In his preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth describes good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (6). The style of confessional poetry seems particularly suited to this description; To think that confessional poets simply transcribe powerful emotions onto paper, however, is a misconception. This article attempts to examine the field and themes of confessional poetry, focusing on the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Sharon Olds. A common theme in these women's works seems to be the subject of (incestuous) fathers and father figures; By analyzing their work relevant to this study and placing it in the context of previous research, this article seeks to explore and explain this motif through the lens of social oppression. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get an Original EssayConfessional poetry, a style of writing that emerged in the United States in the late 1950s, can be described as "poetry of the individual.” or 'I'”; it deals with very personal topics that would normally be kept out of the public domain. Themes like depression, suicide, mental trauma and abuse, which were not traditionally discussed openly in poetry before, are addressed through the lens of private experience and emotion. In addition to dealing with taboo or shocking subjects, confessional poetry reduces the literary distance between the author and the narrator of the poem; As the term confessional suggests, the poems appear to be a direct translation onto paper of the author's feelings and experiences. However, it should not be assumed that confessional poems are simply the poet's confession of his personal problems and complications; according to Zane, the poems should be seen “as a means of defamiliarizing the reader and their conventional assumptions about the domestic” (261). It is questionable whether confessional poetry can be described (in part) as autobiographical; Uroff argues that the narrator of Robert Lowell's confessional poetry is not a literal being but a "literary self" (105), who nevertheless imitates Lowell's own person to a large extent. Zane adds: "Much of Plath's work is autobiographical, but that does not necessarily mean that every poem is about her and that the feelings and events are true to her own life" (260). Khalifel argues for a broader view of the influence of the poet's life story on the works; he claims that experiences not only influence the narrative, but create “an aesthetic identity in the poems, which is rooted in real life” (iii). Confessional poets did not just transcribe their emotions; craftsmanship, shape and construction are very important. “Poetic form serves as a vehicle for previously taboo content rather than previously taboo content. . . an organic extension of the content” (Parini 52). Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are two major names associated with confessional poetry. Both were students of Robert Lowell, for whom the term confessional poetry was coined (Uroff 104), and admitted that their writings were influenced by his works (Poets.org). Controversial and private topics are addressed in their works; Plath's "Lady Lazarus" and Sexton's "Sylvia's Death" openly discuss suicide, Plath's "Daddy" and Sexton's "Daddy Warbucks" both use Nazi imagery while dealing with father figures. Sharon Olds is a contemporary poet and has denied the confessional label in several interviews. She is notagree with the definition of the term, explaining: “I believe that a confession is the act of recounting, publicly or privately, a wrong that one has done, that one regrets. And confession is a way of trying to get to the other side and change your nature. . . I would use the term seemingly personal poetry for the kind of poetry I think people refer to as “confessional.” Apparently personal, because how do we really know? We don’t” (Blossom 31). Besides disputing the name, then, Olds does not deny the concept behind it; his seemingly personal poetry deals with taboo subjects – his poem "The Victims", for example, is about divorce and a father's contempt – and reduces the literary distance between narrator and author, suggesting that, if it is d Accordance with No's choice of words, Olds can be read as a confessional poet. Since the poetry of these three women is – at least partially – confessional, their poetry is intended to deal with similar subjects in a broad sense. Remarkably, Plath, Sexton, and Olds all wrote poems about fathers or father figures, while attributing incestuous tendencies to these figures. Swiontkowski argues that the “incestuous dad figure” in these women’s poetry “is not identical to the biological fathers of these four women. This dad is a shared archetype, a symbolic incarnation of a form of community experience” (iii). This poetic figure symbolizes much greater (social) experiences precisely because it does not represent an objective historical narrative but is created from a subjective and emotional subconscious. In one of Plath's most famous poems, "Daddy," she uses Nazi imagery and terms to describe her experiences and relationship with her deceased father, as well as her husband, who takes on the role of a father figure. She paints a harsh picture by comparing her "Daddy" to a "black shoe/In which I lived like a foot", suggesting that