The Poetics of the Personal 'I': Confessional Voice in Selected American Modernist Poems
Abstract
Confessional poetry is one of the Sapphic tendencies in modernist literature. It manifests the poets psychological world by uncovering the hidden side of his life. It discloses his secrets and hidden repressed desires through the confessional act. Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or "I." This style of writing emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass. Lowell's book Life Studies was a highly personal account of his life and familial ties and had a significant impact on American poetry. Plath and Sexton were both students of Lowell and noted that his work influenced their own writing.