Confessional Poetry

A quick definition of Confessional Poetry would be that it is poetry focused on the ‘I’.

It deals with subjects polite society would rather sweep under the carpet. It is raw, fearless, emotive and unflinching.

Or as Robert Lowell put it in his National Book Award acceptance speech: ‘It is huge blood- dripping gobbets of unseasoned experience’.

Robert Lowell, W D Snodgrass, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are the four poets most often cited as ‘Confessional’. However, it was, and still is, a controversial title. The form is often criticized for being self- indulgent. Even Snodgrass, arguably the first confessional poet, dislikes the term intensely.

W D Snodgrass

Poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw says, ‘no one wants to be called a confessional poet…It suggests all you do is blurt your feelings. But to work explicitly with the self requires extraordinary judgement and control’. These poets aren’t simply wailing into the void. They are still working within the constraints of poetry. Rather like a doctor describing a wound, brutal but precise.

Confessional poets wrote about then taboo subjects such as mental illness, familial drama, suicide, and sexuality. Of the four poets mentioned. Sylvia Plath is probably the best known and loved. Two of her most famous poems, ‘Daddy’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’ are great examples of confessional poetry, dealing with the death of her father and suicide attempts, respectively.

Sylvia Plath

In our century, when many people have Instagram, Facebook, or whatever is the latest social media app, people often reveal the raw, personal details of every-day lives. In that context, it can be difficult to see confessionalism as a distinctive approach.

Much poetry today can be thus classed as ‘confessional’ even if it doesn’t claim that title or acknowledge the influence behind it.

I have written a slightly satirical poem to conclude my blog.

The Confessional poetry sentence
State who you are, what your purpose is,
the name of the poem - something informative
and honest like a post-it note on your forehead,
equally, describe the world in which you move,
if there are places you want to avoid, the nature
of your baggage, what you need to make a go of it,
in turn, define the meaning of everything, say what
will change and what will stay the same, making sure
you have allowed for sufficient instances,
then you can relive that moment of happiness,
the one you revisit so that it takes a toll on your health
and causes you to drink, developing crise de foie,
ulcers, anxiety, stress, headaches, an arrhythmia,
so that you want to sue the past for medical damages,
yet when it was suggested that you let this moment
go in the hope that your health might improve
as one might give up smoking or try a vitamin,
you said; what’s the point of living without any joy?

Thank you for reading and do add any comments you have about this style of poetry or today's social media confessional approach.

David Wilkinson