he constrained her, "I hardly dare to breathe or Achoo". Several critics have suggested that the foot should be seen as a phallic symbol suggesting his incestuous desire. His father's fear extends beyond his character: "I thought every German was you./And the obscene language/An engine, an engine/You piss me off like a Jew." This expansion of characteristics becomes more significant in the tenth and thirteenth stanzas, where the emphasis shifts from "daddy" to a new abusive father figure: "Every woman adores a fascist,/The boot in the face, the brute/The brutal heart of a brute like you/. . . I made a model of you,/A man in black with a Meinkampf look/And a love of the rack and the screw./And I said yes, I do”. Marrying a man she compares to her father has a strong connection to Freud's Oedipus complex, again implying an incestuous tone. The tone of this poem is increasingly dark and full of anger; Interestingly, before composing “Daddy,” Plath wrote another poem apparently addressed to her father, which describes his loss in a different tone. “The Colossus” projects the father as an enormous statue fallen into ruin; the poem opens with the line "I will never fully recover from you", expressing her desperation to rebuild (the memory of) him. The statue cannot speak exhaustively: “Brave-mule, pig-like grunt and bawdy sneers/Proceed with your big lips. ". Even thirty years was not enough “to extract the silt from your throat.” By projecting her father's image onto such a gigantic structure, she seems to recognize his power and the place it still occupies in her mind; however, she has difficulty reconstructing his memory and highlights his inability to add anything to his life by muting him. THEThe change in tone between these two poems is explained by Khalifeh by stating that "Plath's literary relationship with her father changed after her husband's betrayal. Following this crucial event, Plath began to attack the father instead of being submissive to him” (276). Anne Sexton's "'Daddy' Warbucks" seems to address a father figure, like a rich sugar daddy who fought in the war. Annie, the narrator of the poem, is an orphan, filling the empty father space with a “daddy,” whom she “knew your money/would save me.” Sexton uses sexually charged words to talk about his money: "'cause you got money, money, money./You let me touch them, caress the green faces/lick their numbers and that allows you to be/my 'Daddy! ' 'Dad! '”. The seemingly incestuous tone continues more explicitly in the second stanza, where Sexton writes: "And all the men there were never to come./Never, like a flood, swim over my breasts/and lay their lamps in my bowels./ No. No./Just me and my “daddy”/and his boisterous males.” Like Plath, Sexton uses a Nazi reference: "I died swallowing the Nazi-Japanese animal." The narrator does not judge his "dad", but seems entirely consistent with their relationship. In “How We Danced,” Sexton suggests incest in his description of dancing with his father. The dance begins innocently, “and we danced, Father, we orbited./We moved like washing angels.” ", but towards the end of the poem, this image is corrupted: "You danced with me without ever saying a word./Instead, the snake spoke while you held me close./The snake, this mocker , woke up and pressed himself against me.” The snake here is a clear phallic symbol; her father's erection transforms the dance from an expression of an endearing moment between father and daughter into a shocking snapshot of incestuous tendencies. Sharon Olds' tone toward her father seems relatively intact at the beginning of "Looking at My Father." His character is judged, but apparently none of this matters to the narrator, who enjoys looking at her father: "I don't think I'm wrong about him,/I know about the drink, I know he's a teasing,/obsessed, rigid, selfish, sentimental,/but I could look at my father all day/and not get enough.” The poem goes on to describe his father's facial features in detail. At the end of the poem, however, the incest motif surfaces: "I know he's not perfect but my/body thinks his body is perfect," followed by "What I know, I know, what my/body knows, it knows. like/release the leash from my mind and go/look at it, like an animal/look at the water, then go there and/drink until it is full and can/lie down and sleep. The narrator does not condemn her father, but rather seems to consent voluntarily. In “Late Poem to My Father,” Sexton mediates between the alcoholic father to whom she tells “even at 30 or 40, you put the/oily medicine on your lips/every night, the poison to help you/fall unconscious" and his former self, a seven-year-old boy: "helpless, intelligent, there were things that man/did near you, and he was your father,/the mold by which you were made", suggesting a feeling of understanding, even forgiveness, for what he has become. Whenever she thinks of what her father, as an adult, did to her and her family, she remembers "that child who was formed before the fire", which Sexton suggests was was injured: the bones of his soul broken, “the little/ tendons that hold the heart in place/ broken.” The poem ends with the lines "When I love you now,/I like to think that I'm giving my love/Directly to that boy in the fiery room,/As if he could reach him in time.". The title of this poem suggests) 29 2016.