09-03-2012, 03:49 PM
I've come to really dislike too much focus on the self in poetry, which is startling to me because my formative experiences as a reader and amateur writer all involved confessional poets. Anne Sexton was the first poet I read for pleasure, followed by Sylvia Plath then John Berryman and Charles Bukowski.
Now though I don't like too much rambling about the poet's soul and their struggle, their journey, how life has affected them. I especially hate it when a writer expresses a major subject solely through the prism of themselves and their emotions. Maya Angelou does this a lot. She seems to celebrate her race and gender by heaping praise on herself, Maya, Ms. Angelou, and treating every other black woman as confirmation of her struggle. Lines like "I am the dream and the hope of the slave" feel almost offensive. No slave, after a long day being whipped and worked to buggery, sank down on their bunk and thought: "one day, one day, Maya Angelou will break these chains and become a rich writer."
Likewise, Sexton was best when she wrote about her own direct experiences and left major subjects alone. Looking back, her attempts to tackle stuff like the Holocaust are just embarrassing. These days I rate Plath and Berryman higher than Sexton, whose work I'm still fascinated by, but just as much on a psychological level as on the level of pure art. Plath I think is kind of underrated. She's often called a confessional poet and discussion of her is left there. But she was so much more than a tortured artist. Her poems are filled with delicious sarcasm and horror. References to "Nazi lampshades" show a working knowledge of the Holocaust, and I see her as having more in common with poets like Edgar Allan Poe than Anne Sexton.
Now though I don't like too much rambling about the poet's soul and their struggle, their journey, how life has affected them. I especially hate it when a writer expresses a major subject solely through the prism of themselves and their emotions. Maya Angelou does this a lot. She seems to celebrate her race and gender by heaping praise on herself, Maya, Ms. Angelou, and treating every other black woman as confirmation of her struggle. Lines like "I am the dream and the hope of the slave" feel almost offensive. No slave, after a long day being whipped and worked to buggery, sank down on their bunk and thought: "one day, one day, Maya Angelou will break these chains and become a rich writer."
Likewise, Sexton was best when she wrote about her own direct experiences and left major subjects alone. Looking back, her attempts to tackle stuff like the Holocaust are just embarrassing. These days I rate Plath and Berryman higher than Sexton, whose work I'm still fascinated by, but just as much on a psychological level as on the level of pure art. Plath I think is kind of underrated. She's often called a confessional poet and discussion of her is left there. But she was so much more than a tortured artist. Her poems are filled with delicious sarcasm and horror. References to "Nazi lampshades" show a working knowledge of the Holocaust, and I see her as having more in common with poets like Edgar Allan Poe than Anne Sexton.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe