict”
This addict wants to die a slow, but happy, death from the drugs they have married. They like the drugs more than they like themselves and has completely overtaken their minds. The lines go really short, longer, longer than the one previous, longest, shorter than the one previous, shorter, and really short. This makes you read the poem like someone who is high or drunk would speak: slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, etc.
Define Confessional Poetry:
Confessional poetry emerged during the 1950s and mainly focuses on saucy topics that the poet themselves experienced. At that time that could include mental illness, sexuality, and suicide. Examples of confessional poets are Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass.
Of the photos I observed of confessional poets they all look very... "free" looking. They also all look very deep in thought and their photos do not reflect the normal photos of the day.
I really wish I could write more and touch on all the topics, but due to time restraints I could only answer 4 out of the 6 questions.
I learned that confessional poetry is simply put: poetry using the personal form. The narrator uses personal pronouns, such as “I” and “me”. This form of poetry began becoming popular in the 1950’s, and often tackles the taboo. Of the six poems we were required to read, four mentioned death, one mentioned sex, and one mentioned drug addiction. None of these taboo subjects were dealt with lightly, either. Suicide, prostitutes, genocide; all very confessional in nature.
I've learned that confessional poetry set a new standard for emotional, internal, and personal images and writing to be expressed. Some write to shut down other's views on religion, because of what they personally believe, but others write to ask questions they have had themselves. Many holocaust writers have enough to back up their emotions, such as in Sylvia Plath's "Daddy", and lays down a depth of human nature. Some may ask, "Is there something wrong with me?" when reading these, but that is the entire point. I particularly love these poems, because they represent such questions; they make the reader imagine something new, scary, or personal.
Eitreim
Period 2
Confessional poetry is a form of poetry that is deeply personal and introspective. Most prevalent in the 1950's and 60's, it seems closely related to the Beat movement and authors like Kesey and Kerouac.
Paragons of confessional poetry come from both genders and a variety of backgrounds, although certain themes predominate. Suicide is prevalent, and all the men have beards.
Confessional poetry is poetry that is told using first person. It developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Confessional poets wrote about topics that had never been discussed in American poetry before. These types of poems often deal with death, trauma, depression, and relationships. Many of the topics found in these poems are taboo, or topics that people do not like to discuss. Anne Sexton often wrote confessional poetry to help deal with her mental illness. I found these poems to very interesting. Some of the poems, like Sexton’s “The Addict,” were easy to understand, while others were not, such as the “The Man-Moth” by Elizabeth Bishop. I also read Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” which was a very interesting and sad poem about the narrator’s father and his abusive ways. By the end of the poem, she is glad that she is through with her father. Overall, I enjoyed these poems, although they dealt with taboo topics, as they were not like any poems that I had read before.
I learned that confessional poets are those that confess aspects of their private lives. To me, it makes their poetry much more emotionally driven. Lowell must have had trouble with marriage for him to have written such a poem that makes readers think twice about getting into a relationship. Sexton's poems upset me the most. She wrote about the cruelty that all men are capable of showing. Another of her poems including an addict comparing pill taking to some religious ritual. Confessional poets tend to cover topics that most people stay away from because they are disturbing. These people are brave enough to share the hardships from their lives in order to open our eyes to what really happens in the world.
Confessional poetry is personal poetry or poetry about the ‘I’. Confessional poetry focuses on personal experiences like trauma, death, depression, and relationships--topics otherwise usually avoided. Common confessional poets are Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton.
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, the daughter views her dad like God. Her dad is a Nazi and it is believed that her mother might be part Jewish. It is a poem of contradictions. I believe it is about the individual trapped between herself and society, as a teenager we have all been there trying to discover who we are and what we like. The poem “You’re” by Plath is about pregnancy. Plath uses phrases such as “Mute as a turnip from the Fourth of July to All Fools’ Day” to distinguish the nine months of pregnancy and describe it in a more charming way.
Elizabeth Bishop’s “Man Moth” actually originated from a misspelling of the word mammoth in a newspaper article. The Man Moth appears to be a superhero figure of sorts who sometimes exhibits the qualities and characteristics of a moth and sometimes demonstrates those of a human. We can all learn from the Man Moth the characteristics about being determined, brave, and having a different perspective on the world and the way we view it.
As Sylvia Plath stated: “I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who everyone else is.”--a very relatable line stating that we are so busy being who society expects us to be that we do not even know who we are let alone who our friends are because chances are they are doing the same thing as you--fitting into the mold society as set you to be.
“If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.”--Sylvia Plath
All of these 6 poems I just read are taboo subjects. One was about auschwitz, another about drugs and prostitution. What I noticed throughout all of these poets in their poetry is there immense use of emotion. They are confessional poets. Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or “I”. It was first introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These kind of poets talked about subjects that were taboo subjects not accepted during this time century. A couple well-known confessional poets I read about were “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and “The Dream Songs” by John Berryman. Both of these two poetry pieces were very personal stories in the authors lives.
Confessional poetry was a literature founded around 1950-1960. Some notable authors are Robert Lowell, Sylvia Path, and Anne Sexton. The whole idea around confessional poetry is bringing out topics which have not been seriously discussed in society. Examples of this would be death, depression, trauma, relationships, or even the holocaust. One of the most prominent examples of this is Anne Sexton. Sexton has a poem that discusses the harsh realities of addiction and what they do to the body. It gives readers a view from an addicts point of view. Another one of Sexton’s works deals with Auschwitz camp. This once again goes inside a persons mind who was in Auschwitz and shows what they were thinking or saying at the time. This poetry is not a fun, flowery kind to read. This is a harsh reality poetry; however, is very good to inform society about the realities of life.
Through out blog task assignment I learned a great deal more about confessional poetry than I did before. I did not even know that confessional poetry existed. With the use of confessional poetry, the poets are able to make the poems much more personal to the reader. When the reader reads "I", they feel that they themselves are saying I and are this person who is being written about. Because these are such personal poems, the bring out the morbid and the saddening of society. They do not focus solely on flowers and pretty things, but of harsh instances. They use their gift to make a possibly controversial stance on subjects. Confessional poetry brings the authors we read about today together. Everyone knew one another during this time and many of them had some sort of mental illness, including depression. Many of these poems have something to do with why society is broken. Whether that faction is due to sexual orientation, societal status, or occupation. Bishop felt alone although she lived in New York. During this time in her life, her homosexuality is odd in society. This poem was relevant then as well as now. I thought it was interesting that Lowell wrote from the perspective of a woman. He could have possibly had a female in his life which had similar experiences as the woman in the poem. I enjoyed these poems. Although they were confusing at times, they made me feel for the characters and the authors. They are rich in emotion and make the reader reevaluate their own stance on certain subjects. This may be difficult for the average author, but for these power house poets, they come not necessarily easily, but are their true selves.
To me, the Confessional Poetry is just first-person writing but added with topics that are not talked about very much. Before 1950, poets did not write about their experiences or themselves and that is very interesting to me. I would think that that would be the first thing poets did. It would be easier experiencing it first hand. I see poets as so open about their lives but not before that time I see. This time in age I see poets as artist and artist generally can be the most open and out there people. I believe that before that time, poets wrote about their experiences but not first-person using I, me, and so on. But the poets may have purposely ignored certain parts of themself that were not popular at the time. I did not see Bishop’s poems about a lesbian but I find that interesting and I will look back and read it with that lense. I always enjoy people who stand up for something different. Sharing their thoughts is interesting. For example, Anne Sexton talks about suicide. That subject was and still is very touchy. These people are very bothered and it is a drop into the seas that they lived in. I find it intriguing to step in someone’s shoes.
What I have learned today is that confessional poetry is not an author necessarily confessing something they have done. It is more that they are confessing their distaste for problems in society. The Man-Moth for example, in my opinions, expresses the distaste that Bishop has for the emphasis on beauty that America has. The Man-Moth himself has to live in the tunnels all day and can only come out at night because he is ugly, like a moth. Lowell is obviously not a woman, but he writes from the perspective of a woman in his work To Speak of Woe that is Marriage. He condemns abusive and adulterous men, as the poem sends a sort of chill down the readers spine. In Sexton’s The Addict, she points out the addiction that many patients in mental facilities were dealing with. Though it is a poem that is through the eyes of only one patient, you can assume that many other patients who were dealing with depression were given the same pills, causing the same addiction. The patient is not given a name for this reasoning. Most characters are not named at all in confessional style poetry. I think it is because a reader could then place themselves in the situation that the character is more easily, and see why the author is condemning and questioning the acts and events of their poem. It makes sense that this sort of poetry became popular in the late 50’s and early 60’s, as this became the time that is known for so much reform in the United States. During this time, those that questioned the social norms and the government were the same people who grew to fame throughout the decade shift. Though the 50’s are seen as a more conservative time, by the end of the decade many people were questioning everything about America, which is what makes these authors so important. They brought up taboo topic like abuse, depression, rape, sex in general, drug usage, and so many other things. These authors are still important today because their work creates conversation on things that people still do not want to talk about.
Breitzman 3
I learned today what confessional poetry is. It is poetry dealing with personal feelings and experiences of the various poets This experiences range from a death of a close personal friend or family member to problems with alcohol or drug addiction. Confessional poetry was founded in the late 1950s and early 1960s and was probably seen as controversial, for prior to this the world had never read poetry as deep and personal as confessional poetry. I definitely feel that confessional poetry is more passionate and sincere than other forms of poetry, since they are dealing with personal and prior experiences. Though confessional poetry can be difficult to relate to, I commend the poets for being so brave as to write poems about their traumatizing experiences. For example, Anne Sexton wrote a particularly eye-opening poem called "After Auschwitz" which describes the cruelty of the Nazis and how they should be looked at with disgust after how they killed thousands of innocent Jewish people. Though the Holocaust in World War 2 was still probably a very common topic, it was very brave for Sexton to express her deep, personal feelings through poetry. I enjoyed reading and learning more about confessional poetry, and commend the poets for expressing their true feelings.
