confessional poetry
SYLVIA PLATH - A ROMANTIC AMONG CONFESSIONALISTS.
There is no denying the fact that Sylvia Plath is connected with the confessional movement but she differs from other confessional poets in some respects. She was quick enough to sail enthusiastically in the direction of the tide of Confessionalism. Yet, not as wholeheartedly as Anne Sexton did, or was pensive restraint as W. D. Snodgrass or with as formidable gusto of self-aggrandizement with which John Berryman exposed himself in his “Dream Songs” and “Love and Fame”. Plath’s early poems like “Point Shirley” and “Hard Castle Crags” are purely autobiographical in nature and confessional in character. But her best poems like “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus” have deeper connotations. As Brestin puts it:
They deal with extreme emotional states and sometimes with the theme of individual suffering as inner registration of outward turmoil. One can recognize the experience of the poet in them, whether by internal hints or by clues from their context among other poems, but they often leave the lateral details unspecified, to be supplied by implication or by other writings. (Brestin 50)
This method of self-dramatization makes Sylvia Plath something different from other confessional poets. Though she belonged to the same generation and handles the same sort of material as the other Confessionalists, her attitude to poetry (only way of surviving for her) and her poetic strategy differ to a great extent from theirs. Two important features keep her apart from them. A poet moving between the two sides of the Atlantic, keenly responding to the broader social, political and cultural framework of her time, she is unable to keep her interest centered narrowly on herself. Secondly being influenced by American and European traditions of poetry, her sense of self-hood differs essentially from the day-to-day identity of the poet as a person as he / she is projected in confessional poetry. The difference in poetic strategy can be best
There is no denying the fact that Sylvia Plath is connected with the confessional movement but she differs from other confessional poets in some respects. She was quick enough to sail enthusiastically in the direction of the tide of Confessionalism. Yet, not as wholeheartedly as Anne Sexton did, or was pensive restraint as W. D. Snodgrass or with as formidable gusto of self-aggrandizement with which John Berryman exposed himself in his “Dream Songs” and “Love and Fame”. Plath’s early poems like “Point Shirley” and “Hard Castle Crags” are purely autobiographical in nature and confessional in character. But her best poems like “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus” have deeper connotations. As Brestin puts it:
They deal with extreme emotional states and sometimes with the theme of individual suffering as inner registration of outward turmoil. One can recognize the experience of the poet in them, whether by internal hints or by clues from their context among other poems, but they often leave the lateral details unspecified, to be supplied by implication or by other writings. (Brestin 50)
This method of self-dramatization makes Sylvia Plath something different from other confessional poets. Though she belonged to the same generation and handles the same sort of material as the other Confessionalists, her attitude to poetry (only way of surviving for her) and her poetic strategy differ to a great extent from theirs. Two important features keep her apart from them. A poet moving between the two sides of the Atlantic, keenly responding to the broader social, political and cultural framework of her time, she is unable to keep her interest centered narrowly on herself. Secondly being influenced by American and European traditions of poetry, her sense of self-hood differs essentially from the day-to-day identity of the poet as a person as he / she is projected in confessional poetry. The difference in poetic strategy can be best