A style of American poetry that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, addressing personal and psychological material, trauma, mental illness and the self in ways earlier poetic decorum had reserved from print. The critic M.L. Rosenthal coined the term "confessional" in a 1959 review of Robert Lowell's Life Studies, and the label was then extended to poets including Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and W.D. Snodgrass. The movement is closely associated with its poets' own biographies, several of whom, including Plath and Sexton, died by suicide, which has shaped both the movement's critical reception and later debate over reading its poems as autobiography. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Disputed
Period, To (Year)The core group, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and W.D. Snodgrass, published its defining work between 1959 and the mid-1970s; because the confessional mode's influence continues in later poetry with no clear closing event, literary historians differ on whether, or where, to place an end date. Period, From (Year)Anchored to the publication of Robert Lowell's Life Studies and Rosenthal's review coining the term; sources describe the movement's emergence more loosely as "late 1950s." Connections
Associated Authors
Developed the style alongside Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton in Lowell's Boston University seminar; one of the movement's most widely read poets.
Source Sylvia Plath (Wikipedia)
Associated With
Modernism, Movements Confessional poetry (Lowell, Plath, Sexton, Berryman, Snodgrass, late 1950s-60s US) developed in dialogue with, and in reaction against, the formalist impersonality of prior modernist and New Critical poetics; M.L. Rosenthal on Lowells Life Studies: Lowell removes the mask. His speaker is unequivocally himself. Wikipedia: Confessional poetry.
Sources
1. Life Studies (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Reception section
For this reason, Life Studies is viewed as one of the first confessional books of poetry, although some poets and poetry critics such as Adam Kirsch and Frank Bidart question the accuracy of the confessional label.
Reception section, on the book's standing
Life Studies is viewed as one of the first confessional books of poetry
View the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Confessional Poetry (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)lead sectionQuote, lead section
Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Sylvia Plath (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Associated Authors: Sylvia Plath, Boston University seminar section, confessional poetryQuote, Associated Authors: Sylvia Plath, Boston University seminar section, confessional poetry
Within this seminar, Plath, Lowell and Sexton, whilst starting with very different writing styles, each gravitated towards a new style of poetry dubbed confessional for its use of personal experience and its tendency to use a direct form of address.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.