Confessional poetry is an interesting writing style to study. Founded in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it focuses on extreme moments in the writers lives. People like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and W. D. Snodgrass all helped to refine the poetry and make confessional poetry into what it is today.
Confessional poetry focuses on extreme instances in the poet’s lives. For example, Sexton’s poem “After Auschwitz” focuses on the holocaust and the effects on people. The narrator in the poem is so focused on death that it is all he or she can think about. The narrator talks about the Nazi’s sautéing babies and eating them for breakfast. Whether this is real or not, it does focus on the extreme cruelty and experiences that these people had to endure.
Lowell’s poem "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage" talks about a husband that is constantly out running around on his wife. It says that he is out looking for prostitutes while his wife sits at home and cries. He also comes home around 5:00 with whiskey on his breath and beats his wife. Instances like these are traumatizing to any spouse. By using examples like these, we see that Lowell was an excellent confessional poet. He uses an extreme portion in his life to write the poem and explain what was happening at that time.
After researching confessional poets on google, they seem to be somewhat cynical about their writing. For example, Lowell wrote, “The light at the end of the tunnel is just an oncoming train.” Comments like this are somewhat harsh and kind of have a negative outlook on life. However, this style of poetry is very real and is not fluffed up to make stories seem unreal. This is a very style of poetry that says stuff the way it is.
When initially looking at the blog task I had not the slightest idea of what confessional poets were. I thought about it a little more and broke it down: confessional (confessing) poets
(poetry). Though my analysis was not completely correct, it did have some truth. By dictionary, the definition of confessional poetry is “poetry of the personal or “I” (poets.org). Many times the works deal with extreme personal experiences, and include experiences with taboo subjects such as sexual orientation, mental illness, and other topics that society does not claim as the norm. Confessional Poets began to emerge in the 1950’s when the social norm is to live in a house that is identical to the rest in the neighborhood, have a white picket fence, and have a wife and children that were obedient to the father/husband’s command. I feel like each of the authors had their own “confessions” to share with a society that was not accepting of them. For example, Elizabeth Bishop was known for being homosexual, so through her free verse poetry, she is able to express that in a way in which society may not interpret it in that way. Robert Lowell discussed the extremely taboo topic of suicide through the Spider in “Mr. Edwards and the Spider”. Anne Sexton wrote “After Auschwitz” one year prior to her death in 1974. In 1973, there were a couple different events that this poem may be trying to address. In 1973, the troops were all brought back home from Vietnam after an unsuccessful war. Also in 1973, Roe vs. Wade occurred in the United States. This court case made abortion legal in the United States. So, my thoughts are that the author of the poem is trying to disapprove of the the choice of the court case. After this class period, I am now well informed of what Confessional Poetry and Poets are!
Poetry. The use of words to convey meanings deeper than the words themselves. When I read poetry, the words dance around in my head. My eyes rush over the words, my mind trying to catch up and decipher their meaning. I stumble upon a line, reread it, then reread it again. There is something wonderful about the connection made between a poet and his or her reader, sometimes in just a few lines.
Confessional poetry is paramount to the poetry genre. It is most often created with many “I”s within. This genre of poetry often displays the poet’s extreme circumstances in their lives. If not realized in their own life, the poet may be creating a story to touch others dealing with said circumstances. Common themes used by Confessional poets, Sexton, Lowell, and Plath, etc, are mental illness, suicide, sexuality, and drug abuse. Using lines of poetry to mask and spotlight issues that are often difficult to read about is brilliant. Confessional poetry reminds me a lot of musical artists. Musical artists that are troubled often times create songs that hold meaning to whatever issue they are facing. This release of emotion through songs or poems help not only the composer, but also any listener similar to the composer.
After reading example poems by Sexton, Lowell, and Bishop, I am more familiar with Confessional poetry. “The Addict” by Anne Sexton speaks of an individual who has an addiction to pills. Using the personal “I” as the narrator, Sexton may be talking as herself, or she may be placing her addict reader as the narrator. She never claims it is a problem, but rather says, “It’s a kind of war where I plant bombs inside myself.” A reader can envision these pills as very harmful, without Sexton ever telling us they are harmful. My favorite poems were those written by Anne Sexton--her work is very powerful. “After Auschwitz” by Sexton is incredibly powerful. Although I do not agree that the whole male gender should be connected to Nazism, I appreciate the connection she chooses to make. She must have empowered many women to question the men in their lives after they read her poem. She must have been a feminist.
Zeke Wieser
Coming into the blog-task, I was familiar with many of these authors and the Confessional Poetry movement. However, the lack of my "learning" of these things will in no way lessen the enjoyment they give me (and the length of this blog-task).
The advent of Confessional Poetry is a defining era in American (and I would argue Western) poetic history. The Confessional Poet began to dismantle some of the restriction and suffocation brought on by metre and syllabic stress. However, poets like Plath, Lowell, Sexton, and Bishop preserve the satisfying sounds and repetition that some form and metre can provide.
It is worth mentioning that modern poetry in America would not exist without this era of Confessional Poetry.
Emotion is a core pillar to the power of Confessional Poetry. Experience and pain through experience creates palpable emotion for the reader, and many Confessional use evocative imagery in order to convey these messages.
Reading these poems opened my eyes to a whole new world of poetry. From Bishop to Sexton I see very different styles of writings and meanings. While reading Bishop I learned that she does not always follow the “poetry” rules, as in, making them rhyme, she has her own style. She likes to take animals and make them into a human characteristic which I find interesting. Her writing I find mysterious.
Lowell likes to tell it how it is. His poem about marriage is not sugar coated it he tells about the lies and the emotional hurt that is caused by marriage. He uses emotions and makes them come alive in you. I think this because while I am reading his stories I get saddened by the marriage story because cheating is a sin and In the spider poem fear rises up in me because of all the fire he is talking about. For example, “The treason crackling in your blood.” He has a dark perspective on things but it is reality.
Sexton I think is the darkest poet out of these three. Writing about Auschwitz is hard to do and the way she describes the men and the place is short but very long and dark when you analyze it. Sexton did have mental problems so this could probably be reflected on what she is going through and how she is feeling. Both of the poems we read are about emotional after thought of such problems. These are both dark places to be, being an addict and being in auschwitz are not places anyone wants to be. Reading these poems show me that people have an everlasting emotion about certain events that has happened to a person.
Confessional poets opened poetry and the world to a darker side. They told stories about themselves or using the word “i” for stories about depression, murder, and other traumatic events. These poets changed the landscape of american poetry by going against the norms and writing intellectual heartbreaking poems. An author from this time, John Barryman, wrote about the traumatic event of his father's suicide and how it affected him greatly. Poets like him changed the poetry movement dramatically this affects the way people think today and the way poetry will be written forever. Photos of these poets are not just everyday snapshot photos, they express meaning and that is conveyed through the poets looks and expressions.
Learning about these poets showed me what more there is to poetry than I already knew.
Confessional poets and confessional poetry is an era where poetry topics and from are simply put. Incredibly deep and personal, but easy to understand. Prior to now, poetry and I did not get along. It has always been a struggle of mine to completely understand why the poet is saying exactly what he/she is writing. While reading “After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton I felt a wave of discomfort. When reading anything regarding the holocaust, I become greatly uncomfortable. With that being said, I learned today that confessional poetry is more passionate and more sincere than other styles of poetry. Confessional poetry ranges from personal loses, like a death of a loved one, to traumatizing events within their lives, like drug abuse/addiction. I envy these poets for being able to openly share their story in such a beautiful way. If I had to choose a favorite poet out of the three I have read today, I would have to say Anne Sexton. In her poem, “The Addict”, she made me feel the addiction. In a weird way it felt like she was able to justify it… able to tell me why the addiction was going on. Anne Sexton makes me want to read poetry, which is something I thought I would never say in my life. Throughout the other poems, like “The Man-Moth” I felt lost and confused. I had to reread constantly just to understand what was going on. It didn’t catch my attention as did the others. I can truthfully say that I am extremely excited to learn more about confessional poetry, and read more poems. I am the type of reader that likes to read realistic novels. It is difficult for me to connect to fictional stories. To say the least, confessional poetry is the perfect style of poetry for me. I commend these poets immensely for being so gifted.
Confessional poetry is a style of poetry that I see as much more personal than plain poetry or writing.
When something is written from the perspective of the writer instead of a fictional character, it adds authenticity to the story and a somewhat better meaning as well, because the reader knows that the author is feeling something as they're writing this therefore the reader's emotions will follow as they see fit.
Sympathy and joy are much easier achieved in Confessional poetry because they are told from first person and from author experience, usually. For example, in the poem Sexton wrote about the woman who wanted to kill herself, the reader is probably experiencing some decently disturbing imagery in their mind. They see Sexton as the woman and the reader will react as so.
Another thing I find curious is the fact that most of the confessional poets are women, however their works are still highly recognized. I think this is because men have a harder time coming out with their feelings, regrets, fears and secrets than women do. I think this says something about the pride of the men during this time.
I have also learned that this is probably my favorite style of poetry because it is most often the style that I prefer to write in whilst dabbling in the poetic realm.
Today I learned a lot about Confessional Poetry. Developed in the 1950's to 1960's, confessional poetry was all about "I". It dealt with subject matter that has never been discussed before in poetry such as death, depression, and relationships. Some people were appalled by it. I really enjoyed "The Addict" by Sexton. Describing an addiction is hard but Sexton sums it up pretty clearly.
"I like them more than I like me." This sentence is a good indicator if you have an addiction. This is why people overdose because they want the drugs more than they want their body.
