North American Poetry I (1945 - 2002) --- Jiří Flajšar, Ph.D.
(4) Confessional Poetry
- the most influential poetry movement after 1945, prominent in late 1950s and beyond
- Confessionalism was represented in history by the ancient Greek poet Sappho, St Augustine's Confessions (398), etc.
- most recently anticipated by Walt Whitman who wrote in the first person, but in an assumed masque rather than in a purely autobiographical mode
- the poems typically give an autobiographical impression, but need not be such (e.g. Anne Sexton admits she does not write autobiography but presents fiction as if it was one)
- wrote in an openform, in free verse
- regarded poetry writing as an act of self-therapy
- focused on presenting one's private suffering in order to make it universally shared by readers
- the poem speakers suffer mental problems and instability, their egos are sick and haunted by many obsessions
- for the first time poetry explores the taboo topics of suicide, alcoholism, perversion, etc.
- many of the confessional poets actually did commit suicides
Robert Lowell(1917 - 1977)
- his earliest published collections were in the vein of Formalist Academic poetry, were admired and won many prizes
- still turned to Confessional poetry, considered the founder of the Confessional movement
- later wrote also sonnets on personalities of America, these were not much appreciated
Life Studies (1959):
- the collection breaks with Formalism and introduces Confessionalism
- abandons regular metre and rhymes in favour of prose poems
- resembles journal or diary entries, dramatizes intimate subjects from his own life
- intensely autobiographical, personal, very subjective, even subjectivist
"Skunk Hour" (Life Studies, 1959):
- a famous Confessional poem addressed to an upper-class woman residing in the New England coastal area
- employs striking descriptions ("hill's skull") and unusual actions (watching lovers in cars), which give the sense of something being wrong with the speaker's mind
- features a speaker obsessed with his own love life and its problems
- the structure of the poem is formalistic, uses interlocked rhymes and regular stanza patterns
Theodore Roethke(1908 - 1963)
- started as a Formalist poet and never completely abandoned the Formalist mode
- wrote in a great variety and forms and approaches
- managed to publish his poems in magazines, was acquainted with poets as W. H. Auden or William Carlos Williams
- wrote long free verse poems in a visionary mode influenced by mysticism
- like Romantics used nature to explore mental states, also employed Transcendentalist approaches
- later turned to poetry of psychoanalysis, himself suffered serious mental breakdowns
- mingles elements of Confessional and metaphysical poetry
"Open House" (Open House, 1941):
- influenced by W. B. Yeats and his traditional metaphysical poetry, mystical themes, and national poetry
- also influenced by the metaphysical poets, especially by John Donne, by William Blake, and by Emily Dickinson
- uses a relatively conventional form, regular metre and rhyme
- opts for a simple vocabulary, words of Anglo-Saxon rather than foreign origin, uses short monosyllabic rhymes
- the rigid form contrast with the content describing the going out of one's mind
- uses the metaphor of a self-confessional writer standing as an open house
"Child on Top of a Greenhouse" (The Lost Son and Other Poems, 1948):
- uses free verse, chooses longer words, includes Latin-based words for the names of the flowers
- introduces an original subject, a Confessional poem from the limited point of view of a child
- preoccupied with the natural world of greenhouse and with gardening for commerce
- sometimes assumes the voice of a planter (his uncle owned a greenhouse for commercial planting)
"The Far Field" (The Far Field, 1964):
- the introductory lines classify the poem as a driving car poem
- describes natural world and relates these observations to himself
- later in the poem becomes metaphysical, contemplates eternity and such concepts
- follows the Transcendental journey of the self through both cultivated landscape (the field) and wild nature (the river)
- uses the approach of feeling for the suffering of others, similarly like Walt Whitman
- the sympathetic approach, Romanticism and Transcendentalism were not popular modes in 1940s to 1950s
"Wish for a Young Wife" and "In a Dark Time" (The Far Field, 1964):
- later Formalist poems, the latter at the same time in a strongly Confessional mode
Elizabeth Bishop(1911 - 1979)
- her poetry resembles that of the Projectivist poet Charles Olson (1910 - 1970)
- interfuses the metaphysical and the confessional, but is not as emotional as the most other confessional poets
- preoccupied with lonely individuals in her poetry
- often wrote about animals, especially fish, about exotic landscapes, etc.
