Confessional Poetry Vivid & personal 1950’s & 1960’s Revealing the self through poetry American poets
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009) Robert Lowell (1917-1977) Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) John Berryman (1914-1972) M.L. Rosenthal (1917-1996) Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal Sylvia Plath The left-handed child of divorced parents, What could he do but make every triumph a mare’s nest and all delight a stammering mistake? M.L. Rosenthal All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry’s side. Then came a departure. Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought. I don’t see how Henry, pried open for all the world to see, survived. John Berryman