Confessional Poetry

1
Confessional Poetry

• Steph P Dani M

2
Definition

• The genuine strength of confessional poets,
  combined with the pity evoked by their high
  suicide rate, a romantic confusion between poetic
  excellence and inner torment
• Berryman, Plath, Sexton all committed suicide

3
Berryman
4
Definition cont.

• Confessional poetry is a type of lyric and
  narrative verse
• It deals with intimate experiences and facts of
  poets own life

5
Plath Family
6
Elements and Style

• Private experiences with feelings about death,
  trauma, depression, and relationships were
  addressed in this type of poetry
• I is used more than you

7
(No Transcript)
8
Sylvia Plath

• Daddy
• You do not do, you do not do
• Any more, black shoeIn which I have lived like
  a footFor thirty years, poor and white,Barely
  daring to breathe or Achoo.Daddy, I have had to
  kill you.You died before I had
  time--Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,Ghastly
  statue with one gray toeBig as a Frisco seal

9
Daddy

• The first two stanzas of the poem Daddy by
  Sylvia Plath are simple and sound more like a
  strange nursery rhyme than an angry vision of her
  father. The rhyme scheme in Daddy lulls the
  reader into a hypnotic state and the language is
  free from the kind of dark imagery and terms in
  the poem. This nursery rhymes innocence is
  destroyed with the images and language of Nazism
  and several references to horrible wars. Although
  the reader of the poem gets the impression of the
  daddy depicted in the poem, he does not exist
  outside of images of men from history or
  historical photographs.

10
Sylvia Plaths father
11
Anne Sexton

• Baby Picture It's in the heart of the
  grapewhere that smile lies.It's in the
  good-bye-bow in the hairwhere that smile
  lies.It's in the clerical collar of the
  dresswhere that smile lies.What smile? The
  smile of my seventh year, caught here in the
  painted photograph.It's peeling now, age has
  got it, a kind of cancer of the backgroundand
  also in the assorted features.It's like a rotten
  flagor a vegetable from the refrigerator,
  pocked with mold.I am aging without sound,
  into darkness, darkness.Anne, who are you?

• I open the veinand my blood rings like roller
  skates.I open the mouthand my teeth are an
  angry army.I open the eyesand they go sick like
  dogswith what they have seen.I open the
  hairand it falls apart like dust balls.I open
  the dressand I see a child bent on a toilet
  seat.I crouch there, sitting dumblypushing the
  enemas out like ice cream, letting the whole
  brown worldturn into sweets.Anne, who are
  you? Merely a kid keeping alive.

12
Baby Picture

• Her poem is a representation of the depression
  and self doubt as well as torment of her
  existence that she has experienced in her own
  life.
• The last line of her poem is possibly the most
  powerful in the entire work. It shows her raw,
  intense confusion about who she is and how she is
  possibly going to make it in what she most likely
  considered the cruel game of life

13
Baby Picture
14
Sources

• http//typesofpoetry99.blogspot.com/2009/03/americ
  an-confessional-poetry-movement.html