Hey guys!
Already we have completed exercises on poetry analysis, Langston Hughes/Harlem Renaissance, ee cummings, and now we will complete a final exercise on Sylvia Plath. While it may seem I have chosen each of the poets at random, I have chosen each for a specific reason, as follows:
Smith/Lindsay - Two personal favorites, plus an introduction to poem analysis
Langston Hughes - Poetry that relates to a literary movement (Harlem Renaissance)
ee cummings - Poetry that experiments in style and form (syntax and punctuation)
Sylvia Plath - Poetry that that belongs in a subgenre (confessional poetry)
It is important to understand that poetry does not exist in a vacuum; it comes from somewhere, relates to something, was written by someone, and has something important to say even if the only thing of importance is that the poem does not consider itself important.
SYLVIA PLATH
1. Sylvia Plath helped begin a style of poetry referred to as 'confessional poetry'. Read more about the movement here:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5650
2. Read Sylvia Plath's biography here:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/11
3. Read her stunning, emotional poem 'Daddy' here:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15291
...and watch and listen to it here:
http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/video/plath.html
4. Find another confessional poet you like and post a 250-word response in which you do the following:
-Spend 100 words discussing 'Daddy' and your impression of Plath and her poetry.
- Spend the additional 150 introducing your confessional poet, including a poem you have chosen and your analysis of it.
Please do not get stressed out that this exercise is already posted - it will not be due until Wednesday next week. This will be the final exercise in this unit - the remainder of the time will be spent working on poetry notebooks. NOTEBOOKS WILL BE DUE MONDAY, MARCH 9...that will also be the day we do the coffee shop performance/reading.
Good luck!
Mr. Parsons
English II Honors
23 comments:
Allison Rowe
Sylvia Plath
I think that Sylvia Plath’s poetry style of the confessional poetry is very great writing because of the personal details added. I can tell that she has put real feeling into her poetry and I love how I cans see her emotions and know how she felt through her life. Her poem “Daddy” I feel that she thinks she is responsible for her father’s death before she was even born. I feel that she regrets her father’s death and lives a poor life in his memory. Sylvia feels bad because she could never to talk to him and she writes about the crazy things she has done in regret of her father’s death. I think that the ending of Plath’s “Daddy” was terrifyingly odd. Writing of killing two men if she had killed him and the vampire’s blood; she is not afraid to express her opinions. Then authorizing that nobody ever liked him and that he had a black heart confused me so, it’s like he was never really dead. She just imagined it all because he was such a bad person and he was dead to her.
Anne Sexton was a confessional poet who was born in 1928. She offers each viewer several different views, which are all eye-catching and leaves the reader wanting to read more. She writes with emotional anguish and leads the reader through her life and all of her experiences within it. The poem I choose from Anne’s work is “Live or Die.” This is a very different poem, which is to my liking because it keeps my mind interested. She writes that death is always here and has been for a very long time and a lot to do with Hell. Anne authorizes that when she thought of religious things and was very suspicious of them in the past she mourned greatly by what she called a ‘dwarf-heart’s doodle.’ I honestly have no idea what she is talking about here and will ponder on it for a while. She writes disgustingly of a baby that someone had cooked with maggots on the side and sewn onto the plate by someone’s horrible mother. (I love reading these types of things because they make me wonder if these things actually happened in her life or are they just fiction?) From the second stanza it’s almost as if she has murdered someone and put them in the trunk of her vehicle. She writes that she tried to dress it up, but I think she meant in regret it was still just a dead body. I think that she’s talking about murdering her child, a baby. In the last stanza she authorizes of a dream she has that she thinks can never come true. I love her style of poetry, but it makes me scared to have actually known her.
Daddy by Sylvia Plath was very well written and very different from other poems I have read. Sylvia is talking about how she have had to kill him but he died before she could. At the end of the poem she’s telling her father that she’s through with him and that the never liked him and there’s a stake in his black heart.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932. The death of her father died from complications of diabetes and his death defined her relationships and her poems. She published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers. My impression of Sylvia Plath is that she was very talented and she was also very strong.
