The Confessional Mode Of Poetry Essay - 1454 Words

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the confessional mode of poetry, coined by M.L. Rosenthal in 1959, emerged in the United States as a reaction to New criticism and Modernism, the dominant literary theories at that time. This mode of writing worked as â€Å"a model for poets who chose to reject modernist difficulty and new critical complexity in favor of a more relaxed or personal voice† and gave them the opportunity to â€Å"articulate feelings , thoughts and emotions that challenged the decorum of an era marked by its containment of psychic needs and desires†(Beach, 255). Some critics have asserted that confessional poetry was compromised by emotions and was just â€Å"not poetry†. Some others have praised it for its authentic exploration of authors’ repressed anguish or deepest feelings and a faithful reflection of life. Although, confessional poetry highlighted poetry of self-revelation characterized by extreme exposure of private and intimate au tobiographical material, it attempts to â€Å"transcend the self† and expose collective experience and embody the world outside the self (Waggoner, 506 qted in Lynn p43), a melting and â€Å"fusion of the private and the culturally symbolic† ( Rosanthal , 80 qted in Lynn p 43) . Anne Sexton (1928–1974) is one of the major American poets who had successfully achieved that sense of â€Å"fusion† while handling themes and issues that were perceived, at that time, as social taboos. Sexton’s epoch-echoing poem, â€Å"Her Kind† published in 1960, exploresShow MoreRelatedConfessional Mode in Poetry of Kamala Das3267 Words   |  14 PagesCONFESSIONAL MODE IN POETRY OF KAMALA DAS Confessional mode of writing has its virtual origin in the mid50s in America. It is hybrid mode of poetry which means objective, analytical or even clinical observation of incidents from one’s own life. Confessional poems are intensely personal and highly subjective. There is no ‘persona’ in the poems. ‘I’ in the poems is the poet and nobody else. The themes are nakedly embarrassing and focus too exclusively upon the pain, anguish and ugliness of life atRead MoreMy Grandmothers House by Kamla Das1143 Words   |  5 PagesMadhavikkutty. Her poetry is an exploration of the geography of her own mind, and the lyric is an instance of such self-exploration. Through images of repulsion and horror, she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of her married life, and the intensity of her misery as a wife who had to submit to her husband whom she found repulsive, and with whom she had no emotional contact at all. She has won many prizes for her work . some of them being the P. E. N. Asian Poetry Prize, Kerala SahityaRead MoreDickinson and Plath Comparative Analysis Essay example1530 Words   |  7 PagesPoetry is an intense expression of feelings and ideas which reflect the joys and struggles of the person writing it. We use it to convey love, to mourn a loss, tell a story, or to say the things we are afraid to tell an actual person. Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath dont write sonnets. These two poets clearly used poetry as a cathartic release for the troubles of their lives. Their struggles with even the rudimentary, plagued them throughout their short lifetime. Life and death being in constantRead MoreAnalysis Of Hughes s Poem Light Of This 1977 Words   |  8 Pages However, the ambiguity of Hughes s poetry may be derived not so much from a desire to obscure truthful representation, but from the inherently traumatic impact of this act of writing. In light of this, Hughes s fragmentary syntax and the episodic construction of the Birthday Letters sequence, may well be understood as a literal manifestation of his attempt to pull together a scattered, dispersed, or lost series of recollections (Freeman, 30); the trauma of which constantly resists any easy assimilationRead MoreKerrinie Broussard. Professor Christian Faught. American1800 Words   |  8 PagesKerrinie Broussard Professor Christian Faught American Literature since the Civil War March 26, 2017 Sharon Olds Confessional Poetry Confessional poetry came about around the late 1950s and between the early 1960s in which it was a new style of writing that writers had not come across before. This type of poetry gave the writer or author the freedom to write about personal experiences, emotions, and certain feelings about dark things such as depression and harsh relationships. Sharon Olds was anRead MoreBiography of Sylvia Plath1452 Words   |  6 PagesCritical Analysis Sylvia Plath, a great American author, focuses mostly on actual experiences. Plath’s poetry displays feelings and emotions. Plath had the ability to transform everyday happenings into poems or diary entries. Plath had a passion for poetry and her work was valued. She was inspired by novelists and her own skills. Her poetry was also very important to readers and critics. Sylvia Plath’s work shows change throughout her lifetime, relates to feelings and emotions, and focuses on dayRead MoreKamala Das3523 Words   |  15 PagesIN THE POETRY OF KAMALA DAS * Dr. Bhosale B. S. The poetry of Kamala Das has the unique place in Indian poetry in English particularly written by women poets. She has developed the feminine poetic sensibility. There is an expression of her personal and public experiences in her poetry. The ideas, which she has expressed in her poems and in her autobiography, My Story, appear to be similar. She has written a great deal of inward - looking or ‘confessional poetry’. Her poetry is confessional becauseRead MoreThemes and Values of the Beat Generation as Expressed in Allen Ginsbergs Poetry1400 Words   |  6 PagesThemes and Values of the Beat Generation as Expressed in Allen Ginsbergs Poetry Perhaps one of the most well known authors of the Beat Generation is a man we call Allen Ginsberg, who expresses the themes and values in his poetry. He was, in fact, the first Beat Writer to gain popular notice when he delivered a performance of his now famous poem, #61505;Howl#61504;, in October of 1955. The Beat Generation is typically described as a vision, not an idea and being hard to define. It isRead MoreEssay on The Role of the Reflexive Ethnographer1252 Words   |  6 PagesRabinow, Jean-Paul Dumont and Vincent Crapanzano† (Visweswaran 22) but began with women who, because of societal constraints, could not be anthropologists. These women’s writings, she claims, have been â€Å"dismissed as ‘popularized accounts’ or as ‘confessional field literature’† (Visweswaran 21). These ethnographies have been also called â€Å"inadequate science† (Visweswaran 21); this is in relation to Malinowski’s belief that anthropology is a structured and scientific method. It is ironic then thatRead MoreMutilating Self Into Spirit: Sylvia Plaths Poems.4131 Words   |  17 Pagesmetaphors and irony in literature. He has highlighted the use and importance of irony in a very impressive and literary way. His article Irony as a Principle of Structure is an excellent piece that stresses and underlines the importance of irony in poetry. According to Brooks, this was one way to visualize the impact of the context in regards to the literary techniques. The backbone of his article is the irony used in any literary work. He believes that this is the key technique to make the poetic