Oh, silly Anne...

The confessional reader's expectations are what are false! They expect the delivery of a snapshot of an authentic self that cannot be delivered because (our)selves are bound by language! If you write and genuinely think you are expressing (your)self, I suppose you are only in that this expression is the only self we really express into existence!

From Paul A. Lacey's "The Sacrament of Confession"

"Which is to say that, whatever the adjective 'confessional' tells us about subject matter, the noun it modifies, 'poetry,' points us once more to the questions of style and form. A poem gives shape to experience so that both the experience itself, in all its density and complexity, with whatever tastes, sights, feelings, and textures are peculiar to it, and the 'meanings'-- the insights, reflections, consequences, emotional and spiritual implications of the shaped experience-- become available to us" (Lacey 94-95).

"The poem, then, looks two ways, toward expression and toward communication. It organizes our responses as we write, but it also organizes responses in the audience we begin to imagine" (95).

"If the reader is being addressed in some special 'confessional' sense, what is his role? Is he hearing confession like a priest, granting or withholding absolution?" (96).

THIS IS THE KIND OF IDEA I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ESPOUSE ALL ALONG!!!!:

"The content, it must be insisted, does not make the poem truthful. Even the most autobiographical poet distorts or suppresses facts for the sake of making a fiction which will tell more of the essential truth. To reach its readers, the poem must persuade us that the truth it tells is worth the price it exacts; it must lead us to appropriate and satisfying reactions" (98).

Anne Sexton's poetry regarding power? Ohhh, I need to keep reading this but I really need to find the quote I went digging for, too. Damn.

Basically, Anne Sexton was looked at as trivial because her personal subjects intersected with femininity.

Confessional poetry differs from confession in that it is literary, but it is also the literary nature of the confession contained in the poetry that subverts confessional politics (but how?)

The Black Art (Anne Sexton)

A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.

A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wards were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.

Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hates,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.


I'm not sure how people read this poem and devalue how it is concerned with gender difference. Here is Paul Lacey's take:

First, he believe that the theme of "[t]he events of life are never enough, either as experience or meaning" is established in this poem (100).

He goes on..."The poem is not concerned primarily with distinguishing women from men or feeling from knowing; instead, it separates these ways of entering and valuing experience-- each conceived of as magical-- from the trivial data of experience itself. A writer is a spy or a crook, one who discovers or steals secrets, in the poem. He is also a perverter of order for the sake of nature" (100-101).

THE SEPARATION IS GENDERED. It doesn't necessarily reflect the way things are, but the way things are supposed to be. Sexton is considered "emotional" as her male confessional counterparts are considered "knowledgeable." She doesn't question these different perceptions, but instead reinforces them (?) Does she really? Sexton's poetry is written from an unwaveringly feminine place...

Anne Sexton wrote about traditionally feminine subjects and had the identity of a woman and her voice was mired with a concern for feminine things! She didn't pretend!

How aware was Sexton of the gendered review of her poetry? I need to read some letters...

I just walked outside to breathe and see the lunar eclipse. It's amazing how the Earth's penumbra makes the moon look like a massive cotton ball. It's a shame that the whole neighborhood smells like pork.

I love the tone of Anne Sexton's letters. I want to be her best friend.

From Letters:

"I do what I do because I don't know how to be someone else. Therefore I dedicate myself to write my best self, and in this minute to thank you for writing your best self so well and giving me a hand out of my foolish 'death bed'" (100).


Off to evening activities...