My confessional poet is Anne Sexton because during her lifetime she was encouraged by her doctor to pursue writing and she enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for adult education. When she was 46 years of age she won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry in 1967. When she was older she had a mental illness and committed suicide I have chosen 45 Mercy Street because it was a very interesting and out of the ordinary to me and because she’s looking for 45 mercy street which does not exist even though she’s been there with her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. He house is also located on 45 mercy street even though it does not exist At the end of the poem the woman ends up throwing her pocket book into the Charles River and throws herself into the cement wall. That’s why I chose Anne Sexton as my confessional writer. I think she wrote this poem because it is a dream where she is trying to find 45 mercy street and she can’t because it’s a dream and she keeps looking for something that never existed. I think it’s her sub consciousness trying to tell her what she wants and desires.
Anne Sexton - 45 Mercy Street
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign --
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down --
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
The Poem named “Daddy” by Silvia Plath confused me in ways. I could tell that she had strong feelings about her father, but I did not know if they were good or bad. The beginning was sort of unclear for me, but as I read on, I started to get the real picture. Through out the poem she said that she was afraid of him. She said that she was even afraid to breath or barely sneeze around him, because she was so terrified. She describes her father as being kind of a dark, scary man with his mustache and the way that he was so strict on her. From the middle of the poem to the end, I liked how she hid the way that she described her life, from the time that her dad died, to when she wrote the poem. The last sentence in the poem really made things clearer for me, and led me to believe that this poem was a closure for her and her dad. I really liked her type of poems, because she included her personal feelings and was not afraid to tell it like it was. She just put everything out there for you.
For my other confessional poet, I chose Anne Sexton. I chose her because her life was very interesting, and I am surprised how great her poems were. Anne Sexton was always in and out of mental hospitals, because she suffered from postpartum depression. When she was in the hospital, was when she had written a lot of her poetry. She also went to the Boston Center for Adult Education to join in on a poetry workshop. Anne had gotten married to Alfred Muller Sexton II, who ended up divorcing her, causing her to attempt suicide. Most of her poems are very melancholy because she was depressed most of her life. Her life sadly ended when she successfully killed herself.
I chose to analyze the poem “All my Pretty Ones” By Anne Sexton. This poem was about her father. Her father was an alcoholic, and was never there for her. At important times in her life, she mentions that she has many photos of them, but her dad was never in them. Before she talked about her pictures, she said that her dad has boxes and boxes of his pictures, and he was with people that she did not know. This meant that he did not include her in anything in his life. Throughout the poem, she mentions how her mom and family and friends did not like his drinking habits. At the end of the poem, she ends up forgiving her father, and not holding her grudge against him for not being there for her.
Tania Waller
3rd Period
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1940, her father died from diabetes. Her afther was very strict, and both his attitude and his death defined her relationships and her poems. The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath is a very emotional poem. She shows the anger she has towards her father and his death. She compares her father to a Nazi, a vampire, and the devil. By comparing her father to Hitler, and herself to a jew,he is her, she is saying that her and her father are complete opposites. She switches from talking about her dad, to talking about her husband. It seems like she tried to replace her father with her husband. Her fathers death has been following her and by the end of the poem, she is finally over his death.
Anne Sexton was born in 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts. Sexton offers her reads an intimate view of the emotional anguish that characterized her life. The central issue of her poetry was based on the experiences on being a woman, such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction in her work. The poem I chose is “The Abortion” by Anne Sexton. Sexton was in a suicidal depression stage. Her psychiatrist recommended her to write poetry. Sexton became pregnant and was worried her husband wasn’t the father, and so her mother assisted her in an illegal abortion. In my opinion, this poem isn’t about her opinion towards abortion, but more of the afterwards feelings she has about it. She is feeling guilty for the death of a child. She uses the line “somebody who should have been born is gone.” The regret and depression in this poem in very straightforward and obvious.
Sylvia Plath contributed greatly to confessional poetry. In her poems she showed intense emotion. Plath went through some hard rimes in her life. She was often depressed, and a lot of her poetry came from this. One of the major depressions in her life was the death of her father. This brought her the poem “Daddy”.
