Sentimentality at the School of Confessional Poets

Sentimentality at the School of Confessional Poets

Poets of the Confessional School are easily inclined to fall into the trap of sentimentalism when they open up their heart to express their internal feelings. Some poets succumb to the temptation while some others survive over it. Sylvia Plath has certainly failed in the trap. Her life is deeply influenced by the close attachment she had with her deceased father. The sentimentality kicks in as she could not mentally accept to surrender to the reality that her father had already passed away. She is till emotional about her relationship with her father as if he is still walking around and alive. In her poem “Daddy” the second stanza captures her state of minds with the following terms:

“Daddy, I have to kill you
You died before I had time
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal”

Plath who still addresses her father in the poem, reminds herself that he died too soon before she even had enough time to enjoy his presence. She is deeply attached to the memory of her father although she recognizes she should not fail to move forward with her life and let him rest in peace.
Anne Sexton on the other hand is an example of a poet who has avoided sentimentalism in her work. In her poem “The Truth the Dead Know”, she kept her emotions from derailing. This fact is demonstrated by her selected choice of language, which conveys to the reader the sense that she has finally accepted the reality of the deaths of her parents. The first stanza for example confirms that her poem is certainly composed by a mindset cleared from any outburst of excessive emotions:

“Gone, I saw and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.”

Brief Comparison of “Ave Maria” and “Howl” part I

Brief Comparison of “Ave Maria” by Frank O’Hara and “Howl” part I by Allen Ginsberg.

“Ave Maria” is written by Frank O’Hara, a poet member of the New York School. Its narrator addresses the mothers of America and advises them to be more open towards their growing kids, especially when it comes to encouraging them for frequent outdoor activities away from parental supervision.
“Howl” is written by Allen Ginsberg, a poet of the school of “Beats”. The part I of this poem describes the turmoil that various inhabitants of the world are going through while completing their mundane activities.
Both poems are in a free verse style without any directly recognizable rhyme or meter system. In addition, small case letters mark the beginning of all the verses, to the exception of their respective first lines.
The narrator of “Ave Maria” advocates strongly for the implementation of a new order in an American society deprived of the authoritarian parenting style. Thus, according to the narrator, the growing kids would supposedly benefit out of it. Lines 1 to 3 read:
“Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won’t
know what you’re up to

Furthermore, lines 32 to 36 read:
“so don’t blame me if you won’t take this
advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in
front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when
they were young.”

In the “Howl” of Allen Ginsberg, the narrator displays a strong influence of Walt Whitman writing style. In addition, he begins all his verses with small case letters, except the first verse. The narrator also insinuates implicitly for the gradual enrooting of a new order in an American society that tolerates any form of sexual language in literature.
For example, lines 37 read: “who left themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and
screamed with joy…”

And also line 41 reads:
“who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart…”

Contemporary poems and their ornamental ancestors.

Contemporary poems are as poetic as their ornamental ancestors.

Contemporary poems are characterized by their own originality, their intrinsic creativity and the presence of poetic elements just like classic poems.

In “an Elegy for W.C.W., the Lovely Man” by John Berryman, the similarity of sounds that constitute the end rhyme is noticeable. For example, in the third stanza, the end rhyme consists of the words ahead and read; down and crown as follow:

“Too many journey lie for him ahead,
too many galleys & page-proofs to be read,
he would like to lie down
in your sweet silence, to whom was not denied
the mysterious late excellence which is the crown
of our trials & our last bride”

In addition, a contemporary poem can use matter of sounds just like does a classic poem. For example in “The Waking”, the extreme use of the assonance is profusely exploited by Theodore Roethke. The vowel sound [A] for example is redundant in the lines 17 and 18:

“What falls away is always. And is near
I wake to sleep and take my walking slow”

Furthermore, contemporary poems are partitioned in tercet, quatrain, and recurrent stanza like the classic poems. Moreover, they sometimes adopt the free verse style, pioneered earlier by the school of “Imagism” which authorizes and validates the violation of the grammar rules and the use of fragmented sentences or words in Poetry. An example is in this second stanza of “I know a Man” by Robert Creeley where the word “said” is abbreviated to “sd” and where all lines begin with a small case letter:

“sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what”.