Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
English
Advisor
Wayne Koestenbaum
Committee Members
Mary Ann Caws
Nancy K. Miller
Subject Categories
African American Studies | American Literature | Literature in English, North America | Poetry | Women's Studies
Keywords
confessional poetry, poetry, contemporary poetry, American poetry
Abstract
When a provocative style of autobiographical verse had emerged in postwar America, literary critics christened the new genre “confessional poetry.” Confessional poets of the 1960s and ’70s are often characterized by scholars of contemporary poetry as a cohort of writers who, unlike previous generations before them, dared to explore in their work the personal and inherited traumas of mental illness, family suicides, failed marriages, and crushing addictions. As a result, the body of work these writers produced is often experienced as a collection of stylized, literary self-portraits. What can these self-portraits reveal to us about the connection between confessional poetry and other autobiographical acts? This project examines how two poets within the confessional canon, John Berryman (1914-1972) and Anne Sexton (1928-1974), performed in various guises the part of the confessional poet. In addition, this project introduces to the canon a third unconsidered Black prison poet, Etheridge Knight (1931-1991), who was also writing at the same time as Sexton and Berryman. By considering Knight’s work as one of the strains (or divergent branches) of confessional poetics, this project confronts some of the critical blunders that constitute the curiously white-washed canon known as confessionalism.
Recommended Citation
Rodriguez, Lara Rossana, "The Strains of Confessional Poetry: The Burdens, Blunders, and Blights of Self-Disclosure" (2016). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1451
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African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Poetry Commons, Women's Studies Commons