Emerging from the Wreck HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao March 18, 2011

Nine Female Figures Two Women Reading

From Modern to Contemporary “literary hegemony of the fifties” (Breslin 59) “Contemporary poems contain cracks, even fissures; they are heterogeneous. If they include disjunctions, interruptions, digressions, it is to show how they remain open, in process, rather than creating a perfectly ordered enclosure” (Breslin 61). Ideas of regeneration Confessional poetry as “mythologizing of the self,” Plath’s transformation into “The fine, white flying myth” of Ariel (Breslin 104) Connection to Ginsberg’s “Howl,” a preservation of self-image by keeping it separate from “temporal, physical reality”; “Compositional self-exploration turns out to be compositional self-idealization” (Breslin 104) “Howl” as attempt to “recover an original wholeness that has been lost in time” (104)

On the tradition Crisis for contemporary poets—third generation of twentieth-century American poets (Ginsberg, Bly, Rich)—that first generation were still part of the scene First generation as those born before 1900; between 1900 and 1920 as second; those born after 1920 as the third Adrienne Rich’s “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” (1972):

Sylvia Plath ( ) Parents Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath; father taught German and zoology at Boston University; died when she was eight Aurelia moved family to Wellesley to teach at Boston University Published poetry, fiction, and journalism before attending Smith College (Heath E 2836) English major Depression, breakdown in 1953 after serving as Mademoiselle College Board editor; electroconvulsive shock treatments led to suicide attempt that summer; psychiatric care before returning to Smith June 1955 graduated summa cum laude; M.A. on Fulbright Fellowship at Cambridge, England Married Ted Hughes, later Poet Laureate of England, on June 16, returned to the states; Plath taught at Smith

Sylvia Plath ( ) Lived in Boston for a year, returned to England in 1959 Published The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), The Bell Jar (1963), Ariel (1965); The Collected Poems (1981), The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982) Collected Poems won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982 Had two children; separated from Hughes Committed suicide in her flat, Yeats’s house in London after The Bell Jar was published Ariel contained last poems Late poems as most well received; final poems with change in tone

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) Parents Helen Jones and Arnold Rich; father a professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University Rich grew up in Baltimore Educated at Radcliffe College First book of poems, A Change of World, which won Yale Younger Poets award, published with preface written by Auden Guggenheim fellowship in Europe; married Alfred Conrad, economics professor at Harvard Mother of three sons during 1950s, ideas of femininity during the time Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), poems about confinement (Heath E 1677) Theme of stifling women’s voices as theme within her work

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) Feminine consciousness: “from self-analysis and individual accomplishment to lesbian/feminist activism and the collective shaping of a feminist vision of community that is perhaps strangely rooted in the Puritan ideal of the city on a hill” (Heath E 1677) Personal and political Influenced by open styles of Pound, Williams, Levertov, confessional mode of Lowell, Plath, Sexton, and Berryman 1974 National Book Award, 1986 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, 1997 Tanning Prize, 1999 Lannan Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, two Guggenheim fellowships, MacArthur Fellowship

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) Diving into the Wreck: Poems (1973); An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems (1991); Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, (1995); Selected Poems (1996); Midnight Salvage: Poems, (1999); Fox: Poems, (2001); Selected Poems (2004); Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007)