I have learned today what exactly confessional poetry is. I do not know much of poetry, and I find it hard to decipher what exactly some poems mean to say, but I do enjoy it. I have heard of these poets that we read today (Lowell, Sexton, Bishop, Plath) but I did not know much about them. I knew what Sylvia Plath would bring in her poems because I have read a few of them before and I thoroughly enjoy her work, but I did not know how to label it. I now know what confessional poetry is and I now know what exactly her style, like the style of writing the other above listed poets have, is actually called.
Confessional poetry was emerging in popularity in the era surrounding the 1950’s and 60’s. This type of poetry dealt with the writer, and their personal experiences and feelings. It was uncommon and very unpopular to discuss topics such as sex, drugs, depression, and death; these were very risque for their time. It is very interesting to me that some people were so willing to break the norm of the time and talk about uncomfortable things. From what I know about this time, it seems that most people were very rule abiding. As uncomfortable as it is to read this poetry sometimes, it has a comforting aspect, proving that some things you are going through, you are not alone, despite the fact that people around you usually didn’t talk about them. I felt that Anne Sexton had the easiest stories to read and understand, while Bishop’s stories took further analysis to get even a glimpse of what she was referring too.
Confessional poetry is a sub-genre of poetry that deals with personal or private events or emotions that one feels. It usually is associated with a traumatic event in ones live that leads them to powerful emotion. In Man Moth, Bishop is describing her emotions of thoughts of failure and the way that man sees failure. Men and Women are the moths in the story and they try to overcome a obstacle. The moth in the poem tries to overcome a problem that is set in front of them and tries to fly higher. Knowing that he will not be able to reach his goal, the moth still flies on perusing the impossible.
Lowell writes about life and relates it to the life of a spider. His poetry comes from his observations of spiders when he was very little. He starts off by writing that the spiders are marching above, giving them personification characteristics. One of my favorite lines from the story/poem is when he says "if God who holds you to the pit of hell, Much as one holds a spider," I believe he is trying to relate the situation of God being the final judge of morality of our decisions in life to that of a spider. He see that a spider is a gross, carnivorous creature that brutally traps and kills its pray. We see and judge its actions like God judges ours. "A very little thing, a little worm,
Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said, Can kill a tiger." This line is telling us that no matter the size or other physical features that we see something with, we should always never underestimate its true potential for anything. A small black widow can easily kill a large human with just one bite.
Confessional poetry is very interesting in the fact that the poets write about taboo kind of things. It is not a surprise that it was first seen in the the 1950's and 1960's, as this is when the counterculture movement was about to begin. This was a good way for poets to write about personal things that others would down upon, without getting chastised(maybe they did, I don't know). Some of the poems I read that were not on Google drive were very interesting. Michael Jackman had a very disturbing poem about touching himself inappropriately at a bus station. I cant help but wonder to myself, is it really necessary to write poems like this? Perhaps it is, to show readers a wider view of the world. Sylvia Plath is a rather interesting poet as well. Her poem title “Daddy”, shows the dark side of Nazi Germany families. This type of poetry is very deep and meaningful and I appreciate it.
Guthmiller pd.6
I learned in reading these poems that you can get across a lot of meaning and depth in a small space using a smaller word count then a novel. I like how deep these poems get quickly.
In “The Man-Moth” the man-moth tries and fails countless times to climb the moon but falls every time. The moon could represent the dreams that the Man-Moth has.The Man-Moths hands could be a symbol for his creative potential.
“The Moose” could represent how nature can intrude on modern life.
In “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” the spider seems to represent a person's willingness to live. Just as a small spider can kill a tiger, any person can do anything if they set their mind to it.
In “To Speak of Woe that is Marriage” the husband is running around town with other women because his wife does not satisfy him. Their marriage started good but now is filled with problems.
Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or “I.”
The poems seemed to have more meaning after I looked up the definition of confessional poetry. The topics the poems covered did not magically changed, but they were given more meaning. When I first read through the poems I took the meaning to be a general statement about death, trauma, addiction, and so forth. However, when I realized that these were the authors personal beliefs on the issues I realized that it was much more personal than I had assumed. In particular, I found “After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton to be fairly potent. Sexton is saying that people were killed in the Holocaust as if it were a regular activity, like breakfast, that occurs throughout the day. However, Sexton is not targeting the Holocaust alone. Sexton is not saying that men were only evil during the Holocaust, and evil is no longer a possibility. Sexton goes as far as saying that man should not exist; birds have the right to exist, but man does not. I find this fairly interesting because at the end she begs for God to not hear. I take this to mean that she does not want God to hear these thoughts that she is having. I believe she wants man to exist, but without the innate evil that is within each man. One poem that I found interesting outside of the Google Drive was Robert Lowell’s “Waking in the Blue.” Lowell touches a fairly interesting topic, age, in this poem. Lowell starts off by saying how he grins (we can presume that he sometimes chuckles) at seeing people who used to be well built football players. However, currently they are sixty years old and broken down. I find this interesting because later on he goes on to state that he looks at himself in the mirror, and struts around. Lowell is saying that he will be that sixty year old man someday, and a young man will most likely be chuckling at him. I am not one hundred percent sure if Lowell chuckles at the man’s appearance, or if he chuckles at the idea that he will be that man someday. I personally believe it is the latter. Overall, I believe confessional poetry is a very interesting idea; we can learn where people stand on some more difficult topics.
Today I learned what confessional poetry is. Previously I had no knowledge of it. Confessional poetry seems to be poetry that is very personal to the writer. The poet writes about personal experiences some of which may have been considered taboo at one point in time. This type of poetry began to emerge in the in 1950’s and the 1960’s. Confessional poetry focuses on topic such as death, trauma, addiction and depression. These type of topics were not seen written as much before the emerge of confessional poetry. Personally I enjoy reading confessional poetry as it appears a lot of thought and real life experiences have went into the writing of the poems.
My favorite confessional poems that I read today came from Anne Sexton. Sexton began writing poetry after her therapist suggested that she did so. This was her way of venting and letting off some steam. I enjoyed Sexton’s poems the most because they were very easy to understand and she didn’t have to make them extraordinarily long to get her point across. I also enjoyed them because they are written from her experiences. “The Addict”, written by Anne Sexton, was a short poem about Sexton’s struggle with drug addiction. Sexton almost personifies the pills and gives them human characteristics. She claims that she knows she is killing herself slowly but she loves these pills more than she loves herself. She even says that she is in a type of marriage with these pills. I believe that this poem accurately portrays the mind of a drug addict.
I also enjoyed the poem, “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage”, by Robert Lowell. The poem is about a husband cheating nightly on his wife and coming home drunk. I feel that a lot people who have been cheated on could relate greatly to this poem.
Confessional poems to a great job at relating to the underlying problems in every person. Confessional poems talk about topics that people don't really usually want to talk about.
Poetry-literary work in which a special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. Understanding poetry is not, under any circumstances easy for me to understand. Before class today, I did not even know that confessional poetry existed. Most of the time poetry is not fun for me because of how the brilliant authors construct their poems. Confessional poets are those who write poetry about their own personal lives. Confessional poetry is a type of poetry which written in first person. Bishop, Lowell and Sexton are all confessional poets who not only write their emotions on paper, but also take into consideration the construction behind the poem.
“The Moose” by Elizabeth Bishop
This poem really shows the power that nature holds within us. I think this poem is very neat and relatable because many of us have experienced a surprise by nature whether it be a deer jumping from the ditch in front of us or an unexpected storm that destroys our neighborhood or even an “abnormality” among yourself. .
“After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton
Although this poem is only a mere 2 pages, the power that speaks from the poem is incredible. I found this poem to be quite interesting. The very last line to the poem is, “I beg the Lord not to hear.” In this poem, I assume a prisoner is feeling a severe hatred for mankind and thinks they deserve nothing but the worse. Although, this person is also feeling remorse for what he has said aloud.
In regards to the to the images I have found within these poems, I have noticed the majority have some sort of resemblance to freedom. Each and every poem I have read today has been extremely deep in words and in meanings.
After reading the selected author’s poems, I did a little digging, and read up on the history and significance of “confessional poetry.” A confessional poem is a poem that is in the first person, making use of the I pronoun and the ideology that surrounds us all as individuals. The concept of confessional poetry began to really solidify in the 1950’s and 1960’s. However, the use of a first person narrative has long been used to convey epic stories and induce a catharsis. The difference is that confessional poetry is used to discuss feelings and taboos. Before confessional poetry, narrative poems were not used as an outlet for personal struggles, but as a way to place a reader in the narrator’s place in an entertaining way. Confessional poetry opened the floodgates of the personal poet, and the connection to emotion and a purging of secrets that is often associated with modern day poetry, and poetry competitions, or poetry slams. Looking at the pictures of confessional poets, most seem to be people that would arouse a second suspicion from me. They all seem like normal, well-adjusted adults, and none seem to have defining characteristics that could hold them back from being a “model” citizen. However, by looking at their poetry, we can tell that they are all much more grand than they seem. Some look at the world with grand detail, while others are surrounded by grand torture. The emotions created and conveyed by these poems are much greater than their poet’s life story. These poems are the direct distillation of the poet’s very emotional and mental essence. They are the viewpoints, confusions, dreams, hopes, and ,especially, fears of their creators. Confessional poetry is designed to inflict emotion, and it does its job exceptionally well. The creation of poetry is also an outlet for the poets, and they help to keep poets sane. Every person has their own struggles that will never be felt or shared by even their closest friends and family. Confessional poetry is writing that everyone can connect to, and have an opinion on. It helps to know that there are other people in the world who feel similarly. They are the unknown, yet ever present, support net that lets each and everyone of us feel connected.
