CONFESSIONAL POETRY.

Mahendran U. M.Phil. Research Scholar Department of English.

Submitted to Dr S. Murali Professor and Head Department of English

Confessional elements in Plath and Sexton.

M. L. Rosenthal first applied the term confession to Robert Lowells work. One definition of what makes a poem confessional is offered by Irving Howe, who argues that a confessional poem would seem to be one in which the writer speaks to the reader, telling him, without the mediating presence of imagined event or persona, something about his life. The first poem that was called confessional was Snodgrass Hearts Needle, which provided a model of truthfulness. Before then, the subject matter of poetry implicitly included little of the poets private life, instead focusing upon public Issues using a detached persona. The new confessional poems removed the mask that poets had been hiding behind and provided an insight into the private lives of the poets. However, upon close study it is clear to recognize the differences as well as similarities between the confessional poets and their poems. The label confessional poetry oversimplifies and undervalues the nature of the poetry of Lowell, Sexton and Plath. While these poems frequently engage in what is repressed, hidden and falsified, defining them as confessional undermines the creative ability of the writer to construct a persona Or imaginary scenario that is separate from their lives. Critics have argued whether or not the poems of Lowell, Sexton and Plath are confessional. M. L. Rosenthal argued that Plath was a confessional poet because she followed Lowells autobiographical method in Life Studies. Likewise, Edward Butscher argues that Plaths confessionalism was the ultimate goal of her poetic career. Howe also describes Plaths Lady Lazarus as a confessional poem because it discusses her recurrent suicide attempts. Nevertheless, Howe criticises much of Plaths poetry for being self-indulgent, describing Daddy as a revenge fantasy rather than confessional. Howe separates Plath from the confessional category because he claims that she has abandoned the sense of audience in favour of self-indulgence. In stark contrast to this, Rosenblatt argues that while Plaths later poems were influenced by life experiences, her poetry does not depend on its confessional nature. Rosenblatt states that while these poems begin with an autobiographical situation they exist by themselves and can be read and understood in most cases without biographical information. Rather than directly using her experience in the poems, Plath frequently uses elements from her experience as the starting point for imagistic and thematic elaborations. In her earlier poems, Plath appeared to repress certain themes that were influential on the imagery of her poems. Later, however, Sylvia begins to tell the truth. In The Colossus Plath presents the image of her father, but not the full extent of her feelings toward him, which are revealed in Daddy. While she both loves and hates her father in The Colossus, it is in Daddy that Plath unleashes her hatred upon him. Expanding on the reality of her experience, Plaths persona is at conflict with her father because he is German, and she is a Jew. Robert Phillips argument that Daddy is a poem of total rejection is reinforced by Plaths line Daddy, I have had to kill you. However, more controversially, it has been argued that Plath is sexually obsessed with her father. Some critics have suggested that the black shoe in which she has lived like a foot is a phallic symbol that proves her incestuous desires. In the poem, Plath moves from desiring her

father, fearing him, to hating him. The suggestion of incest is embellished in Plaths implication that she married a man just like her father: I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. This reference appears to apply to Plath in her statement that she was married to this man for seven years. However, just as her relationship with Ted is over, Plath tells her father: Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through. Like in Daddy, Plath addresses a German Herr in Lady Lazarus, where she addresses the hidden theme of suicide. Plaths uses of first person narration imply that it is her who has done it again. Like Sexton, Plath frankly admits that this is not her first suicide attempt This is Number Three. However, at the end of the poem the speaker undergoes a rebirth that enables her to eat men like air. In comparison, Plath explains the oppressive treatment that women receive in society in her poem, The Applicant. Like Sexton, Plath is tired of domestic servitude and the emphasis that is placed upon womens appearance. Plath emphasizes that a person will not be accepted by society unless they are our sort of person. The purpose of a woman is to do whatever you tell it or to marry it. Plath points out the patronising treatment of women with her line Come here, sweetie, showing that a woman is treated like a dog, or a living doll rather than an independent human being. The qualities that are valued in women are sewing, cooking and talking, as well as the obvious requirement of looking attractive. Critics often make the mistake of claiming that the voice of Anne Sextons poems is hers, rather than an invented persona. As Sexton said, in a radio interview with MacBeth, facts are very unimportant things, there to make you believe in the emotional content in a poem. In order to be effective, the voice of Sextons poems must likewise be both a selection (an aspect of the whole person who is writing) and an artifice, shaped and ordered to suit the needs of the poem. Anne Sexton provides proof of her use of personas, stating that she would alter any word, attitude, image or persona for the sake of a poem. Sexton claims that distorting the truth made a better poem. What is typically confessional about Sextons work is its handling of taboo or shocking subjects that were not traditionally discussed in poetry before the so-called confessional poets. These taboo subjects such as mental breakdowns, suicide, marital problems and incest were themselves hidden from poetry in the past. Sextons poems engaged in what was repressed, hidden, or falsified from an early stage in poems such as In the Beach House, which associated her parents lovemaking, the royal strapping, with a beating she had received from her father. However, Anne Sextons recurring themes were further expanded upon throughout her poetry so that any repressed feelings were finally revealed. Repression was a key theme for Sexton, which is reinforced by the comments of Robin Becker a former student of Sextons, who explained how Sexton used to