- in her choice of nature subjects resembles the work of the Modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887 - 1972)
- influenced many other, especially female poets
- received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1956)
"The Fish" (North and South, 1946):
- the speaker catches a fish which does not struggle
- the speaker finds the fish admirable, she discovers a wonder in the familiar when the familiar is observed closely
- the fish has already survived several attacks, the speaker comes to pity him and drops the fish back to the water
"One Art" (Geography III, 1976):
- a villanelle on a similar subject as John Berryman's "The Ball Poem"
- moves from a smaller to a larger loss, but takes them all stoically
- ironically belittles the pain of losing by claiming that "the art of losing isn't hard to master"
"In the Waiting Room" (Geography III, 1976):
- an adult woman recalls accompanying her aunt to the dentist in the year 1918 when she was seven
- from the point of view of a child-anthropologist meditating on what we are and where we come from
John Berryman(1914 - 1972)
- his father committed suicide when he was twelve
- himself suffered depression, turned to alcoholism, and eventually committed suicide
- his poetry was influenced by W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden
- won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
"The Ball Poem" (The Dispossessed, 1948):
- describes the symbolical first encounter of a little boy with the feeling of an irreplaceable loss
The Dream Songs (1969):
- the collection assumes three different personae and makes each of them speak in the first person
- uses satire and irony, makes it difficult to determine whether the poet is seriously autobiographical of playfully ironic
"A Professor's Song" (The Dream Songs, 1969):
- a humorous description of a poetry lesson on British Romantic poets
- a playful mocking of the serious pomposity of academics
- begins out of nowhere at the middle of a phrase, makes radical shifts in syntax as well as in meanings
"Dream Song 14" (The Dream Songs, 1969):
- a humorous undermining of serious literature
- a self-confession of an obstinately bored vagabond
Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965)
"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner":
- a ball turret is a plexiglass sphere occupied by one gunner which was mounted on aircraft during World War II
- develops the metaphor of a ball turret as a mother's womb in which the gunner is enclosed
- based on an actual incident in which a gunner was killed by explosive shells and his remains were unceremoniously washed out of the turret with a steam hose
Richard Hugo(1923 - 1982)
- born in White Center, a suburb of Seattle, state Washington, which is the haunt of many of his poems
- was abandoned by his mother and brought up by his maternal grandparents, was unable to leave their house for years, though he was oppressed, beaten up by older boys, etc.
- preoccupied with the small-town life and madness of its inhabitants, his favourite colour to use in his poems was grey
- resembles in the choice of his subject the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935)
"Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg":
- a driving car poem describing the speaker's stop in the abandoned small town of Philipsburg, Montana
- the poet himself lived in a small town which was established at the site of silver mines and which became a ghost town once the mines were exhausted, the only well-preserved buildings are the typically American many different churches
- portrays the uniformly boring, grey, and lonely life in the small town
- concludes with the realization that it is necessary to kill the memory of the small-town and leaves the desolate place
"Letter to Kizer from Seattle":
- an epistle addressed to the fellow poet Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925) also associated with the poetry of the Pacific Northwest
- autobiographical, intensely personal, reflects the period in the poet's life in which he went insane while driving
- say thank you to the friend who helped him out of depression related to the negative aspects of success and to ageing
"White Center":
- the speaker returns in his imagination to the painful memories of his childhood spent in White Center
- addresses an old woman who brought him up, but the address "you" may refer equally to the suburb where he grew up
- the mention of "murder" suggests the violence which filled the poet in his youth and which he had to suppress
- describes the corrupting effects of the small-town life on its inhabitants, denies the neighbours any notion of class
- the speaker ends up happily and leaves behind the suburban working class society with its essential loneliness, sense of insanity, religious pretentiousness, fights, etc.
"Gray Stone":
- a later poem from his Stone Sequence on coloured stones but also on the larger life
- takes such a stance to the stone almost as if it were a partner for conversation
- contrasts the permanency of the stone and the fleeting nature of human life
Anne Sexton(1928 - 1974)
- suffered psychical problems throughout her life, committed suicide
"Her Kind" (To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960):
- the speaker expresses the feeling that nobody understands her
- compares herself to a supernatural creature, to a witch
"The Truth the Dead Know" (All My Pretty Ones, 1962):
- the speaker tries to comes to terms with the deaths of her parents which followed closely one upon another
"You All Know the Story of the Other Woman" (Love Poems, 1969):
- the poem presents a confusing surreal intercourse between a dominant man and a suppressed woman figure
Sylvia Plath(1932 - 1963)
- married the British poet Ted Hughes, was separated from him in 1962
- attempted suicide several times, killed herself a year after the separation from her husband
- preoccupied with pain in her poetry
"Tulips" (Ariel, 1965):
- the speaker lies in a hospital after miscarriage and projects her surroundings into her thoughts (Plath actually miscarried)
- associates the hospital whiteness around her with purity, longs to die, to merge herself with the purity
- associates the redness of the tulips with life and with her responsibilities as a wife and mother
- seeks to leave her body and disconnect herself from life
"Daddy" (Ariel, 1965):
- one of the most famous hate poems of any time
- the 30-year-old speaker addresses her dead father, a Nazi official, and transforms private suffering into a public drama
- interfuses autobiography and fiction
- appropriates the facts of her own life into the poem (her father's death when she was about eight years old, her attempted suicide when she was twenty, etc.)
- thinks herself into being Jewish and assumes the role of a Nazi victim (the poet herself was of non-Jewish origin and did not personally experience the Second World War)
- the daughter suffers the Electra-complex arising from the communication problem with her authoritative father
- the strong emotions and strained approaches contrasts with the relatively conventional form
- the rhyme scheme overuses one rhyme group, exploits especially the /u/ sound
"Ariel" (Ariel, 1965):
- the poet rides her horse Ariel in the English country during the absence of her husband
- turns even the most peaceful images into violent ones
"Elm" (Ariel, 1965):
- a meditation on the many aspects of life
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