Q. How does Sylvia Plath’s confessional poetry reflect her relationships, and how do these relationships shape her work?
Q. Sylvia Plath is often associated with the confessional poetry movement. What are the defining features of the confessional movement, and how does Plath fit into it?
Q. Discuss Slyvia Plath as a Confessional Poet.
Confessional Poetry Movement
Sylvia Plath, a prominent voice in the confessional poetry movement, fearlessly explores her personal experiences, emotions, and struggles in her poetry.
The confessional poetry movement started in the mid-1950s in the United States. It describes the works of poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats influenced these poets. These poets used their personal experiences to inspire their poetry.
However, confessional poetry differed from these earlier poets in its frank and often shocking portrayal of personal experiences, including taboo topics such as mental illness, addiction, and sexuality.
Confessional Poetry
The term “confessional poetry” was first used by M.L. Rosenthal in a review of Robert Lowell’s book “Life Studies” in 1959.
Rosenthal used the term to describe Lowell’s personal and autobiographical nature, a departure from earlier generations’ more formal and impersonal poetry.
This movement is characterized by its intimate, personal subject matter that often deals with taboo or controversial topics such as mental illness, sexuality, and family dysfunction.
Confessional poets typically write in the first person and use autobiographical details to explore themes of self-exploration, emotional pain, and personal conflict.
Confessional poetry was part of a more significant movement in American literature known as “New Poetry.”
It rejected the formalism and restraint of earlier modernist poetry in favour of a more direct and emotionally charged style.
Confessional poetry is about the idea of “writing the self.” It is a form of therapy or self-exploration for the poet. Many confessional poets use their own experiences to connect with readers.
Some of the key features of confessional poetry include:
1- Personal Subject Matter
2- First-Person Point of View
3- Autobiographical Details
4- Emotional Intensity
5- Use of symbolism
6- Breaking With Traditional Forms
7- Focus on the Present Moment
8- Blurring of Boundaries Between the Personal and the Political
Confessional poetry often deals with the poet’s experiences and emotions, including struggles with mental illness, family conflicts, and intimate relationships.
1- Personal Subject Matter
Sylvia Plath’s poetry is personal and autobiographical. Many of her poems are inspired by her own experiences. For example, her poem “Daddy” is about her complicated relationship with her father.
In the poem, Plath uses vivid and sometimes shocking language to explore her feelings of anger and resentment toward her father, as well as her complex sense of loss and grief.
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 toe
Big as a Frisco seal.
In this passage, Plath uses the metaphor of her father as a “bag full of God” to convey the overwhelming and complicated emotions she felt toward him. She also uses stark language to describe her feelings of anger and frustration.
2- First-Person Point of View
Confessional poets typically write in the first person, using “I” to convey their experiences and emotions.
Sylvia Plath’s poetry is often written in the first-person point of view. It allows the reader to understand the poet’s personal experience and emotions. The poem Mirror goes:
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Ariel is another example of the first-person point of view in Plath’s poetry, where the speaker takes on the voice of the mythical winged horse:
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cryMelts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the redEye, the cauldron of morning.
The speaker uses the first-person point of view to convey a sense of transformation and metamorphosis as they become the arrow, the dew, and ultimately the winged horse itself.
Using the first-person point of view, Plath allows the reader to enter into the speaker’s experience and feel the exhilaration and danger of transformation and flight.
3- Autobiographical Details
Confessional poets often use specific details from their lives to create authenticity and emotional depth.
Sylvia Plath’s poetry is known for its autobiographical nature, drawing inspiration from her life experiences.
Plath often used her poetry as a catharsis to explore her struggles with mental illness, relationships, and motherhood. Here are some examples of autobiographical details found in Sylvia Plath’s poetry.
In her poem “Tulips,” for example, Plath writes about being in a hospital after a miscarriage and feeling overwhelmed by the experience:
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.
Plath uses her experience of being hospitalized to convey a sense of powerlessness and loss of control.
4- Emotional Intensity
Confessional poetry is known for its raw honesty and emotional intensity. Poets often address taboo or controversial topics and explore complex and challenging emotions.
In “Lady Lazarus,” Plath describes her metaphorical rebirth:
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—And like the cat I have nine times to die.
These lines convey Plath’s emotional intensity concerning her struggles with mental health and also her resilience in the face of adversity.
5- Use of symbolism
Confessional poets often use vivid and, at times, disturbing imagery to convey their emotions and experiences. Symbolism is an essential element of confessional poetry. It helps to create a sense of depth and meaning beyond the literal words on the page.
Sylvia Plath’s poetry features numerous symbolic instances that help convey her thoughts and emotions.
For example, in “Ariel,” Plath employs the symbol of a horse to represent freedom, empowerment, and the merging of her identity with the force of nature: “God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—
The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch.
The horse, Ariel, symbolizes Plath’s liberation and exhilaration as she connects with the raw power and energy of the natural world.
6- Breaking With Traditional Forms
Confessional poets often break with traditional poetic forms and structures, instead favouring free verse or unconventional forms that reflect the fragmentary nature of their experiences.
In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” Plath uses unconventional form and structure to convey the fragmented nature of her experiences. She writes:
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Plath breaks traditional forms and structures using short, fragmented lines and a conversational tone. The use of repetition—”I”do it”—further” emphasizes the poem’s sense of fragmentation and repetition.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
This unconventional structure reflects the speaker’s fragmented and tortured psyche, giving the reader a sense of the speaker’s inner turmoil and pain. By breaking with traditional forms, Plath can convey emotional intensity in a way that would be difficult to achieve through traditional forms.
7- Focus on the Present Moment
Confessional poets often focus on the present moment. They use sensory details and vivid descriptions to create a sense of immediacy and intimacy in their work.
Sylvia Plath’s poetry often explores the present moment and the experience of being present in one’s life. Here are some examples of how she focuses on the present moment in her work:
In “Blackberrying,” Plath describes picking blackberries in vivid detail, using sensory language to immerse the reader in the present moment.
Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if
Lit from within. I come to one bush of berries
So ripe it is a bush of flies, hanging their
Bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
Plath’s attention to detail and use of sensory language help create a vivid and immersive experience of the present moment.
8- Blurring of Boundaries Between the Personal and the Political
Many confessional poets use their experiences to explore more significant social and political issues, including gender, race, and power dynamics.
In her poem “Daddy,” Plath uses her experiences with her father to explore more significant social and political issues related to gender, power, and oppression. She writes:
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
Plath also uses her experiences with her father, whom she portrays as a fascist oppressor, to comment on the societal expectations placed on women and how men use their power to control and subjugate women.
Plath blurs personal and political lines throughout the poem, using her experiences to shed light on more significant cultural and social issues.
In conclusion, the confessional poetry movement was a radical departure from the more formal and traditional poetry of the past. Confessional poets rejected the idea of detached and objective poetry. Instead, they embraced a personal and subjective approach to writing.
Sylvia Plath’s poetry profoundly influences readers and establishes her as a key figure among confessional poets. She fearlessly explores taboo subjects and expresses intense emotional honesty.
Plath’s work inspires and challenges readers today. It speaks to the universal human experiences of love, loss, and the struggle to find meaning in a chaotic and often cruel world.