The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath shows some intense emotion. Plath had mixed emotions about her father and his death. The poem makes it seem as though she misses her father, but she shows harsh ideas of what she thought of him. She starts out like she misses him by saying “ and get back, back, back to you”. Then she goes on to end the poem as she is done with him by saying “ Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” These emotions are obviously due to his strict personality and her mixed emotions after his death.
W.D Snodgrass was another great confessional poet. He was a founding member of the confessional movement of poetry. Snodgrass wrote very personal poetry. A lot of his influences came from events in his life, such as his divorce and the loss of his daughter through the divorce. Snodgrass wrote translations, literary criticism, free verse, and formal meters. His work is actually a lot similar to other confessional poets such as Sylvia Plath.
One great poem written by J.D. Snodgrass is “April Inventory”. It is similar to his more famous poem “Heart’s Needle” but perhaps just as personal and meaningful. “April Inventory” expresses Snodgrass’ thoughts of the changing of the seasons in relation to his life. He talks about growing old and uses nature to help describe it. He speaks of the things he has learned and taught in his life. Snodgrass does a good job of using nature to express his feelings. All of this helps make J.D Snodgrass a successful confessional poet.
Sylvia Plath is an excellent writer. She uses many comparisons in her poem "Daddy", to portray her father as the man that she thought he was. She compared him to German people, in her poem, and stated that she was like a jew, in the lines, (29-35.) "I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene/An engine, an engine/Chuffing me off like a Jew./A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen./I began to talk like a Jew./I think I may well be a Jew." She seems to be declaring her unknown hate for her father. She feels as if he was a strict man, with a fat black heart. She feels as if nobody ever truly liked her father, and now that he is gone, people celebrate his passing. Her harsh words against her father seem to only be words of pain, be expressed through anger. She uses her fathers death at the age of ten, as reasoning behind her attempted suicide. I believe that Sylvia was a very depressed woman, obviously because of her cause of death, but also because of the great heartbreak written in her poems. Heartbreak meaning that sadness and state of depression that her life brought. Her father died at a young age, her husband left her for another woman, leaving her behind with their children.
Anne Sexton was another very talented poet. She wrote the poem "Cinderella", which talks about Fairy tales and how they come true. It makes me think about how I would like to be a cinderella in a fairy tale. It talks about the unrealistic nature of how perfect everything is in fairy tales. Stating in the last stanza "Cinderella and the prince/lived, they say, happily ever after,/like two dolls in a museum case/never bothered by diapers or dust,/never arguing over the timing of an egg,/never telling the same story twice,/never getting a middle-aged spread,/their darling smiles pasted on for eternity." I believe that Anne, as well as myself, are envious of the characters in fairy tales. Thy always seem to have their troubles at the very beginning, but then, they always get their prince charming, or there princess, or their money, or their most wanted belonging. Fairy tales are only reminders of how much life is truly not perfect. You never get exactly what you want, and sometimes, when you do, it ends up just crumbling beneath you. This is what Anne Sexton is talking about in her poem "Cinderella", the simple fact that life is never merry all of the times, and you don't go living on forever with a big smile on your face.
Amanda Harris
2-25-09
Parsons 2nd period
Exercise 4
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath’s life has affected her poetry in many ways. She lost her father at a very young age, eight years old. He died from complications from diabetes. However, when he was alive he was very strict on her and her mother. He had a very authoritarian attitude and that greatly effect Sylvia, and his death didn’t help her much either. Both of those events greatly affected her views and techniques for her poetry. When Sylvia Plath was a little girl she was always pushed by her family to be perfect and succeed. She had this thought in her mind that you have to be great or you will fail.
After high school she moved to Cambridge England for college, she had a full scholarship to the school there. She ended up meeting the man that she married there, Ted Hughes. They had two children. One was born in 1960 and another in 1962. Sadly her husband left her for a woman by the name of Assia Gutmann Wevill. That through her in a state of depression and caused her to commit suicide with the help on her gas oven.
Her poem “Daddy” is very emotional. Some believe that it was toward her father. But, some how I do not believe that. Sure, some parts may have been, but I get the feeling that she was writing that towards her former husband Mr. Hughes. That may sound strange but it is what I think about it. But, who ever she wrote about she had a very angry feeling toward him. She wanted to be the one to kill him instead of how he died.