Today I was exposed to Confessional Poetry in many different ways. I learned that the era of Confessional Poetry arose in the 1950s and 1960s and is characterized by poetry containing use of first person or “I.” The Confessional Poetry Era brought up many personal topics that were originally not shared with others through a public forum. Such topics included experiences with and feelings of death, trauma, depression, and relationships.
Throughout this class period I read and analyzed many poems. I will give a brief synopsis of them below:
“The Man-Moth” by Elizabeth Bishop: This poem is relatively short but filled with good language and imagery. It highlights the life of the “man-moth” who seems to be stuck between two worlds. Perhaps this poem is highlighting the two life stages of a moth: larvae and grown moth. As a larvae he stays beneath in the tunnels but as a moth he flies toward the light and the moon. I believe the basic theme of the poem is someone who strives for something better, but each time falls back into fear and a life of unfulfillment.
“To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” by Robert Lowell: This poem appears to be written from a wife’s point of view about her husband. The entire poem is written in quotation marks because it is someone speaking of their personal experience. Clearly, the poem is written about a marriage that is going down hill. The poem begins with, “The magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.” This suggests that the marriage began as happy and successful, but has faded into the current situation. The husband begins to run away from their problems by leaving the house and seeking pleasure elsewhere, such as finding prostitutes.
“After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton: Sexton’s poem is written from the point of view of a holocaust survivor. The poem’s structure contains very short lines in order to put emphasis on certain words such as the first lines of the poem that contains only the word “anger.” The narrator is expressing her very negative view of mankind due to her traumatic experiences in the concentration camp.
Overall I had a positive experience with this type of poetry. Unfortunately I was unable to explore all facets of this poetry in the limited time I had of the class period. However, I am looking forward to studying this literature more.
Confessional poetry is a style of poetry that tends to be very personal, and is used as a platform to, well, confess things -- things that are considered to be more taboo in today's society. (You have to give it to scholars for giving their genres names that make sense.) It got its start in the 1950s -- and still exists today -- and paved the road for many other types of poetry, as well as other forms of art.
One thing I can say about confessional poetry as compared to other forms of poetry is that it is relatively easy to understand. The main purpose of the poem is to confess, so if the reader did not know it was doing that, it failed. There can be a deeper meaning, but there does not always have to be.
Aside from the poems in the Google Drive folder, I read "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath and a few from W.D. Snodgrass, notably "April Inventory". I liked Snodgrass' style of writing more than that of the other poets I read; that is not to say I liked his poems more, just his style. I was surprised to research Snodgrass further and find that he actually released new poetry as late as 2006, three years before his death.
All in all, the era of confessional poetry is and has been a very important era in poetic history.
Today I learned about Confessional Poetry. It is a type of poetry that emerged in the 1950’s and 60’s. Confessional Poetry is called the poetry of “I”. It is called this because it is often written in an autobiographical manner. The subject of these poems also tend to be private and personal. Covering the subjects of death, depression and other personal situations. It seems to me that this type of poetry is more abundant of people that are commonly associated with drugs and alcohol. When I looked up some pictures of Confessional poets, they all appeared to be pretty average people. I think this helps enforce the idea of Confessional Poetry in that it an art that is personal to every person and anyone can do it. Anyone can participate in this type of poetry because everyone in life at some point have a difficult situation, unique from everyone else, and this type of poetry helps individuals express deeper feelings for others to share.
I learned that confessional poetry is a form of poetry in which it used as a sort of confession. I loved these poems because it makes it more expressive and easy to insert yourself into. The pronoun I is already being used and so it is easily relatable. I also believe that from this personal form of poetry there is much more to be read into. Small tidbits can be interpreted in a much deeper sense because they are personal it would depend on the viewpoint of the person interjected into the poem (the reader). I can only imagine that using writing in first person they find these poems an easy way to express their own thoughts and feelings.
Burch
Pd. 3
Confessional poetry was first used in the 1950s and 1960s. Poets found ways to speak about many touchy, taboo topics by writing artfully and purposefully. The auditory beauty of the poems merges with the dark feelings and sensitive ideas. Elizabeth Bishop, a famous confessional poet, wrote “The Man-Moth” to express the idea of attempting to escape a sense of loneliness but failing every time. Subways are called “artificial tunnels”, alluding to the fakeness and the stiffness of humanity. The man also rides the subway backwards, symbolizing his differences. She also makes references to her sexuality when she calls the moon “queer” and personifies it femininely and talks about its unmeasurable temperature--she was lesbian in a time when that was extremely taboo. Robert Lowell wrote “To Speak of Woe That Is In Marriage” to write about the pain of an abusive marriage. The topic is unique in an era when abuse was fairly common and unspoken of. Especially unique, “To Speak of Woe That Is In Marriage” was written by a male. In “Mr. Edwards and the Spider”, Edwards discusses his thoughts on hell. All the confessional poems that I had a chance to read were mentally stimulating compared to the fluffy poems I have been forced to read for class. Although I am not a fan of poetry, confessional poems have caught my attention.
Confessional poetry is different from other forms being as it is personal to the author. It often describes events that have taken place within the life of the author either being traumatic or some sort of important life event. The writing began in the late 1950’s and into the early 1960’s
Bishop: The Man-Moth
The Man-Moth describes a man in the street as the moon shines on him. He believes the moon is a hole in the sky and tries to see the opposite side. This poem is difficult to interpret, but I found through later researching that the setting is in New York. The man tries to break free from his loneliness, but fails.
Bishop: The Moose
This poem is of a journey on a bus. The passengers are all sleeping when the driver halts to a stop for everyone to check out the moose that has wandered in the road. The passengers stare in awe quickly, and then the journey continues. I feel as though the poem tries to portray the power of nature, and how it can affect our lives.
Lowell: To Speak of Woe that is in Marriage & Mr. Edwards and the Spider
Lowell seems to say exactly what he thinks without censoring any of his ideals. The poem of marriage sheds light on the emotional and psychological pain that is caused from marriage. In the other poem Lowell tries to convey how cheating is sinful. His perspective on many things is rather dark, but truthful.
Sexton: After Auschwitz & The Addict
Her poetry seems to be the most intriguing considering it is created as a coping mechanism for her to relieve stress. Her poems aren’t very long, but she conveys her points. “The Addict” talks of her drug addiction of the past. It shows the difficulty in quitting drugs as she claims “ It’s a kind of war where I plant bombs inside of myself”.
While reading the poems I grasped that confessional poetry is poetry that is used to confess feelings. I particularly enjoyed the poem "To Speak of Woe that is in my Marriage". I found it interesting that the whole poem was in quotes, this means that someone is speaking about the marriage. At the beginning it says "Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen." I thought that this meant the marriage started out good and there was something there. They loved each other but eventually it faded and turned into a want for something that wasn't there anymore. At the end of the poem when the husband is referred to as an elephant this is because he is upset, elephants get upset and raise their hind legs. The poem also says "What makes him tick?" This is a rhetorical question that shows the wife's lack of understanding the situation she is in with her husband. When reading the addict, I got the feeling of depression and sadness. I looked up Anne Sexton and found that Sexton suffered from depression in her life. She was an addict and had multiple failed suicide attempts. She started poetry when her therapist suggested it, and her confessions in her poetry became a success. Sexton commited suicide one evening after pouring a glass of vodka, she then locked herself in the garage with the car engine running. She died by carbon monoxide poisoning. The poem shows a real struggle that she has gone throughout her lifetime. Sexton's other poem "After Auschwitz" is different. The most important line I grasped was "I beg the Lord not to hear." She talks about the meaning of how horrid death is acting. She wants man to have no power. That is why she doesn't want the lord to see what she wrote. He is the one that created man. In "The Man-Moth" there is the implication of comparing men to moths and dolls. "The moose" is not the story of an actual moose, but a bus. The bus travels through Nova Scotia. In the poem "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" Lowell uses Jonathan Edwards as his inspiration for the work. I think that each of the poems has an underlying meaning they hope to get across. Each is a confession of something personal, or maybe someone else's confession.
Confessional poetry is basically poetry told from a sort of first-person perspective, with the subject of “I” that is characteristic of narratives. Such poetry is either about subjects close to the author (i.e. the author’s lifestyle, major moments/points in his/her life, his/her struggles, and so on and so forth), or ones that were rather shied away from during the time period, ones like death and sex and drugs.
I don’t know how I feel about this poetry. Some of it is written rather prettily - it reads nicely. Most of it has me terribly confused, however. I’m not terribly skilled at deciphering poetry, nor is it something I’m awfully interested in, to be frank. I want to say I’d like for meanings in poetry to be more clear, but that would almost defeat the purpose of poetry if it were so, because poetry is such a free, eclectic art form, full of meaning yet seemingly meaningless all at once.
Some of these poems are rather dark, or, interesting, I suppose. They make me wonder what the authors’ lives were like, what they were going through and what they were thinking when they wrote some of their poems. Like Plath’s poem “Daddy,” or “Addict” by Sexton.
The nice thing about poems is that they read quickly, and rhythmically, which makes it easier on the mind. Analyzing poems is another feat entirely.
Truth be told I don’t completely understand confessional poetry. I mean, I suppose it was big enough of a deal to garner a period and type and style for itself, whatever it is. A lot of it seems like therapeutic form for many - a means of relieving the mind and heart of what ails them, to clear the self, release all heavy thoughts in big loads into words on pages. A lot of poetry seems to be that, in some way or another. Perhaps the confessional poetry era made way for quite a bit of the poetry that we know and recognize today - the deep, burdensome, emotional stuff.
