CONFESSIONAL POETRY AS A SCHOOL IN POST-MODERN POETRY<br />By<br />Inas Haider Kadhum<br />Al Mustaqbal University College, Iraq <br />English Department<br />Key Words: Confessional Poetry, Anne sexton, Robert Lowell <br />Confessional Poetry <br /> It is a period in the American poetry that appears between (1945-1960). It is called confessional for its subjective poetic style. It begins with Robert Lowell's shifting from the style of New Criticism school to a more simple and self-verse (Nelson,2013:31).The confessional school is defined by Cuddon (1999:636) as " a record of a poet's states of mind and feelings and his vision of life". The poets begin to write openly about their domestic problems, mental illness, divorce, and family strife. This period is called also as women's movement. They present an emotional, social, cultural, and psychological reality. Death, committing suicide, and depression are the most frequent themes (Middlebrook, 1993:636). The most representative poets are Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell. Both of them died because of drugs, mental disorder, and suicide. Their poetry is described as private and personal, the private soul of the poet appears while writing. Their poems are revealing their hidden thoughts and they are called as "I" poems. Confessional poems are presented with no distance between the speaker and the poet because within the poem the poet speaks his real suffering, thus, their poems look autobiographical in content and narrative in structure. The focus of the poet shift inward rather than outward to the human emotion (Beach,2003:159).<br /><br /><br /><br />1 Anne Sexton<br /> Anne Gray Harvey Sexton was born in November 9th 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in middle- class family in Weston. The daughter of a successful businessman Ralph Harvey (Middlebrook,1991:5). Sexton’s childhood was materially comfortable but not happy. Her relationship with her parents was difficult, perhaps even abusive. After her divorce, Sexton fell into depression and her health started to decline as her poetry enriched more filled with topics that are out of the familiar and mostly considered taboo (ibid:22).Sexton suffered from post-partum depression, and after the birth of her first daughter she suffered her first breakdown and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. Other institutionalizations followed. Anne Sexton started writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to help her stay away from killing herself. She used her poetry and prose as a breather, somehow -regardless of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide ,she committed suicide at age of 46 years (George,2001:37).<br />2 Robert Lowell<br /> Robert Lowell, Jr. was born in 1917, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. and died in 1977, in New York. He is an American poet who was noted for his complex, autobiographical poetry. In his poetry, Lowell expressed the major tensions, both public and private, of his time with technical mastery and haunting authenticity(Carruth,1967:437). His earlier poems, dense with clashing images and discordant sounds, convey a view of the world whose bleakness is relieved by a religious mysticism compounded as much of doubt as of faith. Lowell’s later poetry is composed in a more relaxed and conversational manner. After the death of his mother, he suffered from several breakdowns and depressive disease, his doctor advised him to write down about his childhood as a means of being relaxed. His death is because of lungs cancer that he suffered for a long time(Davidson and Lowell,1996:40). <br />References<br />Beach, C. (2003). The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth- Century American <br /> Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br /><br /><br />Carruth, H. (1967). A Meaning of Robert Lowell. In The Hudson Review20, no.3<br /> Autumn.<br />Cuddon, J. (1999). Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory .London: Penguin Books. <br />Davidson, H. & Lowell, R. (1996). A Literary Life. Basingstoke, Hampshire: PALGRAVE.<br />George, D. (2001). The Supernatural in Short Fiction of the Americas: The Other World in the New World. Boston: Greenwood Publishing Group.<br />Middlebrook, D.(1991). Anne Sexton: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company Print. <br /><br />---------------- . (1993). What Was Confessional Poetry? In The Columbia History of American Poetry. Parini, J.and Brett, C.M. (eds.). New York. Colombia University Press. <br /> Nelson, D.(2013). Confessional Poetry. In The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945. Ashton, J.(ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br /><br /><br />