Along with Sylvia Plath there is another confessional poet that I enjoy. Her name is Anne Sexton. One of the poems that I enjoyed most was “Live or Die”
"Live or die, but don’t poison everything.
Well, death's been here
for a long time —
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,the damn bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became a perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I played it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize —
and you realize that she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchins,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes."
The poem that I chose from this author interested me because it is very emotional, and it tells what she thinks. It talks about dying and becoming like everything she says. “.. a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchins, picking roses off my hackles. If I’m on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. And if I’m ice they simply skate on me in a ballet of costumes” It leaves you thinking, and is an extremely great poem.
Ashley Barlow
3rd
Sylvia Path was an expressional poet. To me her poems didn’t make sense till the very end. In her poem “Daddy” was really an expression of hate. We can assume that her and her father had a very bad relationship. The poem really doesn’t say what her father had done to make her hate him so. It just talked about how much she would really like to take his like. At the end of her poem she basically insults him by saying “ your fat black heart”. I take that as her describing her father as a lazy man how dose not care about anything.
Anne Sexton was a very out spoken writer. She had a lot of mental breakdowns. She found help with writing poetry. I really respect her for finding a release. Everyone needs a way to try and express there self. My favorite poem she wrote would have to be “live or die”. Anne Sexton wrote in after one of her most significant breakdowns. The poem is about fighting for your life and having to work through all kinds of obstacles. The whole poem is basically a memoir of her recovery from a mental illness. Anne Sexton went to writing poetry whenever she started feeling bad or thought she was going to lose her mind. In a way poetry saved her life.
Anne Sexton was born in 1928. She had a bad home life growing up. She finished and then became a fashion model for a while. Then she had a very turbulent marriage. She was first diagnosed with postpartum depression in 1952. Even though she went though all of these obstacles she still produced great poetry.
Sylvia Plath Response
The poem “Daddy” was an excellent poem. In the poem she tells us about the relationship with her father. I think with this style of poetry you can really let the reader into your own thoughts and feeling. In this poem Sylvia shows us how awful her father was to her. In the second stanza she says, Daddy I have had to kill you, you died before I got the chance. When you read that line in the poem it really makes you think. He must have done terrible things to this girl for her to want to kill him. Later in the poem she tells us when she was twenty she tried to kill herself just so she could get back at her father even though he was already dead. In the end of the poem she said Daddy, Daddy you b****** I’m through. I think that is amazing for her to finally be able to let go of all her feelings and just be done with what he did to her. It is what every abused kid of today would love to do. I think Plath is a great poet. She used poetry to help her cope with things in her life, which left us with amazing poems. When you read Sylvia Plath the emotion just jumps right off the page. Like in her poem Daddy. When you read that poem you can feel the anger and hurt from her. Sylvia Paths’ style lets us in her head and shows us what she thinks. She is an amazing poet.
The poet I have chosen is Anne Sexton. She was born in Massachusetts, in 1928. She married Alfred Muller Sexton at age nineteen. In 1954 she was diagnosed with postpartum depression suffered her first mental breakdown and was admitted in West wood Lodge. She repeatedly returned there for help. 1995 with the birth of her second daughter she again suffered a breakdown and her kids went to live with their father. At that same time she also attempted suicide. Her doctors encouraged her to write poetry. She enrolled in a poetry workshop and at the Boston Center for adult Education. While there she used poetry to let herself endure life as long as she did. She offers us the intimate views into her own life. She made being a woman the main thing that her poems were about.
The poem that I chose of Anne Sexton was, wanting to die. I chose this poem because it let me see why she attempted suicide after her second daughters’ birth. In the poem she talks about suicide like they are actual people. She says they never ask why. Later in the poem she says that suicides have already betrayed the body. That kind of makes you think about if it betrays why would she do it? She keeps going on through the poem with the repetition of suicide and all its qualities. This shows us how it has consumed her life. At the end she says and the love what ever it was, an infection. Its like she doesn’t want to be loved.
