Confessional and Post-confessional Poetry

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Erik Martiny (Paris Science et Lettres)

Ed. by Erik Martiny, Paris Science et Lettres
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1950-

Places

United States (Location)
United Kingdom (Involved)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Recommended Reading

Confessionalism is a term used to describe mainstream American poetry of the 1950s and 60s. Like many cultural trends, it sprang into being as a reaction to the perceived stuffiness and excessive formalism of the academic poetry of the 1940s and 50s. Early examples of confessional poetry include W. D. Snodgrass’s

Heart’s Needle

(1959) and Robert Lowell’s

Life Studies

(1959). Although Allen Ginsberg’s

Howl

(1956) is not often categorized as belonging to the confessional aesthetic, it contains many of the hallmarks of what critic Al Alvarez called Extremist poetry: a propensity to violate the norms of decorum, an inscription of the intensely personal, an openness to experience, and an expression of acute mental suffering. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton’s poetry has also been planted…

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3019 words

Citation: Martiny, Erik. "Confessional and Post-confessional Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 October 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19331, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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