Maio, Mayo..oooh, daffodils

Any self revealed in words or speech has to be a persona according to Maio/Trilling's thesis-- and this is something with which I would agree.

"The authentic self of the poet-- the private self devoid of his or her conscious or unconscious literary persona-- is of course a compilation of selves...Our distinction between authentic and sincere is helpful here. The personal poet's sincere self can be seen as one, or part of one, of these many selves; it is the persona presented publicly as poetic voice and is confined to the poem exclusively. A poem's speaker is not wholly the poet and consequently cannot even represent the authentic self, the assemblage of selves" (Maio 3).

My thesis also assumes that "a personal poem is distinguishable by its speaker" (4).

The choice to put something in a poem is the same as the choice we make the share or withhold other information in conversation, or even with ourselves. This is why poetry could serve as a public self-discovery for poets such as Sexton and Adrienne Rich-- they can choose to alter what they remember or know to be hard facts, but that choice is revealing as well, even if what it reveals is simply the walls to the world of the poem.

Anne Sexton was someone searching for who she was--writing allowed her to construct a self that she was relatively aware was unstable, not just mentally, but in terms of consistency. She looks for this self in terms of examining her own consciousness, looking at her self as man's "other," the victim of him putting skin on her bones, conceiving of her like an architect; and lastly, in terms of finding a self beyond the self that goes on thanks to the presence of a domineering, masculine God. There are moments where her revelation of the construction tears down the construction itself.

p. 72-73: re-vise his ideas?

"...she knew from her earliest attempts that for poetry to be distinguishable as art, it could not be only an authentic confession of one's self-perception. And this, finally, is why Sexton's 'I' is not an authentic one in her personal poetry: her willingness to craft a voice distinct from her conscious voice-- even the one used in session with the therapist-- one that is sincere, but one belonging entirely to the poem as its speaker rather than belonging to the authentic Anne Sexton who speaks as the 'I' of her poems" (73-74)

"...her shaping poetry from her life was more interesting to her than her life" (78).