Ashley Barlow
3rd
Sylvia Path was an expressional poet. To me her poems didn’t make sense till the very end. In her poem “Daddy” was really an expression of hate. We can assume that her and her father had a very bad relationship. The poem really doesn’t say what her father had done to make her hate him so. It just talked about how much she would really like to take his like. At the end of her poem she basically insults him by saying “ your fat black heart”. I take that as her describing her father as a lazy man how dose not care about anything.
Anne Sexton was a very out spoken writer. She had a lot of mental breakdowns. She found help with writing poetry. I really respect her for finding a release. Everyone needs a way to try and express there self. My favorite poem she wrote would have to be “live or die”. Anne Sexton wrote in after one of her most significant breakdowns. The poem is about fighting for your life and having to work through all kinds of obstacles. The whole poem is basically a memoir of her recovery from a mental illness. Anne Sexton went to writing poetry whenever she started feeling bad or thought she was going to lose her mind. In a way poetry saved her life.
Anne Sexton was born in 1928. She had a bad home life growing up. She finished and then became a fashion model for a while. Then she had a very turbulent marriage. She was first diagnosed with postpartum depression in 1952. Even though she went though all of these obstacles she still produced great poetry.
Taylor Reed
Sylvia Plath’s poem Daddy is a very strange poem. To me it is somewhat of a story that she is telling about her entire life, but at the same time apologizing to her father. She rhymes quit a bit in this poem but I noticed that she seems to rhyme with the same words through out the poem. After reading some of her biography the poem Daddy is pretty much telling her life story. In the poem it talks about her father dieing, it also talks about her attempt of suicide. This poem is simply a shortened version of Sylvia Plath’s life.
The confessional poet that I will be talking about is Anne Sexton. Anne Sexton did not start writing at a young age like most poets. She did not start writing until after she was married. She was diagnosed with mental issues with depression. She has written many famous poems like 45 Mercy Street, A Curse Against Elegies, and the poem I will be discussing After Auschwitz. This poem to me is written in sheer anger. The poet talks about how evil mankind is and how some of the things they have done are cruel. At the beginning of the poem she talks about how the Nazi’s would take a baby and sautéed it for breakfast. I don’t think the Nazis actually did something like this but I think she is just trying to say ho evil they were.
After Auschwitz
Anne Sexton
Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each Nazi
took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.
Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt,
I say aloud.
Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his anus.
Man with his small pink toes,
with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse,
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud.
Melissa Jackson
5th Period
My impression of “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath was that she didn’t really like her father. She seemed to hate him but idolize him and love him at the same time. She loved her father but was afraid of him. Plath seemed very bitter towards her father, even thou at the age of 20 she tried to kill herself so she could “get back, back, back” to him as she says in her poem. Her poetry is very impressive and heartfelt. You could tell how her relationship with her father was in her poem “Daddy.” She confessed her feeling for her father and how she felt about his death. The confessional poet I researched is Anne Sexton. I chose her because she led an interesting life and her poetry is wonderfully written. Sexton was diagnosed with postpartum depression and admitted to Westwood Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital. She returned to the hospital many times for help. The same year she was admitted Sexton attempted suicide on her birthday. Sexton was encouraged by her doctor to write poetry. In 1957 she enrolled into a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education. At the age of 46 Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for her poem “”live or die”. The poem I choose written by Sexton is called “wanting to die.” In her poem she writes about death and wanting to die. You can tell how her depression affected her life. Her confession of wanting to die and shortly after her suicide, which was committed because of her mental illness, shows how unhappy she was and how she felt about wanting to commit suicide.
Plath seems a bit…odd. She was depressed and killed herself, which is nothing new to the human race, however her “Daddy” poem was a bit, different. After I read it I whispered to myself something similar to “That was creepy”(if I didn’t I shouldn’t have). It was creepy, so very creepy. Fat black heart? Vampire? She’s thinks she might be Jewish? If what I just said sounds strange congratulations, your normal. I’m guessing by her poem “Daddy” she hated her dad, and her dad scared her. He was like a vampire to her life and she was saddened by his death, only because she couldn’t kill him herself. Bottom line, she’s creepy, scary, and I’m afraid (and strangely curious in a weird sot of, wanting to understand, way).