Confessional poetry is a genre of poetry that uses the personal “I”. This style became popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Major poets associated with confessional poetry are Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W. D. Snodgrass. Poets use this type of poetry to convey personal messages or experiences without upfront saying exactly what happens. These take some analyzing. Elizabeth Bishop wrote “The Man-Moth” in order to reflect on human behaviors she had experienced while living in New York City. This genre is also used to better put yourself in the situation at hand. Robert Lowell’s “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” is about an abusive marriage; however, it is a look at it from an inside view. Heavy subjects such as death, violence, sex, and drugs are often found in confessional poetry.
One of Anne Sexton’s famous poems, “After Auschwitz”, is a narration of the infamous holocaust. It is very dark and heavy on a reader but is also filled with a sort of passion. The speaker in the poem is being tortured by the Nazi’s.
This Confessional Poetry thing is pretty dark. Confessional Poetry is written in the first person, and tends to deal with normally unmentionable topics, like suicide, death, relationships and depression.
Sylvia Plath is an excellent example of the ideal confessional poet. “The Bell Jar”, a story by Plath that some claim is autobiographical and most claim is at least a little related to her life, is a story about a college girl who attempts to kill herself after some failures. The story contains themes of death, relationships, suicide and rejection.
Anne Sexton, another confessional poet, wrote as a form of therapy prescribed by her psychologist. Her stories often have to do with the difficulties of mental disease, along with suicide and married life. Sexton’s “After Auschwitz” shows off another theme jin confessional poetry: writing about the Holocaust and how awful Nazis are.
Robert Lowell wrote about family and religion. His “Mr Edwards and the Spider” mentions Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” speech and equates humans to spiders, stating that humans race towards their death, which is symbolized by the ocean. Unlike many other confessional poets, Lowell died from natural causes.
(I didn’t have enough time to finish this)
Hillestad Per.7
Today I learned about confessional poetry. I learned that it was created in the 1950-1960’s. It was used as a way for poets to express their feeling in a different way. Many of these poets write about personal experiences and traumas. But confessional there poetry was not just a diary for these authors. They are also very creative and use craftsmanship to make their poems shocking and new. While reading the poems, I really did not have any idea what was going because I have a problem with taking writing literally. But when I read the analysis for the poems, I thought they were fascinating. When observing the images of the confessional poets, I noticed that most of them smiled, but the smile did not reach their eyes. I imagine it's from some of the emotional trauma they have been threw. Confessional poetry has obviously changed the way American poetry is written.
The Man Moth by Elizabeth Bishop was, although very interesting, somewhat hard to understand. I had trouble deciding whether or not the moth was ordinary or some type of human and moth hybrid. I like to think it is the second, it seems like it could be a villain for Spider-Man or something along those lines. The line “Up the facades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him…” is arguably my favorite line in the poem. It creates a feeling of weight for something as weightless as a shadow. The Moose was rich with imagery about life on the farm and the people surrounding the narrator. Mr. Edwards and the Spider by Robert Lowell was intriguing in the sense that it says something as small as a spider can kill a tiger. Later it says that the spider puts up no fight, it stretches its arms and dies. This could be a symbol of the effects of having too much power and losing the will to live because of it. To Speak of Woe that is Marriage is very straightforward about the situations going on within the life of the narrator. A husband that doesn’t care about his wife and sleeps around is very provocative. After Auschwitz by Anne Sexton is rife with hatred not only to the Nazi people, but also to humans in general. I feel that she used the Nazi’s as a scapegoat to spew her hatred about mankind. The Addict was likely the most disturbing out of the six poems. The varying analogies to the pills such as “eight chemical kisses” is refreshing in the sense that it is not the same words being repeated.
Confessional Poetry is poetry told in first person. Sylvia Plath’s poem Daddy talks about her father who was some type of Nazi man. She was terrified of him and was convinced that she was partly, if not completely, a Jew. She talks of meaning to kill him, but he died before she could at age ten. I have learned that poetry is used not only to tell stories, but people use it as an outlet. Sharing feelings that they cannot speak out loud without having to say what they mean directly. Poetry is a place where even the most controversial ideas can be shared without major repercussions. Poetry is art.
Confessional poetry is personal poetry based on the author's life experiences and emotions. It appeared during the 1950’s and 1960’s shortly after WW2. The poets talk about feelings that were not previously discussed: death, depression, relationships, trauma. Confessional poetry was started after Robert Lowell published "Life Studies" in 1959. It was a reaction to unemotional poets like T.S. Eliot.
One of the most renowned confessional poems was called “Daddy” by Plath, a poem about the Holocaust. The girl views her dad very highly and he is a Nazi. She had to kill him and other patriarchal figures. “Home after three months away” by Lowell uses his experience in a mental institution to write this poem. Confessional Poem by Michael Robbins about a woodchuck and a child who hates their owner, the child’s parent does opium. After reading "Man Moth" by Bishop, I was confused. After researching the meaning, I learned that this is an inspirational poem about being brave and not giving up on dreams. "The Speaking of Woes that is Marriage" is interesting because it is written by a man. In the poem, it is a man that is beating his wife. Spousal abuse wasn't a common topic to talk about in that time.
Ripperda 7
Prior to this class period I had never even heard of confessional poetry. I like novels, but am not always as keen on poetry. I did, however, find confessional poetry to be interesting and extremely unique. It seems to me that this style of poetry focuses on the individual in various ways. We see unique individual experiences along with glimpses into the individuals thinking/mind set. One fact that is fairly obvious about confessional poetry is that its authors are not afraid to write anything. They do not steer away from adultery, death, drugs, suicide, or other subjects that are frowned upon. The poems also provide horrifically vivid imagery of events that we may have not wished to imagine. Of the various poems of which I read, I found Anne Sexton’s “The Addict” to be the most powerful. As a reader we get to see inside of the addicts psyche and the fact that they know they are doing wrong, yet they can not (or will not) change. Confessional poetry as a whole seems to have great power in it.
Confessional poetry seems like something that will let you spill out all of your demons in a way that does not make you seem crazy. People have a lot of problems throughout life and confessional poetry is a creative way to express feelings. Just by first glance, confessional poets look like regular people who would not be dealing with an addiction or a very serious problem. Confessional poets are probably the most normal looking creative writers I have ever seen.
I did a little research on Sylvia Plath after reading her poem entitled April 18. You could clearly tell that she was sick but I could not tell what kind of sickness. I found out that Sylvia Plath had two children, she had a failed marriage, low on money, and had killed herself at the age of 30.
Confessional poets seem to have similar problems. Anne Sexton, mental illness; Robert Lowell, manic depression; Frederick Seidel, disturbing imagery.
It seems as if these poets were trying to let people know what was going on in their lives and needed help but at the same time it seems like they were not getting the help they needed.
What is confessional poetry? Confessional poetry is poetry that is used to confess, as seen in the word itself, or a way to write about topics that may be considered to be taboo. It is interesting that this type of poetry did not come around until the 1950s. This confessional poetry is meant to be written in first person, due to it being about the writers emotions and life. Bishop, Lowell, Sexton, and Sylvia are all well known confessional poets; my favorite out of the group is Sexton he has a very simple yet powerful way of making poetry. This type of poetry like others can be easy or difficult to be understood. Though it is easier to understand in some cases, since it is about the writers life; their emotional turmoil, mental illness, memories, etc. With all of those factors it can be really interesting to read the poem and read up on where they got their inspiration from. Like Anne Sexton, in her life she battled with depression; you can see it in her poetry. For example, “The Addict”.
I have learned that poetry is a way of expressing emotions. It is a way of teaching. For instance one can learn the emotions behind an addict. Poetry can also be very random. It can rhyme or cannot. Poetry is whatever the reader wants it to be. The reader can learn what he or she wants to learn from the poetry. For instance, Lowell shows a wife who is being taken advantage of by the husband and who does not care for her. This poetry could be written by a wife and given to a friend to express her feelings without words. The reader see what he chooses to see from the writing. For instance, I see the “Man-Moth as being a homeless person who is guilty and only comes out at night. He lives in the subway and faces backwards away from other people, away from his future. Another person reading this same poem may think of this man-moth as being a moth or another creature who is lively during the night that no one ever sees. The man-moth could be a scavenger for food, who is constantly attracted to light like the moon or the subway lights down below. The gist is that poetry can be anything with no rules. One can enjoy poetry or not. He or she can approach it with an intuitive frame of mind or read painfully as if it tortures them. It is completely up to the reader and poetry doesn’t necessarily have to mean the same to the author as it does to the reader or even another reader. Poetry is expression. Poetry is art. Poetry is confession.
Today I learned about Confessional poetry and what it truly is. Confessional poetry is an autobiography about the author's own life. It emerged in the late 1950's and early 1960's. It can deal with private experiences/feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships. Most of the poems I was able to read today all had a very depressed mood. Some of the author's probably expressed these feelings in their poetry because they felt that others would judge them if they put it out in the open. This was an easy way for them to get their words out onto paper without actually telling anyone directly. I feel like a lot of readers can relate to these poems and know exactly how the author was feeling as they wrote this.
The poem that got to me the most was Sexton's poem "the Addict". I know that in society today a lot of people who struggle in their lives tend to turn to drugs to help "relieve" their pain as to speak. I could feel the emotion of Sexton as I was reading it. It's really hard to see how easy a person can become addicted and rely on a drug to make them happy. This line from Sexton's Poem really hit me hard: "I like them more than I like me".
When I looked at pictures of the authors they didn't look any different than someone I wouldn't look twice at in a grocery store. They look normal. After reading about them I realized how hard and painful their lives were. For example, Sexton killed herself by sitting in her closed garage, turning on her car, and being suffocated by carbon monoxide.
Poetry is a really amazing way for authors to express themselves in their writing and relate to some of their readers.
