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why scholars think “Her Kind” by anne sexton is valuable
why scholars think “Her Kind” by anne sexton is valuable
Essay on confessional poetry
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Confessional poetry is a style that emerged in the late 1950’s. Poetry of this type tends to be very personal and emotional. Many confessional poets dealt with subject matter that had previously been taboo. Death, trauma, mental illness, sexuality, and numerous other topics flowed through the works of the poetry from this movement. Confessional poetry was not purely autobiographical, but did often express deeply disturbing personal experience. (Academy of American Poets)
Three important poets who are typically associated with the confessional poetry movement are Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and Denise Levertov. An analysis of selected works from these poets yields a deeper insight into the individual poets and the broad differences among them. Poetry rarely flourishes in a vacuum. As such, the influences and history of each poet is important to understanding their work. Additionally, the interactions and society of poets of this era lend a glimpse into the similarity of experience of each author.
Despite the analytical simplicity by which some poets become caged into one genre or another, there are tremendous irreconcilable rifts between them. To generalize such diversity of work is to lose the egocentric theme they supposedly share. A closer look at writing style, theme, and the experiential component of the works analyzed show that the term confessional poet is far too shallow a description. Very thin threads bind a group of otherwise immensely diverse poets.
Anne Sexton began her writing on the advice of her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin T. Orne. (Spinello) Her active poetic career began following multiple bouts with severe depression and a suicide attempt. Sexton “offers the reader an intimate view of th...
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...ts of Cambridge, U.S.A. 2006. 10 December 2009 .
Morgan, Bill. Alines Drawn in the Sand - The Life and Writings of Allen Ginsberg. 2001. 10 December 2009 .
Penguin Academics. Literarure A Pocket Anthology. Ed. R.S Gwynn. 4th. Penguin Academics, 2009.
Poetry archive. The Poetry Archive. 2009. 10 December 2009 .
Poetry Foundation. Anne Sexton Biography. 2009. 10 December 2009 .
Spinello, Serena. Associated Content. 2008. 11 December 2009 .
The Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 10 December 2009 .
Poetry’s role is evaluated according to what extent it mirrors, shapes and is reshaped by historical events. In the mid-19th century, some critics viewed poetry as “an expression of the poet’s personality, a manifestation of the poet’s intuition and of the social and historical context which shaped him” ( Preminger, Warnke, Hardison 511). Analysis of the historical, social, political and cultural events at a certain time helps the reader fully grasp a given work. The historical approach is necessary in order for given allusions to be situated in their social, political and cultural background. In order to escape intentional fallacy, a poet should relate his work to universal
Rosenthal, M.L. "Poet of the New Violence". On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Lewis Hyde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. 29-31.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” The opening lines of Howl, by Allan Ginsberg, melodiously encapsulates the beat generation. The beats alluded to by the verbatim ,“The best minds”, are a group of idiosyncratic poets whom through the instrument of prose(driven by spontaneity and a primal lifestyle) , orchestrated a rebellion against the conservative beliefs and literary ideals of the 1950s. Howl, utilizing picturesque imagery, expounds holistically upon the instigator of the movement in culmination with personal experiences of beat members. Accordingly “Howl” evokes feelings of raw emotional intensity that reflects the mindset in which the poem was produced. The piece is structured into three stanzas, sacrificing temporal order for emphasis on emotional progression. The first sequence rambles of rampant drug forages and lewd sexual encounters, eliciting intonations of impetuous madness, one ostensibly hinging upon on a interminable need for satiation of hedonistic desires. Concordantly the following stanza elucidates upon the cause of the aforementioned impulsive madness (i.e corruption of the materialistic society motivated by capitalism), conveying an air of hostility coalesced with quizzical exasperation. Yet, the prose concludes by turning away from the previous negative sentiments. Furthermore, Ginsberg embraces the once condemned madness in a voice of jubilation, rhapsodizing about a clinically insane friend while ascertaining the beats are with him concerning this state of der...
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
The third decade of the twentieth century brought on more explicit writers than ever before, but none were as expressive as Anne Sexton. Her style of writing, her works, the image that she created, and the crazy life that she led are all prime examples of this. Known as one of the most “confessional” poets of her time, Anne Sexton was also one of the most criticized. She was known to use images of incest, adultery, and madness to reveal the depths of her deeply troubled life, which often brought on much controversy. Despite this, Anne went on to win many awards and go down as one of the best poets of all time.