The poet I chose to analyze was John Berryman. John Berryman was depressed and ended up killing himself, this seems to be something common amongst these confessional poets. He was drinker and ,some how, an awesome poet, and amazing teacher too(he taught at the University of Minnesota). In his poem “Dream Song 4” (which is just one of the many dream song poems) John is having trouble over this girl. “Fainting with interest, I hungered back; and only the fact of her husband & four other people; kept me from springing on her; or falling at her little feet and crying; 'You are the hottest one for years of night ;Henry's dazed eyes” She’s good looking, and he wants her, but can’t have her and has to control himself. It’s a short poem, however has a strong meaning for the side of the human mind that longs for things we can’t have, or maybe it has to do with lust. She’s hot, however despite this, it’s probably both. He can’t have her and he’s lusting for her. It sounds the same, however you can lust for something you already have “cough” 1984 Winston and Julia “cough”. This poem is short and powerful, the poet behind it is weird, jumped off a bridge, but is good at what he did.
Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet born October 27, 1932. Her father died when she was only eight. While her father was alive, he was a very strict man. He was an authoritarian. Plath’s father’s rule on her and his unsuspected death greatly affected her style of writing.
Sylvia Plath’s writing that greatly portrays her emotions towards her father is, “Daddy.” This poem describes her feelings of how she felt responsible for his death. Also in the writing it describes how she felt alone in a sense since she could not talk to her father and confide in him. I feel that her overall feeling in the poem is anger. Not towards her dad, but about how she could never have a relationship with him because of his strictness and untimely death.
WD Snodgrass was another very important confessional poet. He was born on January 5th, 1926. He joined that navy and then later attended the University of Iowa. Snodgrass was considered one of the founding persons of confessional poetry, although some think that his writings do not classify as confessional. Many of his poems’ background come from his divorce and losing his daughter.
My favorite Snodgrass poem is “Sitting Outside.” This poem starts out by discussing a lawn chair that his father sat in and did basically nothing. The poem says that he (Snodgrass) did not go to the chair in those last few weeks, meaning that his father had died. In the last few lines of the poem reads, “I have a son, myself, with things to be looked after/I sometimes think since I’ve retired, sitting in the shade here/and feeling the winds shift, I must have been filled/ with a child dread you could catch somebody’s dying
if you got too close. And you can’t be too sure.” This means that he knew his father was dying and he did not want to go too. This poem paints a vivid image in the reader’s mind about his father and how he felt about his last hours.
Sylvia Plath’s raw emotion comes through in her confessional poetry, especially demonstrated in the poem, “Daddy.” Upon first look at the poem, with it’s nursery like tone and rhyme scheme, it may seem innocent, but the content is gray, bleak, and dark. Her moving imagery paints her father as a Nazi, or Hitler, disliked by many, in complete control, yet still looks up to him, much like the followers of Hitler. Through analogies and comparisons, her relationship with her father must have been one of control and fear. I loved this poem, it really made me feel connected to her and her story, unlike other styles of poetry which give you cryptic clues and expect you to figure out how they are feeling. Sylvia Plath just confessed, and the result was a moving poem.
Another confessional poet of the era was John Berryman. His poems are often morbid and dark, yet witty. Like Plath, he suffered psychological burdens, as his father committed suicide when John was only twelve. After that time, both friends, and family members passed away, shaping Berryman’s psyche and writing style. One particular poem of Berryman’s, “Dream Song 80,” is confessional in that the author shares his feelings about death and dying. It is a narrative poem, told by Mr. Bones/Henry, who is assumed to be the same person. Often times the poem refers to the corpse in great detail, and his feelings about dying. One line reads, “O happies before & during & between the times it got / married / I hate the love of leaving it behind, / deteriorating & hopeless that.” Berryman expresses his suicidal tendencies in this poem, confessing to his readers his true thoughts and feelings.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932. The death of her father in 1940 was cause by complications from diabetes. His death defined her relationships and her peoms. To me Silvia Plath was a very strong and determind woman. Her poem "Daddy" was very interesting and very different from other poems i have read. I was alittle confused at first. To me it seemed like she had very strong feelings for her father. At times it seemed like she missed her dad and other times it seemed like she was glas that he was dead. To me i think she has mix feelings about him. She was mad at him for being mean to her. She wishes she could have talked to him without being scared to do so. Because of that shes upset, she upset that it was never like that with him.
