Confessional poetry
Introduction
Confessional poetry is defined as a poetry of the personal. Confessional poetry focusses on an individual’s experience like tough experiences in his/her life, personal trauma, psyche, and matters like sexuality, suicide, or mental problems that were considered taboo in the previous eras before the onset of modern poetry (Hobsbaum, 2017). Confessional poets often set the themes of their literary works about a wide array of captivating societal themes. Confessional poetry is vital in developing an author’s journey to self-improvement. This analysis will explore essential parts of Rosenthal’s description of “confessional poetry’’ with a focus on Lowell and Sexton’s poems.
Rosenthal’s description of confessional poetry can imply a writer speaking to the reader of the poem, telling him about his/her personal life without mediating the presence of a persona or an imaginary event. It is an individual’s poetry that happens because of exploring the inner feelings, thoughts, and attitudes deep below the poet’s conscious rational level. Poems are nurtured out of the images found in the depth of the human dark. The innermost silent consciousness of a man speaks them. Robert Lowell’s “Life Studies,”, sums up the description of confessional poetry (Lowell, 2007). In his genre, Lowell tries to address his innermost private emotional state of the heart, guilt, disappointment, failed attempts, and incestuous desire.
The main term used is confession. The term retains a non-secular ethos, largely hidden in people’s autobiographical documents. Autobiography recounts a personal life with little to no confession while confessional poetry narrates one’s life of sin, salvation, or extremity. It is informed by life and art. Rosenthal aimed to portray confessionary poetry as the poet talking about his/her life and experiences without bias. This can be observed in the way Robert Lowell conveyed his suffering, embarrassments, and emotional upsets of a rocky childhood. Lowell also recounted, as part of the narration of his personal life, the alcoholism he indulged himself into, sexual guilt, and repeated incarcerations in a mental hospital (Lowell, 2007).
Lowell’s confession about his life is a good example of confessional poetry. Similar to Lowell, Sexton also confessed about her mental illness in her poems. Aside from mental illness, Sexton went further and narrated about her personal life and experiences in her poem “menstruation at 40” (Sexton, 2000). Considered a taboo topic during the early decades, topics that dwell on the inner space and feelings of an individual are the perfect examples of confession. Lowell and Sexton developed them in the first person and anticipated to address to the authors themselves.
The concessions in the confessional poetry are described by Rosenthal as an intense monologue where the persona is not treated in disguise but rather planned lyrically. This implies that confessions from the poet bring out his/her naked ego, which is involved with private experiences in a very personal world. The concept of confession, as portrayed by Lowell and Sexton, describes confessional poetry as one that deals with the closer characteristics of the writer’s life and areas of knowledge and experience that most people would keep secrets from the public sight (Takolander, 2017).
Rosenthal describes confessional poetry as one in which the poet’s secluded life becomes a major theme, especially if the poet is under psychological stress or any other unique experience that is worth narrating to the public. Another aspect of confessional poetry is the belief that the readers have when a poet confesses about his/her private life and experiences. The readers have the notion that whatever the poet is confessing, whether true or false, is irrelevant. Robert Lowell once himself said, “There is a good deal of tinkering with facts, but of course―the reader was to believe he was getting the real Robert Lowell’’ (Lowell, 2007). This shows that although Lowell confesses about his private life to the reader of the poem, there was no need to analyze whether the confessions were true or false, the reader would always believe he was getting the real confessions from Lowell.
Confessions, according to Rosenthal, focus on the poet’s experience like tough experiences in life, personal trauma, etc. “Life Studies” by Robert Lowell brings several diverse aspects like depression, mania, and hallucination into scope. When these aspects have been brought into scope, they become normal themes like truth, nature, beauty that can be discussed by any human being as the element of confession takes root (Takolander, 2017). Confessing depicts an unappealing negative side of human suffering. A suffering that is not physical but mental. The poets, Lowell and Sexton, write about their mental suffering, even about their madness attacks. By handling their lives as physical, the poets don’t make their concessions private instead, they depersonalize their own lives.
Secondly, Rosenthal’s description of confessional poetry can be surmised as providing a model of truthfulness. Truthfulness is a fact of being true or realistic to life; being truthful means that we are honestly expressing our feelings and perceptions without bias. This implies that we are accurately describing who we are, how we feel, and how we perceive things in our internal and external being (Hobsbaum, 2017). Confessionary poetry is assumed to provide truthfulness about one’s feelings, thoughts, and how he/she perceives things. Lowell and Sexton, through their literary works, opted to delve into the world of confessionary poetry to factually describe what they feel or think about their personal lives.
As a confessional poet, Anne Sexton had her unique style of work. This is evident in handling facts about subjects like sexuality and mental illness that were considered a taboo in the earlier times. These topics were not deliberated in traditional poetry before confessional writers came into the limelight and addressed them the way they are, basing their arguments on facts. Suicide, mental problems, marital challenges, and incest were some of the subjects hidden from poetry in the past. These earlier poems did not rely more on facts and had no single model of truthfulness—instead, the poems engaged in hidden falsified information from an early age (Takolander, 2017).