Huizenga 7
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Moose” shows the reader the separation of humans from the natural world. The narrator moves from a small province onto a bus pulling her from nature into an artificial world, sealed with the fog rolling in. Bishop demonstrates the raw power of nature, through the interaction with the moose, how it completely stops the progress of the bus and how a “sensation of joy” is provoked by the appearance of the creature. In “Man-Moth,” the main character goes attempts to reach his goal (the hole in the sky). Unlike most people he does not become paralyzed with fear over the number of things that could go wrong, he simply climbs, fails, and returns to his home, where he will wait to try again. People could learn from the man-moth, he teaches us that though fear is still existent, it should never stop someone from attempting to achieve their goal.
Confessional poetry is the expression of the writer’s emotions. This type of poetry is usually based off of personal experience and was not common before the 50’s. During confessional poetry writer’s started mentioning topics that were previously considered taboo topics.
Confessional poetry: A form of poetry addressing personal experiences in death, depression, trauma, and relationships--a confession.
A vast majority of confessional poets I found seemed to have a hippy-like appearance (excluding Eminem I suppose). In my further research I also found that most of them also applied hippy activities to their daily lives--sleeping around, doing drugs etc.
I found every poem I read difficult to understand completely until I read an analysis of each. However, some poems I still found difficult to understand. I love reading poetry, but I never understand what the authors are trying to say to me, I just read them for the words. Although I did find Lowell’s “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” the easiest for me to understand completely without having to open up another tab. I found it interesting that it was a man who wrote this poem, considering the writing was about the hurt of a woman from a man cheating on her. I received this feeling that the man in the poem is Lowell...but that is just a theory. Another poem I found confusing and rather interesting was “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath. She writes about the holocaust, but I am confused if her dad is a Nazi or not. Sylvia sounds like she is in a concentration camp and her dad is a worker of Hitler, but I am not sure how that would work. Either way, “Daddy” seemed to click in my head.
I do feel as though everyone can relate to confessional poetry because everyone goes through hardship or tragedy with in some point in their lives. This is probably most people enjoy these poems--the are real.
I learned something new about poetry today and that is confessional poetry. Confessional Poetry is poetry that is personal to the writer. Confessional Poetry became very popular in the 1950’s and the 1960’s, the poetry dealt with topics that had not before been discussed in American poetry. Confessional Poetry served as a way for these writers to share their emotions. It is a way for the poets to vent about what they are holding in and what they are thinking. These writers put their emotions into their work, they put their own experience into their work, showing that their work could show who they actually were. They literally put their heart and soul into what they are writing. The work that confessional poets did changed the way poetry was looked at. I find it very interesting that poets didn’t write about themselves before confessional poetry. Wouldn’t that be why you would want to write poetry in the first place? To vent and speak what you're thinking and the emotions that you are feeling? The poets that I read today such as Bishop, Lowell, Sexton, Plath, and Berryman, provided me insight to what confessional poetry is. In Bishop’s “The Moose”, he is describing his bus ride adventure through Nova Scotia and how a bus comes upon a moose and then continues to drive, and in Lowell’s “Mr. Edwards and the Spider” he talks about his own adventures and experiences with spiders being either real or imagination. Overall I enjoy confessional poetry, I enjoy reading about other peoples emotions and life events. I look forward to reading more poetry whether it be confessional poetry or not.
Confessional poetry is about the tortured author. The poetry is about very controversial topics and is not very beautiful. All of the poets are very put together people on the outside, but is filled with demons on the inside.
Confessional Poetry: Poetry that discusses things that not everyone wishes to talk, yet this style of poetry brings these topics about to the public.
This poetry came about in the 1950's and 1960's. It was a first of its kind. It brought about topics no one wished to discuss. It made people uncomfortable.
The Poems that I read had incredible themes. Some were easy to spot, while others you had to do some digging and researching. This helped me understand the type of poetry more. Reading and familiarizing myself with it opened my eyes. The analysis of the poems were of also great help.
The images of the great Confessional poets, I found the most interesting. The males in this art of poetry appeared very loosely. They had long beards and not to tidy of hair. This I believe shows us them expressing their self not only through poetry, but with their body as well. The women also appeared not as up tight, but relaxed in these pictures.
Today, I was introduced to Confessional poetry. Confessional poetry differs from other types of poetry where the writer is more compelled to write about their own personal experiences or events. Confessional poetry is able to connect with readers on a personal sense. Readers who have gone through the same experiences as the author will be able to connect deeper to what the author has to say. In Sexton’s “The Addict” someone who is battling with an addiction will connect much more to this poem than someone who does not battle with one. Bishop’s “The Man-Moth” can connect to several readers. This poem describes a “creature” who is struggling through a time in their lives. “The Man-Moth” personally speaks to me because this poem can be related to several different struggles of life. In my opinion, this is the best part of Confessional poetry. The writer is able to take several events from their lives and add a personal struggle to them. The fact that many of these poems are free versed is also very symbolic. In these writers lives, nothing was lining up. There was no “rhyme” or “rhythm” to most of these poets lives. Poetry can be deep no matter if it rhymes or not. Confessional poets are especially deep from the fact that they relate to their own lives.
Confessional Poetry is told by using first person and it is the authors personal experiences. It appeared during the 1950s and the 1960s. They discussed topics that were normally not mentioned like suicide, death, relationships, and depression. Poets associated with confessional poetry are Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell. The images of confessional poets look very free looking and deep in thought. Anne Sexton was one of my favorite poets of this time. In the poem, “The Addict” she has taken pills so many times she has gotten good at it. Drugs have completely overtaken her mind and are slowly killing herself. “After Auschwitz” is another good poem by Anne Sexton about the holocaust. It is from the prisoners point of view. Man has lost its beauty, man does not deserve to be happy again for what they have done. It describes the cruelty of the nazis and hates mankind. Another good poet of this time is Robert Lowell. “Mr. Edwards and the Spider” is describing hell I think. It is about death and how all sinners will be punished by God. Lastly, Bishop wrote “The Man-Moth” which is about a man trying to escape his loneliness. At the end he goes back to how he was before (he goes back down under the street or goes back to loneliness).
Confessional poetry is not like any other poetry. There is no landscapes or designs described, but there is designs of the author illustrated. We can see hidden messages in confessional poetry. The authors include little snippets of who they are in their words. Sometimes the poems are dark and full of misery and other times full of joy. Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Moose” is a description of how she feels about herself. She is all natural and and interesting and “different.” I also liked reading “Mr. Edwards and The Spider.” The description of the spider burning like a person in hell is genius. The fire exerted no energy to destroy the spider.
Confessional poetry is the a work of a personal experience. Most of the poems are dark in nature and very emotional, having to deal with death, sadness and depression. It was a way to to convey the feelings of the author to the public, however I feel that the public at the time may have had mixed emotions, since that was one of the first time they were exposed to something that real. Most of the poets had some form of personal connection to each other and that may have made it easier to write about such deep meaning and feelings. I personally have never really gotten in to poetry so I do not know the various forms or styles, but confessional poetry is an interesting style. I like how the poets are blunt with the material that they are trying to get across. I also think it is interesting how they are confident enough to write about such personal topics, not caring what the public has to say about it.
I believe poetry is a harder subject to grasp than most. The poets themselves are complete artists that have learned to tell a story like singing a song or dancing to a familiar tune. I will completely admit to not 100 percent understanding all of the poems until after I had read the analysis and then re-read the poems themselves. This was especially true with Bishop’s writing although I seemed to do fine with Sexton’s writing.
Confessional Poetry is ultimately one of the more interesting types of poetry I have learned about. In the simplest form of speaking of it, it seems to be/come off as, coming directly from the writer/narrator. Meaning: it is written in first person using pronouns like I, us, we. These poems bring up topics that in todays society, are harder to talk about than others. I believe that this holds true to when they were written as well. That era was the time of properness which would have made it exceptionally difficult to discuss. It seems as if most of them talk about death and dying, or other traumatic events. Occasional ones also brought up drugs and abuse.
I believe these poems served as a sort of therapy or release for the writers and maybe even to the readers as well if they feel as if they can relate in some way. Then they won’t feel like they are so alone because a famous poet feels and understands their pain. On the same hand some of the poets even took their own lives which isn’t a complete surprise by reading their poetry. This proves that they weren’t writing to relate, but because they were truly writing about their lives and inner emotional problems.
I feel that they interest me. I have not quite figured out what I feel about them. They tell abstract stories with symbols.
The “Man Moth” at first was confusing. I had mauch imagery about a month climbing the walls of buildings, then falling and then riding the subway. Finally he was moth part man and crying. I was a little put off. After that I read a analysis and it cleared things up. The “Mothman”, I found of someone who is a rare person, one of a sensitive spirit. Put is has a perseverance. It fails once but then goes and tries again never once the thought of failure. This character is also one that hands out wisdom if you pay attention. But it will not share if you do not.
“The Moose” cause confusion as well. Elizabeth Bishop holds the reader in with the imagery but the way she writes it confuses the reader at first glance. Again, reading another person’s analysis “The Moose”, helped me find clarity. Information about where she grew up also gave me more insight.
Lowells “Mr. Edwards and the spider” reminded me of the fear that some people have of spiders. They scare us as the get closer. An analysis that I read gave the comparison of spiders to humans as we march off to war and towards death. Just like the spiders were when floating off to sea. He is making anti-war statement and bringing religious views into it because he was a religious man.
“To Speak Woe That is in My Marriage” Makes me sad. Because it is confessional poetry. He is telling of his marriage. I did read an analysis on this but it already told me what I had gotten from it. The blooming marigolds is the beginning of the marriage and then both of them become dissatisfied with it. He goes to drinking while she is trying to fix it.
Both of Sextons Poems where ones that felt as a warning to others. That this is what will happen if you depend on pills to fix you. It will make you dependent on them for the rest of your life. “After Auschwitz” is a reference to Sexton’s visit to the concentration. How she learned of what went on there. She is very graphic in how she feels and the the imagery of it gives one the feeling of hopelessness. Which pairs well with her known depression.
