Monday, November 18, 2013

Please explain the images used by Confessional Poets.

Poetry of the Confessional Poets is all about personal
experiences and typically dealt with themes such as death, depression, trauma, and
personal relationships. These were new subject areas in literature given that many times
texts were not typically written from such an honest and open first-person
point-of-view. In this type of poetry, authors dealt with very personal and sacrificial
writings in which, basically, they "spilled their
guts".


Confessional Poets emerged during the 1950s and
1960s. The most famous of the Confessionalists were: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John
Berryman, Robert Lowell, and L.D. Snodgrass.


The imagery of
the Confessionalist's was typically dark and depressed. These authors had no interest in
hiding the truth behind the reality of their lives. Perhaps they looked at their poetry
as a sort of way to deal with what has happened to them and as an own personal therapy
session to heal.


One example of a Confessional Poem is
"Barren Woman" by Plath



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Empty, I echo to the least
footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes,
rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into
itself,
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale
their pallor like scent.


I imagine myself with a great
public,
Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed
Apollos.
Instead, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can
happen.
Blank-faced and mum as a
nurse.



The imagery here is
forced upon a reader through Plath's imagery ridden terminology: empty, echo, sinks,
blind, pallor, dead, injure, nothing, blank-faced, and
mum.


All of these words depict sorrow, solitude, and pain.
This is an example of the way imagery is used in the poetry of the
Confessionalist's.

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