However, the onset of confessional poetry removed that biasness. Confessional poetry, according to Rosenthal’s description, can be a model for truthfulness. Sexton’s recurrent themes stretched massively during her poetry. What was initially considered taboo and falsified, became unmasked and beaten with facts from confessional poets. Sexton’s poems expanded, and her initially “hidden” feelings were finally revealed. Earlier topics that were considered taboo and full of falsified information were brought into the public eye by Lowell and Sexton in the poems. ‘Cinderella,’ ‘More than myself,’ ‘Menstruation at forty’ are some of the confessional poems by Sexton that truthfully portrayed her personal experiences and feelings (Sexton, 2000).
As a model for truthfulness, confessional poems vigorously forced people to acknowledge the problems that society considered taboo. Aside from making people address themes like suicide, insanity, and incest that were considered taboo, Sexton truthfully acknowledged the problems she faced with her mental health. She suggests the explanations for her mental letdown as pressures from her family and having suicidal thoughts while referring to them as “my hospital shift” (Sexton, 2000). Sexton admits that critics do not always want to be told the truth. In describing confessional poetry as a model for truthfulness, Sexton’s confessional themes were geared towards the representation from a female perspective. Through her personal experiences, she aligns these experiences theoretically with an implicit female point of view.
Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Red Riding Hood were old childhood tales that became part and parcel of a child’s growing life. Each child is made to have faith in the life of a joyful ending. Sexton sought to bring out the reality about the notion and tell the facts about it. The model for truthfulness is evident in Sexton’s confessional poetry. She argued that parents should make their children differentiate between living in the utopian world and the little connection it has with real life. Life’s lessons are available to be taught to each individual. What is prudent in expressing reality in those teachings. Sexton communicated the harsh truths about life through her confessional poems like “The Doctor of the Heart” and “The Ambition Bird” (Sexton, 2000). Therefore, Rosenthal’s description of confessional poetry can be summarized as a model for providing truthfulness and facts about how one feels, thinks, and perceives life through his/her confessions.
Thirdly, Rosenthal’s definition of confessional poetry can be a representation of public issues in society using a separate persona, aside from describing the poet’s private life. The confessional poets gave us an insight into their private lives and what they are thinking. However, they also confessed to the public issues facing the world through the use of a detached persona (Hobsbaum, 2017). Lowell and Sexton are often-controversial confessional poets who openly wrote about public matters although using a different persona. The irony in the literary works of these poets is the use of their private experiences to represent the wider public experiences and feels but cannot openly articulate them.
For instance, Anne Sexton wrote openly about incest, menstruation, drug addiction, and adultery at times when these subjects were prohibited in earlier poetry. There is a possibility that no poet at that period in time cried out loud publicly loads of private details (Gill, 2004). In addition to focusing on their private emotional lives and experiences, Lowell and Sexton used confessional poetry, according to Rosenthal’s definition, to articulate public issues in the world.
Aside from forbidden subjects like incest, mental illness, etc., confessional poets confessed their feelings and perceptions to represent what the wider public felt but afraid to articulate. The themes attracted minimal attention because they were not brought to the public eye since no one dared talk about them openly for fear of embarrassment and reprisals. However, confessional poets like Lowell and Sexton got the opportunity to mask these forbidden themes in their poems. The subjects affect every individual in society, but because of the notion of taboo that is placed on these subjects, finding a public platform to address them becomes an issue. However, through the use of indirect persona in their poems, confessional poets represented the public through their poems. For instance, Sexton’s poem ‘The Death of the Fathers, describes incest in her explanation of dancing with her father (Sexton, 2000).
Therefore, to bring into the public’s perspective a topic that most people shun, incest is brought into the public eye and talked by the poet while describing her personal experiences and her insights about the topic. Therefore, Rosenthal’s definition of confessional poetry can be representative of the public issues through the poets’ description of their experiences, problems, and perspectives on a wide array of subjects in the universe (Gill, 2004).
Robert Lowell’s poem “Waking in the Blue” deals with the poet’s mental issues. Lowell describes the mental issues as taking place in a mental hospital where he was treated for mental depression (Lowell, 2007). Although a taboo subject in the earlier society, mental illnesses affected every individual equally. Therefore, through writing his poems as a confession of his personal life and the mental problems he was going through, confessional poets, according to Rosenthal, represents what the general public faces. Addressing the subject in their private literary works, Lowell and Sexton confess indirectly what the general public is going through.
Conclusion
Rosenthal’s definition of confessional poetry portrays truthfulness, concession, and a representation of issues facing the public. Lowell and Sexton’s poems address numerous concepts, some of which were controversial in the earlier societies. However, through their confessions, we, as readers, can be able to get the authors’ thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
References
Gill, J. (2004). Anne Sexton and confessional poetics. The Review of English Studies, 55(220), 425-445.
Hobsbaum, P. (2017). Confessional Poetry. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature.
Lowell, R. (2007). The Letters of Robert Lowell. Macmillan.
Sexton, A. (2000). Selected Poems of Anne Sexton. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Takolander, M. (2017). Confessional poetry and the materialisation of an autobiographical self. Life Writing, 14(3), 371-383.