Rothenberg, Jerome and Pierre Joris, eds. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California, 1998.
Marianne Moore’s most popular poem, which is also her most ambiguously titled poem, is called “Poetry.” In this poem Moore decisively strayed away from her conventional writing style of contrariety and the bizarre, but it does seem to share other characteristics of her earlier poetry. Moore’s apparent purpose in writing “Poetry” was to criticize the present social outlook on the entire idea of poetry, to come up with a universal definition of poetry and of genuine poetry, and ultimately to convince those who dislike poetry of its benefits. She attempted to present this criticism and definition by means of blatant irony, and even though she desperately wants to describe the seemingly trivial activity of poetry, she fails to provide a definition that is not caught up in the negative.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
... as a helping hand to such people with grief and sorrows. All in all, Sexton was a wonderful poet at heart. Her poetry has left a deep impact on me. It can never be easy to read and clearly understand a person, whose writings are mainly touching the topics of mental illnesses and suicide. It is morally difficult for me to read the poetry that is imbued with death and depression. Anne Sexton’s creations were as controversial as day and night and I could clearly see that in every single line or verse. The absence of rhyme gives the impression of the free flow of independent thoughts. She was the author that wasn’t ashamed to write about things that were prohibited; moreover, her poetry makes every reader think and cogitate. It isn’t the type of poetry you read for fun over a cup of coffee, it was written for the purpose of bringing the reader aesthetic satisfaction.
Many times poetry is reflective of the author’s past as well as their personal struggles. One struggle that poets write about is of identity and the creation, as well as loss, of individual identities. Using a passage from the essay Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland, I will show how two poets use their craft to describe their struggle with identity. Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney both write poems which express an internal struggle with roles of identity and how they recreate their roles to fit their needs. Through retrospection and reflection, both poets come to realize that the roles they led as well as those they reinvented have created their own personal identities. Boland, in her essay Lava Cameo, touches on several emotions (loss, despair, etc) and episodes in her life which capture the essence of her identity. It is this notion of individual identity that is a central theme throughout Boland’s essay and some of her poems. Boland, through retrospection and hindsight, has been able to recognize the roles that society has dictated that she follow. These roles were not necessarily created for any rational reason (ex: female role as subordinate and even as marital property). One passage in particular captures the internal struggles Boland has endured. This passage runs from pages 27 to 29 in Boland’s Object Lessons. It begins by saying, "It may not be that women poets of another generation…" and ends with "…but because of poetry."
Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” (1951), shows how the speaker was very drastically and negatively affected by the end of a relationship. The poem tells the thoughts of the heartbroken speaker and how the speaker is trying to create a type of comfort by coming up with different ways to try to feel better while possibly being mentally unstable and ill. This poem is written with great passion and deals with the darkness and sadness produced by heartbreak which then broadens to the subjects of fantasy, reality, and suicide. These subjects are demonstrated throughout the poem with the poet’s use of repetition, word choice, figurative language, and theme.
In the poems, Suicide Note by Janice Mirikitani and Dreams of Suicide by William Meredith, the element of suicide is unmistakably the theme. Although both poems are tragic and melancholic, each poet focuses their attention on different aspects of suicide. Mirikitani dissects the inner thoughts of the speaker and focuses on suicidal ideation, while Meredith’s version brings attention to the suicides of three writers by dedicating and honoring them individually. In Dreams, “the speaker conveys his own empathy for those writers who could not survive the struggle to reconcile art and life” (Kirszner & Mandell).
The 20th Century American poet, Anne Sexton once said, “Poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should almost hurt.” Sexton displays this belief through her writing style and set of controversial themes, which unquestionably shocked critics at times. Many of Sexton’s poems reflect on her personal struggles with mental illness and her numerous encounters with suicidal feelings. Sexton became known as a confessional poet because of her autobiographical style of writing. The main themes of her poetry are depression and death. “Wanting to Die”, “The Truth the Dead Know”, “The Abortion”, and “The Starry Night”, are all examples of Sexton’s writing that portray her central poetic themes. Through the use of vivid visual imagery, especially natural