I am still figuring out on how I feel about Confessional Poets.
After reading the six poems by Bishop, Lowell, and Sexton-- I think I had a decent idea of what Confessional Poetry is, and what the poets are going for when they write their work. But just to make sure my ideas were correct, I did a little research. By my own interpretation, the interpretation of others, and more confessional work-- I have come to a couple of conclusions. In many of the confessional poets and artists works, it seems that the creator is speaking of a somewhat tabooed subject. Such as those written by Lowell and Sexton that we read for class, it seems to be a personal experience. In the poem To Speak of Woe That is In Marriage, I would say that in some point in Lowell’s life, this situation came up, therefore they have a slight knowledge of this typically ignored subject. Same goes with Sexton’s poem The Addict. Usually addiction and drug use in general is frowned upon-- which I believe it should be. But many writers it seems are a little scared to write on the tabooed subjects, even though these things are going on around them. Also if someone is or has been an addict in the past, often times they are too embarrassed to talk about it-- but with confessional writers, there is no room to be ashamed, only to share their work. I find these artists to be fearless and withholding nothing when they do their work, whether art or writing. And sometimes that is what the world needs from literature and art. I respect the writers who can have the guts to write about the odd topics others tiptoe around-- because I know I could not do it personally.
Before researching confessional poetry today I had no idea what confessional poetry was, in fact I had never even heard of confessional poetry. After doing some research I learned that confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or “I”, and it emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During that time confessional poetry particularly stuck out because it discussed topics that were not normally mentioned, such as suicide, death, relationships, and depression. While these topics connected with some readers, they also made other readers feel very uncomfortable. Like many others, I found Sexton’s poems the most enjoyable to read; this is very ironic because they were the most depressing. “After Auschwitz”, a poem by Sexton, is about the holocaust from the view of a Jewish prisoner. The entire poem talks about how man kind has lost their beauty and deserves to suffer. I found the ending to be quite interesting because the narrator wishes that the Lord never hears all of his wishes for the Nazis to suffer. “The Addict”, another poem by Sexton, is about a drug addict that is slowly killing herself/himself. I like how the length of each line was hugely different. This variation makes to reader read the poem like they were using drugs. Two other popular confessional poets are Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. In “The Moose”, Bishop displays how powerful little details of nature can be, especially in our modern lives. I had a hard time understanding Bishop’s “The Moth-Man” but I did understand that it was about a man trying to escape his loneliness and depression. Lowell’s “To Speak of Woe That is in Marriage” is about a man who cheats on his wife, which in turn makes the wife do things to try to impress her husband. Another poem by Lowell, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider”, is about sins and how they relate to death. The poem is saying that all sinners will be punished by God, because that is what they deserve. I enjoy reading confessional poetry, and I have learned that the attitudes/personalities of confessional poets greatly affect their works.
Confessional Poetry is an interesting form of literature where the author is “confessing” his or her experiences and/or feelings about topic such as death, depression, addiction, relationships, and more. This type of poetry originated in the 1950s and 1960s as a new form or literature that was considered fairly permissive. The topics discussed were often dark and condemning of either the author or in cases such as Anne Sexton’s After Auschwitz, damning of the entire human race in the eyes of god. There is also the poem called Daddy by Sylvia Plath that also focuses on the holocaust and how the German people hate Hitler for what he did during the holocaust. This type of poetry clearly focuses on the things that the authors were passionate about, such as the holocaust. Robert Lowell was the first person to pioneer the confessional poem and many of the other people who are famous for confessional poems were taught by Lowell himself. This type of poetry is clearly more focused on the negative side of the authors life. One of Lowell’s poems called Home After Three Months Away focuses on his homecoming after spending three months in an asylum for severe depression. When this style of poetry first emerged, it was not popular because the topics talked about were not widely accepted such as drugs, homosexuality, and mental illness. It seems as though this is an effective way for authors to vent their frustrations through literature. In a society such as the 1950s when individuality wasn't exactly popular, these poems were the beginning of a new generation of authors. My favorite poem was Daddy by Sylvia Plath because I am very familiar with the holocaust and Plath did an amazing job of showing the anger and frustration with the holocaust, and it especially focused on Hitler.
Confessional poetry is unique and quite different. It is a little crazy for me and more than likely for most people because it is about topics we do not want to read about. The poem that caught me most off guard was “After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton. It was disturbing to read “Each day,
each Nazi took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan” (1). It gives me the chills and I do not enjoy reading it even though it was the reality during the Holocaust. As I was searching images on Confessional poetry I found a saying on a picture by Robert Lowell that stated, “The light at the end of a tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train” (http://www.orble.com/robert-lowell-eminent-american-poetwas-born-this-day-in-1917-/). Coming across this picture makes me deeply think on how other people think. I want to always look at the good in situations, so when I imagine how other people look at life differently it makes me upset. I read the poem “Cut” by Sylvia Plath. Her poem was about the thrill of cutting her thumb instead of the onion she was cutting into. Confessional poetry was created kind of late. It was not created until about the 1950’s and that is fairly new for a type of poetry to come out because poetry has been around for ages. It more than likely was created a long time ago, but it was not recognized because of the so outspoken style. Until recently, it was wrong to talk so raw and now today it is becoming more okay even though some people do not enjoy reading it. I hope to learn more about Confessional poetry in college. I am glad I will have some background information on Confessional poetry when entering college.
Palmer Pd. 3
For the first time today, I began to read confessional poetry. I have read some poetry in my past, but none as powerful as these poems. Confessional poetry seems to be the author sharing some form of truth in their lives, often masked by symbols and metaphors. One can tell this because the word “confession” in confessional poetry. Some of the poets I have read today include: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Michael Jackmon, David Yezzi, and a few others. Out of all of these poets, Sylvia Plath was by far my favorite because of her poems were simple, yet powerful. She did not need to be very wordy in order to express her feelings. One of her poems, titled the “edge,” was very hard to analyze because of the various symbols in the poem. However, it is a poem about a woman who is going to commit suicide, and it speaks of all the depression she is suffering from. Her bare feet in the poem show how far she has traveled in life, and how her journey is coming to an end. Only a few days after writing this poem, Plath committed suicide. While her death and depression was unfortunate, we were left with beautiful and powerful poetry. This shows how she was confessing her deep depression and suicidal thoughts she was suffering through her writing. This is only one example of the powerful impact confessional poetry can have on people. It may even be life changing.
When searching for pictures of the poets, I noticed that most of the photos were black and white. This tells me, that while confessional poetry may still be practiced, it was probably more popular in the past. Also, all of the poets appeared to look like regular people that you would see on the everyday streets. They perhaps looked more scholarly in the professional photos, otherwise one would be unable to decipher them among a group of people. This tells me that these poets are suffering with everyday difficulties just like the rest of us.
Today we as a class were introduced to confessional poetry. We read stories by Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Sexton. What is confessional poetry. Confessional poetry is personal. An expression of ones lives or possibly someone’s life who had touched theirs. Confessional poetry comes in many shapes and sizes. Some are very long and some just a couple of lines of text. No matter what, whatever is written into a confessional poem remains personal and is a reflection of a time most authors had no joy for or were mysterious for them. The confessional poetry movement began in the late 1960’s by Robert Lowell. The main individuals involved in confessional poetry are as follows; Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and W. D. Snodgrass. Connection to readers is key for the success of these poems. All of these writers listed previously do a stupendous job at creating mental images and relating to those in a similar situation. Anne Sexton’s “The Addict” allows the reader to see into the eyes of an addict addicted to pills of many different kinds. Robert Lowell’s story “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” Lowell, a male author, puts the readers into the perspective of a young woman who is trapped in a dangerous relationship. The relationship is abusive and she fears for the life. The poem ends with the man standing over the woman resembling an elephant before it crashes down. Lastly, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Moose” signifies how outsiders are either disliked or stared at in awe. In the story a moose can be seen from a bus passing by and people give their opinions on the moose. What these poems all have in common are a strong connection to the reader drawing them in. Confessional poems are a genre where readers can come to find connection with someone else which is unique for a genre.
Today we as a class were introduced to confessional poetry. We read stories by Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Sexton. What is confessional poetry. Confessional poetry is personal. An expression of ones lives or possibly someone’s life who had touched theirs. Confessional poetry comes in many shapes and sizes. Some are very long and some just a couple of lines of text. No matter what, whatever is written into a confessional poem remains personal and is a reflection of a time most authors had no joy for or were mysterious for them. The confessional poetry movement began in the late 1960’s by Robert Lowell. The main individuals involved in confessional poetry are as follows; Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and W. D. Snodgrass. Connection to readers is key for the success of these poems. All of these writers listed previously do a stupendous job at creating mental images and relating to those in a similar situation. Anne Sexton’s “The Addict” allows the reader to see into the eyes of an addict addicted to pills of many different kinds. Robert Lowell’s story “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” Lowell, a male author, puts the readers into the perspective of a young woman who is trapped in a dangerous relationship. The relationship is abusive and she fears for the life. The poem ends with the man standing over the woman resembling an elephant before it crashes down. Lastly, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Moose” signifies how outsiders are either disliked or stared at in awe. In the story a moose can be seen from a bus passing by and people give their opinions on the moose. What these poems all have in common are a strong connection to the reader drawing them in. Confessional poems are a genre where readers can come to find connection with someone else which is unique for a genre.