The other confessional poet i picked was, Anne Sexton. She was born on November 9, 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. She was raised in middle-class. Her dad was an alcoholic and her mother wasnt happy with life.She was scared of her parents. She started relationship with her maid who they called Nana, the came really close. She eloped to Alfred "Kayo" Sexton II, and later they had their first kid. She became very depressed after Nana died in 1954. A year later she had a second child. When her husband was gone she would abuse the children. SHe ended up trying to commit suicide several times she was institutionalized. During this time her therapist encouraged her to write.
Anne Sexton wrote a poem called "Cinderella". To me this poem shows how women have this unrealistic dream about finding the perfect man and perfect life. This poem, in way throws that dream in our face and makes us realize that its fairytale and it was never be reality. Your always going to have tough times and heart ache. It opens your eyes to life and how Cinderella really lived her life.
"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, was a very deep poem, filled with rage and resentment yet it was spoken from one heart (the writers heart)and taken to heart by the reader.Sylvia Plath done a wonderful job being able to express her anger in such a beautifully composed way.in my mind i see Plath as a dark individual one who had a lot of hatred for her overly strict father. the poem "Daddy" revealed to the readers the estranged relationship Plath had with her father. Plath states in her poem that she and her father were unable to talk.she compares her father to a Nazi,and a devil. she describes her father as a brute. the poem expressed a lot of anger, but made the reader relate and feel the sadness that she had felt. Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" was a wonderful poem to read.
I have chose to select William De Witt Snodgrass as my confessional poet. William De Witt Snodgrass was born January 5th, 1926 in Wlkensburg,Pennsylvania. W.D's early work was often compared to the work of Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell, both of which were his teachers. Snodgrass was often credited for being one of the founding members for the "confessional movement". "I first became known for poems of a very personal nature, especially those about loosing a daughter in divorce." W.D's most known style of writing was free verse and formal metres. a few of W.D's wonderful pieces of work would be "Hearts Needle", "A Locked House", "Remains", and "Each In His Season". Snodgrass was a graduate of the University of Iowa. His first poems appeared in 1951. it is often aid that "The Hearts Needle" inaugurated confessional verse. i was introduced to the work of Snodgrass by reading on the web page that Sylvia Plath's autobiography was on. i read the basic about W.D Snodgrass and looked over his poetry and i really enjoyed reading his poetry.
Sylvia Plath is a well-known artist who expresses her feelings in a style that is known as confessional poetry. As I read this form of poetry, it is obvious the authors have applied real compassion and affection. Privileged is the word that comes to mind, because I feel as if I’m being informed of a few of their personal secrets. One of Sylvia’s most famous poems is titled Daddy, which reflects on her childhood and past experiences with her father.
Out of the poems we have been assigned, Daddy has been the easiest to enjoy and relate to. Within the first stanza I already felt the intensity and emotion in Sylvia’s words. The line, “Daddy I have had to kill you.” is so powerful. Sylvia wanted to her father to be dead so badly, she felt immense hate towards him. The next line, “You died before I had time--“, shows that even though Sylvia wanted to be the cause of her fathers death, he died before she had time to kill him.
As the poem continues, Sylvia Plath described what her life was like living with the man that was her father. They obviously did not have a close relationship because it is mentioned in the poem that she could not even talk to father. Sylvia also stated clearly in Daddy that she has always been scared of her father; his looks were so intimidating. After her father died, Sylvia was still haunted by her memories of her father and tried to kill herself. The end of the poem gives closure to the situation though. She finished it by talking about how the villagers and everyone else hated him so, and then she finally states that she is through.
Sylvia’s poems may be too dramatic for some readers, but I loved this piece. Her life experiences really shine through in her work being that she was born during the Great Depression. Personally, I think Sylvia suffered from depression (caused by her father, Otto) and her multiple attempts may be seen as an act of attention, but she seriously needed help. All in all, I really adore her works.
