Week 2 Question # 1

Susan Hines

1. Sylvia Plath's poetry is considered "confessional poetry". Do a bit of investigation, find out what you can about confessional poetry and its roots, and explain how this poem conforms to that genre.

Sylvia Plath uses the confessional poetry writing style. Poets.org states that confessional poetry is a style of writing which emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and that in that time period it dealt with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in American poetry. When writing confessional poetry the poet shares private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships. Confessional poems are often written in an autobiographical manner. Confessional poets were not merely recording their emotions on paper, they felt that craft and construction were extremely important to their work. While their treatment of the poetic self may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of prosody¸ the vocal patterns in a language. One very well-known poem by a confessional poet is "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath. The poem is addressed to her father and it contains references to the Holocaust but uses a sing-song rhythm that echoes the nursery rhymes of childhood. The sing song rhythm of the poem is an example of prosody. The confessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s pioneered a type of writing that changed American poetry. The tradition of confessional poetry has been a major influence on generations of writers.