Impersonal Personalism

When M. L. Rosenthal first used the term poetry in reviewing Robert Lowell's Life Studies, he did so as a matter of critical convenience to reflect both the autobiographical subject matter of the poetry and its connection, however undefined, to a similar impulse in the literary tradition from Augustine to Wordsworth and Whitman. Rosenthal's doubts about the suitability of the term, implicit even in this initial statement, surfaced in an expanded discussion of the phenomenon in The New Poets: was a term both helpful and too limited, and very possibly the conception of a confessional school has by now done a certain amount of damage.' Unfortunately, his fears have been fully justified, for the label is now a major stumbling block. To those who have chosen to attack the mode on fundamental grounds, the term conjured visions of the kind of solipsistic self-advertisement disparaged by Eliot and his heirs, and has therefore become a token of derision or outright contempt. Equally burdened by an all too literal application, even the movement's defenders have been forced into a quandary: either to glorify the courageousness of self-exploration in the face of grave psychic risks, and its potentially therapeutic value, or to rise to the righteous defense of a particular favored poet against the ominous taint of the label.2 The poets themselves have had to resort to unnecessarily elaborate defenses when, in point of fact, none of the major confessionals-Lowell, Berryman, Roethke, Ginsberg, Snodgrass, Sexton, Plath, and the originator of the mode, Delmore Schwartz-are solely in the limited and generally pejorative sense that has gained such wide currency.3 An inevitable counterattack against earlier formulations, begun in the mid 1960's, has centered on the quest for new but no more adequate labels, including Alvarez's extremist poetry, Monroe Spears' open poetry, and Marjorie Perloff's documentary verse.4 It is not the purpose of this essay, however, to enlist in the dubious pursuit of less offensive terminology but to delve beneath imprecation to consider confessional poetry as poetry; indeed, as a

Art · Confessional · Literature · Personalism · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism

• Current Bibliography on Life-Writing

  Kathleen A Bennett, Kathleen Welch et al.•Biography•1981

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• Imaginary Jews and True Confessions

  Open Access•Andrew S Gross•Journal of Transnational American…•2009

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• Viewing Poems as “Bloodstains”

  Janet Badia, Janet L Badia•a/b Auto/Biography Studies•2002

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• Rivers of the Body

  T E Tunc•Women s Studies•2013

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