W.D. Snodgrass is the confessional poet I have chosen. Honestly, I chose him simply because his name is very original. His full name is William De Witt Snodgrass and he was born in Pennsylvania on January 5, 1926. Mr. Snodgrass’s published his first collection of poetry in 1959 and called it Heart’s Needle. It received the Pulitzer Prize. William is most known though for being a founder of the confessional movement. Some of his poems include A Locked House, Pacemaker, Who Steals My Good Name, and Nightwatchman’s Song.
Nightwatchman’s song is a poem that involves rhymes, but is not childish or a disaster. I connected with this poem because it speaks of the unreal, claiming that it can very well be real. I think that W.D. is saying that maybe the watchman is searching for something that isn’t there; or is it? In the first two lines it says, “What’s unseen may not exist—
Or so those secret powers insist”. We tell ourselves nothing is there because we cannot see it, but really that is not the case at all. Mr. Snodgrass did not agree with his poems being classified as confessional, but nonetheless, he grew very famous with them.
Sylvia Plath was an expressional poet who we can obviously say had a very different life. Her poem Daddy didn’t make a lot of sense at first. However, as I got more towards the end of the poem I realized that it was about how her father was more than likely a very strict person and was very hard on Sylvia. The poem never directly comes out and says why Plath dislikes her father so much, however we can take from the poem that his sternness was a great part of it. She shows more of her dislike for her father by at the end of the poem saying he has a “fat black heart”.
Another confessional poet that I chose was Anne Sexton. She was born on November 9, 1928 in Weston, Massachusetts. She began writing poetry after a suggestion from her therapist, who was treating her for depression at the time. A powerful poem by Anne is Wanting To Die. This poem is about the act of committing suicide. In this poem she goes on to say: “But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools”, which is reflecting her depression and her own, personal, thoughts of committing suicide, which is why she was writing to begin with, her therapist. Anne ends the poem with “leaving the page of a book carelessly open, something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.” In this, to me, she is saying that no matter what is said it’s not going to make a difference, because it’s not going to be heard. Which goes back to her own feelings of hopelessness and despair.
I thought that the poem “Daddy,” by Sylvia Plath was pretty interesting. She talks about her relationship with her father, who died when she was only 8 years old. He father was a strict man and her poem tells us that she had a love-hate relationship, minus the love. She compares her father to a German, and herself to a Jew, implying that they never got along. She also says her father was a vampire. I think this means that her father sucked her childhood away from her when he was alive, and she had to live with this for the rest of her life. The line “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through” showed that she didn’t forgive him, but was able to move on with her life instead on dwelling on what he put her through.
The other confessional poet I chose was Robert Lowell. Unlike Plath, Lowell had a good childhood. He was born into a prominent family and attended some very respected colleges. However, Lowell still had problems later in life. He was imprisoned for protesting against wars and had some marital difficulties. He suffered from depression which assisted in his confessional writings. One of his many poems is “The Old Flame.”
The Old Flame
My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -
Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.
A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.
This poem tells about his marriage and how they obviously had some problems. They were once young and very in love, but sadly, that flame died, along with their marriage. He talks about the house they used to live in and how everything was swept away and a new couple made that house into their own. The house was completely different, but the memories were still there.
Sylvia Plath was a very disturbed child after her father’s death. At the age of eight, her father, Otto Plath, died because of his diabetes. His death greatly affected her and the poems, she would eventually write. Her poem “Daddy” clearly proves that she is insane. However, insane people are usually the best artists. The poem is not about her father. It is about the holocaust or her version of the holocaust with vampires. The poem is quite confusing but it does prove one point. The point is that Plath is completely and utterly insane. It is a good poem, though.
My confessional poet is Robert Lowell. Lowell and Plath actually studied and worked together in 1957 in Massachusetts. He was born into a prominent family and he attended Harvard College as well as Kenyon College. John Crowe Ransom taught Lowell different techniques of poetry. Lowell turned out to be one of the more famous confessional poets of his time.
The poem “Skunk Hour” is about a hermit who longs for privacy in it’s most extreme. She has a lot of money so she buys everything around her and watches it crumble. She is apparently very important to her society because she lives practically alone. She claims herself to be queen and her family members to be esteemed members of royalty. The woman is also insane in her pursuit for privacy. She eventually achieves the mission but the town turns to a horrible ghost town. It reeks and thee is no one but she and her minions.
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