Confessional Movement

1. Confessional Movement Pamela Alalay Hazelle Fabian Erik Alagar Kelvin Ritualo

2. Definition • Autobiographical subject matter that is sometimes referred to as grotesque. • Personal pronouns; I, me, my • Love affairs, suicidal thoughts, fears of failure, downright violent opinions about family members, other autobiography sensitive material. • Reveals the poet’s personal problems and unusual frankness. • Associated with work from movement of 1950’s and 1960s.

3. Poetic Techniques & Themes • John Berryman • Themes- • You have to learn how to let go sometimes. • Life is full of challenges. • Take responsibility of everything you own because they all have their own value. • Never take your life or anything for granted. • Live life to the fullest (enjoy your childhood before it's too late). • Poetic Techniques- • Personification • Comparison • Blank Verse • Repetition • Imagery • Rhetorical Question • Symbolism • Robert Lowell • Themes- • Views and opinions of life and his life • Struggles life encounters • Helplessness • Bold • Religion: Catholic Symbolism • Poetic Techniques- • Allusion • Alliteration • Imagery • Figurative language • Repitition

4. Poetic Techniques & Themes • Anne Sexton • Themes- • Religious quest • Gender • Mother/daughter relationship • Madness of suicidal thoughts • Issues of female identity • Poetic Techniques- • Repetition • Similes • Metonymy • Sylvia Plath • Themes- • Life vs. World • Imagination • Depression • Childhood memories • Negative thoughts • Poetic Techniques- • Sound effects • Rhyme & Rhythm • Tone

5. John BerrymanOctober 24, 1914 – January 7, 1972 • John Allyn Smith Jr. • McAlester, Oklahoma • Father committed suicide • Columbia College • Began an affair in 1947, married 3 times • Included in “Five Young American Poets” • Wrote The Poems, The Dispossessed, a biography, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,The Dream Songs, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest • Taught at Wayne State, UC Iowa, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, UC Cincinnati, and UC Minnesota • Depressed, abused alcohol, committed suicide by jumping off the Washington Avenue Bridge

6. The Ball What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over--there it is in the water! No use to say 'O there are other balls': An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down All his young days into the harbour where His ball went. I would not intrude on him, A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now He senses first responsibility In a world of possessions. People will take balls, Balls will be lost always, little boy, And no one buys a ball back. Money is external. He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes, The epistemology of loss, how to stand up Knowing what every man must one day know And most know many days, how to stand up And gradually light returns to the street A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight, Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere, I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move With all that move me, under the water Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

7. TPSFAST • Title – Has something to do with a ball, kid playing with a ball, or a professional athlete • Paraphrase- Different interpretations • Shifts- Changes subject throughout the poem • Figurative Language – Personification, repetition, imagery, rhetorical questions, symbolism • Attitude – Sad, depressing • Structure – Blank verse • Title/Theme • You have to learn how to let go sometimes • Life is full of challenges that you must learn to overcome • Take responsibility of your belongings • Never take anything for granted • Live life to the fullest, especially your childhood

8. Robert LowellMarch 1, 1917- September 12, 1977 • From Boston, Massachusetts, United States • Notable works: Lord Weary's Castle, Life Studies, For the Union Dead • Received his high school education at St. Mark's School • Converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism • Graduated from Kenyon in 1940 with a degree in Classics, he worked on a Masters degree in English literature at Louisiana State University for one year • Taught at the University of Cincinnati, Yale University, Harvard University, and the New School for Social Research • Served several months at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. • Suffered from manic depression and was hospitalized many times throughout his adult life for this mental illness. • Died in 1977, having suffered a heart attack in a cab in New York City

9. Dolphin My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, a captive as Racine, the man of craft, drawn through his maze of iron composition by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines, the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . . I have sat and listened to too many words of the collaborating muse, and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, not avoiding injury to others, not avoiding injury to myself-- to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting my eyes have seen what my hand did.

10. TPSFAST • Title: acknowledging the spontaneity of life • Paraphrase: expresses the emotions of loneliness, helplessness, and the lack of control in the writer's life • Shifts: changes subject throughout poem • Figurative Language: repetition, allusion, imagery, alliteration • Attitude: Depressing • Structure: free verse • Themes: • Do not be so careless and wreckless • Be in control of your life • Learn from your mistakes • Organize your life to reach happiness

11. Anne Sexton 11/9/28 – 10/4/74 • Anne Gray Harvey Sexton • Newtown, Mass • Boston University • Killed herself after both her parents pasted. • a Pulitzer prize in 1967 for her poem "Live or Die" • Wrote: live or die, courage, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1st poem), All My Pretty Ones, Mercy Street • Abused her children, father alcoholic, mother was never around. • Never interested in school till she got to college.

12. Courage It is in the small things we see it. The child’s first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they call you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it. Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to cover your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

13. Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed. Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you’ll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you’ll put on your carpet slipper and stride out.

14. TPSFAST • Title: has to deal with someone being courageous throughout life. • Paraphrase: how life is at a young age then to a more mature life. • Shifts: calm voice to a serious earthy tone. • Figurative Language: metaphors, repetition, personification, • Attitude: Depression and confession • Structure: Free verse • Themes: • life is short enjoy while you have it. • being strong in any type of situation. • Survive through courage not fate.