During today’s class period, I learned something completely new to me. I had no idea what confessional poetry was before this class period. I have never been much of a poetry enthusiast so I do not know many types. I have a much more basic knowledge of poetry, in example: haikus, limerick, odes, rhymes, free verses, etc. Confessional poetry is where the author or narrator is poetry of the personal or “I”. This era emerged during the 1950s with a lot of different poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, etc. When I was looking at pictures of the different poets I found a lot of them seemed to be giving me a little bit of a hippy vibe. This may be because that is a smidgen of my style so that’s what I see or they really joined the hippy movement. I also read Cinderella by Plath and it was much different from the classic Cinderella I was grown to know and love. In her version, Cinderella is wearing scarlet shoes and has green eyes; compared to glass slippers and blue eyes. She is also clingy to the Prince near 12 o’clock; as where in the original she is fleeing from the Prince so he does not see the true commoner she is. I believe that Plath changed the story to give it more realism. She wanted to make it more relatable rather than repeated the same universal story that has been known for ages. Confessional poetry is hard to interpret because there is a lot of symbolism behind every stanza written. In Moose by Bishop, it is very confusing to understand what you are reading. I looked up what the poem was about and it explained to me it was about a poor bus ride that had beautiful scenery and at the end they have to halt to a stop because they see this majestic moose that is in the middle of the road. You would think it would be an easy poem to understand from the summary of it but the way that confessional poets word their lines and stanzas is in a way to make you think and dig deeper to understand what is going on.
These poems are called confessional poems because they use the term I and speak of real life experiences. I really enjoyed these poems because they are much more realistic. "The Man-Moth" talks of a man that feels alone and separated from the rest of the world. “The Moose” deals with the fact that people will go about their normal day, taking everything for granted, until they are forced to stop and look at the world around them. Nature awe’s humankind because it is so calm and peaceful, separated from the world of rushed chaos. “To Speak of the Woe that is in Marriage” is written to show the abuse that a woman goes through because of her husband. “Mr. Edwards and the Spider” is a very confusing poem, for me. It took some digging but I came to the conclusion that it deals mainly with the idea that we are as weak and insignificant as spiders, easily crushed. “After Auschwitz” is really moving because it deals with a very touchy subject. I also really enjoyed it because of the way it ends with the author praying that God doesn’t hear their complaints. “The Addict” is also very moving as it talks about the problem of drug addiction. What I found really interesting is, as many other people have said, that fact that these poems started becoming popular in the 50’s and 60’s. I can see why that would be though. This was a time of conforming and trying to be the perfect family. This naturally meant that there were rebellious people who wanted to show that society wasn’t perfect. I think these poems are harder to analyze and understand, but also very interesting and fun to read.
I was very hesitant to begin poetry. Such a beautiful, complex art, it intimidates me. But the thing I realized about poetry is that it is arbitrary. There is no true answer. Explanation kills art; poetry is interpreted differently by everyone. I really enjoy Sexton and Bishop. Admittedly, I am slightly biased towards Bishop, yet her poetry makes me feel things. The thing about confessional poetry is that the poets have suffered beautifully, as we are all suffering internally. Confessional poetry makes me feel things, which is becoming increasingly difficult to do. I love that each poem can mean different things to people. We live in a society that is becoming numb to the silent suffering. We don’t talk about things that make us feel because then we will see the true ugly side of humanity, and that would hurt. Confessional poetry is hard to read; it makes us feel these emotions that most humans would choose to ignore. Those who are suffering and read confessional poetry can connect to others and see they’re not the only ones suffering. Suffering in numbers makes it hurt a little less somehow. I read a poem by Bishop about the art of losing and how easy it is to master. I connect to little, but when I read this poem, it made me see losing someone or something is bound to happen, and it hurts, but it will not be the end. There will be more things to love and lose in your life.
Darrington 7
Confessional Poetry, a type of writing that originated in the 1950’s and 1960’s. A type of writing that openly discussed the untouchable subjects of the past, fitting for the time, where social norms became more relaxed and free spirited people became abundant. Confessional poetry typically deals with emotions the author may feel towards death, depression, relationships, among other aspects of the human condition. These poems were initially shocking to the public, but now they are more accepted. Confessional poems are written from a first person perspective, utilizing “I” and “me” type viewpoints. The original confessional poets (Bishop, Sexton, Lowell, Plath, etc.) were very precise and cunning in their work. Their poems were not sloppy like the angsty, teenage journal entries of today, but had a more refined structure. Many of the confessional poems take on a dark perspective, and show the less appealing sides of human life through quick excerpts.
*Sexton “After Auschwitz”- A poem about an individual, most likely Jewish in descent, describing his/her disgust with the actions of the Nazis and somewhat trying to rationalize their actions.
*Sexton “The Addict”- A person’s battle with prescription pills and the struggle of life they face. The individual tries to justify his/her actions, but also recognizes the destruction being done. Chilling, while very smooth at the same time.
*Lowell “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage”- A quick story depicting the difficulty of one couple’s marriage. From beating the wife, to running off with prostitutes, the husband is clearly not faithful. I find it ironic that pairs of sentences easily rhyme together, but the relationship between the two people is much more difficult, therefore the “woe” in marriage.
*Bishop “The Man-Moth”- Of the poems I read, this was definitely my favorite. This poem featured fantastic imagery and similes, along with brutal reality of modern life. It explained the struggle that we face today, of being part of the “rat race” and being unable to escape. The moth-man tried to escape through the sky and nature, but ultimately returned to the subway, riding backwards so he couldn't judge where he was going. This is just like some people simply following the generic path encouraged by society, unable to escape the mundane.
After viewing a few pictures of confessional poets, I feel as though the group tends to be a mix of troubled, introspective people. A majority of the pictures displayed the writers glancing into the distance, deep in thought. This group of writers appear to be invested in the workings of the human mind and the issues faced on a day to day basis. They are the journalists of the human condition. A few of the pictures appeared happy, smirking at the camera (Lowell, Plath). After a little research though, many suffered bouts of depression, and Plath killed herself by placing her head in an oven. Rough.
Because Confessional Poetry is so personal (utilizing the pronoun "I") it allows for the author to process, examine, and express their inner demons while allowing the reader to analyze societal issues.
Without Confessional Poetry we would not have modern literature, music, poetry, or really any other form of artistic expression as we know it...
...so it's extremely important for everyone, but especially English dorks, like us.
Also, Confessional poets are usually introspective individuals. This makes sense because their job is not only to examine their own minds/problems, but also to illustrate a deep human truth within their psyche. Heavy.
Before reading about what "Confessional poetry" was, I had no idea what it even was. When I looked up the definition I learned that “Confessional poetry” was poetry written in a “vividly self-revelatory verse association of a number of American poets in the 1950’s and 1960’s” (Poetry Foundation). When looking at their list of authors Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton all made the cut. They were all describe as leading authors when it comes to “Confessional Poetry” and they are some of the main starters of it as well. When reading their poems I noticed that each and everyone of them were very descriptive, but they were descriptive in their own ways and no two authors had the same style of writing. I really enjoyed reading Robert Lowell’s “Mr. Edwards and the Spider”. When I first read the title I knew right away I would not like this poem, because I hate spiders. But, after reading this poem I saw their beauty in the way he describes their movements and how they act in the trees. I then got to enjoy them dying and being burned in a fire. His writing appealed to me in a such a way that for a while when I was reading I did not even know it was about a spider. I thought it was about another magistical creature that he was describing.
I have never really been a huge fan of poetry, but Confessional poetry is different than others. Confessional poetry started in the late 1950's and early 1960's. This type of poetry is quite different than other types of poetry because the poet expresses more personal emotion or feelings toward a touchy subject. I really enjoyed "After Auschitz" by Anne Sexton. The individual in the poem is most likey Jewish and he/she is disgusted by the Nazis. Confessional poetry is interesting to me because it almost means exactly what it is. The poet confesses his or her opinion on hard or emotional subjects. These types of poems have a variety of lengths, but accomplish the same thing. The reader can better understand the poems when more emotion is being used. Confessional poetry is the most intersting type of poetry I have ever read.
I have never really heard of confessional poetry before, so this was interesting to me to learn about. I have learned how confessional poetry is poetry of the personal or of the “I”. It started in the late 1950s, early 1960s. This poetry opened up a window to different topics that people didn’t talk about before. These authors paved the way for new types of poetry. I like this type of poetry because it is deep and meaningful. The people who write these poems are full of emotion and do not hold back. I admire them for it. One such emotional poem is “Wanting to Die” by Anne Sexton. It is an emotional poem that tells of the thoughts of a suicidal person. This topic would be considered taboo before this time. Another poem I found is “Cut” by Sylvia Plath. She describes the thrill of accidentally cutting herself. It seems weird, but its very poetic. She says,
“What a thrill ---
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge”
These poems are interesting to me, because I can’t imagine the public opinion or backlash some of these poems got. Even now, some of these poems seem taboo to me.
Confessional poetry seems to be poetry written from personal experiences. It often takes on dark undertones, pulling from the deepest/strongest emotions of the author. It seems as though many of the confessional poems are written with nature metaphors, whether it be insects, the moon, or trees. However, some directly represent the morbid and animalistic tendencies of man itself. Confessional poetry seems to be just what its name implies, a confession of the author’s most dominating innermost feelings. Some typical topics include death, death by suicide, prostitution, vengeance, and addiction. Hardly a positive confessional poem can be found. Each confessional poem seems to represent the worst parts of human tendencies. Additionally, I found that many of the confessional poets looked like, for lack of a better descriptor, hippies. To me, it would seem that these poets are highly in tune with their innermost beings and darkest thoughts. Clearly, each confessional poet knows how to delineate and symbolize these grotesque feelings, and evoke strong emotions from their readers.
Overall, I felt that each poem was a unique masterpiece, even with their common themes. I appreciate the sense of passion that I felt the poets were putting into their poetry. These poems are certainly memorable. Perhaps these are my favorite types of poems simply because of how relatable they truly are.
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