unrepress the class. What remained repressed for Sexton was her memories of sexual abuse, whether real or imagined. While her friends believe that Sexton was sexually abused, her therapist, Dr. Orne, believed that it was a false memory. However, Sextons preoccupation with incest is clear in many of her poems including The Truth the Dead Know, Flee on Your Donkey and In the Beach House. In The Death of the Fathers, Sexton suggests incest in her description of dancing with her father. The innocent dance is perverted with the image of The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me. As well as repressed images of sexual feelings toward her father, Sextons poems imply an unnatural relationship with her mother. Sexton reported to her psychiatrist, repressed memories of her mothers genital inspections, which left her feeling ashamed and humiliated. While this theme is not overtly explored in her poems, Sexton implies hostility toward her mother in many of her poems. If the themes of insanity, suicide, marital discord and incest had been hidden from society, Sexton tackled these themes vigorously and forced people to acknowledge them. In an interview with Barbara Kevles, Sexton admitted: Recently I noticed in Flee on Your Donkey that I had used some of the same facts in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, but I hadnt realized them in their total ugliness. Id hidden from them. In Sextons poem Live, she mentions her time in a mental hospital by referring to my hospital shift. Sexton offers the reasons for her mental breakdown, blaming her suicidal tendencies and the pressures of her family: a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchins, picking roses off my hackles. If Im on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. Domesticity depresses the character - most likely to be Sexton herself - because she feels used by her husband and children. Sexton admits what the critics always highlight People dont like to be told / that youre sick. However, Sexton is more upbeat in this poem when she mocks Even crazy, Im as nice/ as a chocolate bar. More overtly suicidal is Sextons Wanting to Die in which she claims that suicides have a special language. In this poem, the character states that Twice I have so simply declared myself, / have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy. While she realises that Deaths a sad Bone, she is drawn to it year after year. Like Robert Lowells poems about marital breakdown, which arguably influenced Sexton, Sexton also wrote a poem called Man and Wife. Aside from the pressures that Sexton feels from her children, the character of Man and Wife feels isolated from her husband. Although they are married, they do not even know each other. There is a sense that they are forced to stay together, out of obligation, like A soldier is forced to stay with a soldier / because they share the same dirt. However, a sense of love is expressed in the lines Oh darling, / we gasp in unison beside our window pane. This

poem emphasizes the complex nature of human relationships. Previously, before the confessional poets, marital discord would have found little, if any, expression in poetry. What had been absent from poetry as well as society was an insight into the lives of women. Sexton took this hidden aspect of life and presented it in her poems. When All My Pretty Ones was published, it was Sextons direct treatment of the female body in such poems as The Operation that attracted the interest of reviewers. However, certain male reviewers could not cope with these frank confessions that involved the emotional and bodily functions of women. For example, James Dickey criticized Anne Sexton for dwelling on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience. An engagement with what has been falsified for Sexton is explicit in her confession that untruthfulness was a legitimate characteristic of her self-representation. Sexton admits that she falsified the experiences in her poems, for example, mentioning only one daughter, changing the number of visits to metal institutions, and referring to her brother that she did not have. In an interview with William Heyen and Al Poulin in September 1973, Sexton said: I remember Ralph Mills talking about my dead brother whom Ive written about. And I met Ralph and I said, Ralph, ... Ralph, I had no brother, but then didnt we all have brothers who died in that war?...But I write my brother, and of course he believes it... I should say Excuse me, folks, but no brother, but that would kind of ruin the poem.. Even what seems like a personal experience that Sexton is confessing can be an imagined scenario, used for dramatic effect. As Dr. Orne suggested, Sextons memories of child abuse may have been invented when she was reading and writing about incest. Indeed, Sexton has admitted to committing truth crimes during her therapy sessions. However, whether true or not, the stories of incest allowed Sexton to explore a taboo subject.