15. Sylvia PlathOctober 27, 1932- February 11, 1963 • Born October 27, 1932 Boston, MA • Married British poet Ted Hughes, 2 children Frieda & Nicholas • Started out her poems by keeping a journal • Wrote about suicidal thoughts, negative things • Spent time in MA to study with Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. • Smith College & Cambridge University England • Divorced, depression, commit suicide • Ariel, well-known poems, published after her death • The Bell Jar, The Colossus, The Collected Poems • Won Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for collected poems

16. Ariel Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies, Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! -- The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks ---- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through air ---- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel ---- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry

17. TPSFAST • Title: Imagination of a girl committing suicide • Paraphrase: Here she dies from falling off a horse, committing suicide. • Shifts: Thoughtful  peaceful fearful • Figurative Language: Metaphor (horse) & personification (herself & the horse) • Attitude: Mild and depression, sad. • Structure: 10 three line stanzas with a single line at the end and follows a slanted rhyme scheme. • Title/Theme: Name of the horse. No matter what happens when you end your life, you’ll always see something peaceful that you will end up going to.

18. AP Style Writing Prompt 1 Read the following poem, Mirror by Sylvia Plath, carefully. Then write an essay in which you discuss how use of language in the poem determines the reader’s response to the speaker and his situation. I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

19. AP Style Writing Prompt 2 Read carefully the following poem, Cinderella, by Anne Sexton. Then write a well-organized essay in which you discuss how the poem’s controlling metaphor expresses the complex attitude of the speaker. You always read about it: the plumber with the twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story. Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son's heart. from diapers to Dior. That story. Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, the white truck like an ambulance who goes into real estate and makes a pile. From homogenized to martinis at lunch. Or the charwoman who is on the bus when it cracks up and collects enough from the insurance. From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story.

20. Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile down from heaven in the seam of a cloud. The man took another wife who had two daughters, pretty enough but with hearts like blackjacks. Cinderella was their maid. She slept on the sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. Her father brought presents home from town, jewels and gowns for the other women but the twig of a tree for Cinderella. She planted that twig on her mother's grave and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat. Whenever she wished for anything the dove would drop it like an egg upon the ground. The bird is important, my dears, so heed him. Next came the ball, as you all know. It was a marriage market. The prince was looking for a wife. All but Cinderella were preparing and gussying up for the event. Cinderella begged to go too. Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils into the cinders and said: Pick them up in an hour and you shall go. The white dove brought all his friends; all the warm wings of the fatherland came, and picked up the lentils in a jiffy. No, Cinderella, said the stepmother, you have no clothes and cannot dance. That's the way with stepmothers.

21. Cinderella went to the tree at the grave and cried forth like a gospel singer: Mama! Mama! My turtledove, send me to the prince's ball! The bird dropped down a golden dress and delicate little slippers. Rather a large package for a simple bird. So she went. Which is no surprise. Her stepmother and sisters didn't recognize her without her cinder face and the prince took her hand on the spot and danced with no other the whole day. As nightfall came she thought she'd better get home. The prince walked her home and she disappeared into the pigeon house and although the prince took an axe and broke it open she was gone. Back to her cinders. These events repeated themselves for three days. However on the third day the prince covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it. Now he would find whom the shoe fit and find his strange dancing girl for keeps. He went to their house and the two sisters were delighted because they had lovely feet. The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on but her big toe got in the way so she simply sliced it off and put on the slipper. The prince rode away with her until the white dove told him to look at the blood pouring forth. That is the way with amputations. They just don't heal up like a wish. The other sister cut off her heel but the blood told as blood will. The prince was getting tired. He began to feel like a shoe salesman. But he gave it one last try. This time Cinderella fit into the shoe like a love letter into its envelope.

22. At the wedding ceremony the two sisters came to curry favor and the white dove pecked their eyes out. Two hollow spots were left like soup spoons. 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. Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.

23. Lesson Read the poem. Write/discuss the figurative language that is applied in the poem. Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the silk Invisible air drifts, Giving a shriek and pop When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling. Yellow cathead, blue fish--- Such queer moons we live with Instead of dead furniture! Straw mats, white walls And these traveling Globes of thin air, red, green, Delighting The heart like wishes or free Peacocks blessing Old ground with a feather Beaten in starry metals. Your small Brother is making His balloon squeak like a cat. Seeming to see A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it, He bites, Then sits Back, fat jug Contemplating a world clear as water. A red Shred in his little fist.

24. Quiz • What year did the confessional poem era start? • 1850 • 1915 • 1930 • 1950

25. 2. Why did these poets commit suicide? • Because they didn’t like who they were. • Because they hated everything that happened in their life. • Because they were depressed. • None of the above.

26. 3. Who grew up with uncaring parents? • Anne Sexton • Sylvia Plath • Robert Lowell • John Berryman

27. 4. Who tried to commit suicide by overdosing pills? • John Berryman • Robert Lowell • Anne Sexton • Sylvia Plath

28. 5. Other than this poet, his father also committed suicide. • John Berryman • Robert Lowell • Anne Sexton • Sylvia Plath

29. Links • “Sylvia Plath Biography.” Biography. Web. 16 Dec. 2012 • "John Berryman." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Apr. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. • "John Berryman." - Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. • “Anne Sexton’s Life.” Modern American Poetry. English Illinois. 2001 March 18. 16 Dec 2012. • “AP English and Comp.” K12. Web. 2008. 12 Dec. 2012. • “Ariel Poem.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation. 7 April 2010. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. • “Robert Lowell.” UNCP. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. • “Robert Lowell.” Modern American Poetry. English Illinois. 16 Dec. 2012.