WEBVTT

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As some of you know, this
lecture is really, really hot

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off the presses.

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I finished it
today, just in time.

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The working title
is What We Talk

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About When We Talk
About the Confessional

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and What We Should
Be Talking About.

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And I'm going to start just
with a little bit of context

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about how I came to
write these lectures

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and where this lecture fits
in with the other two lectures

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that I've written.

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And I think maybe
it's appropriate

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in particular with this
lecture because my context

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or introduction has,
as you will very soon

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see, a rather
confessional flavor to it.

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In late January of
2013, I told my mother

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that I was going to publish
my memoir called Mothers,

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despite the fact that she
told me she did not want me to

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and that if I did,
terrible things would

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happen to her, to me,
and to my children.

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A few hours after
receiving my email

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and forwarding it
to several friends,

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with a note saying that
I was breaking her heart,

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my mother, who was in
Taiwan at the time,

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was rushed to the hospital.

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She suffered an
aortic dissection

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and never regained consciousness
after an emergency heart valve

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replacement surgery.

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For months after
my mother's death,

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I organized memorials,
cleaned out her apartment,

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managed her literary
estate, and mourned her,

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all while feeling
that I'd killed her--

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that my actions, my
writing and my decision

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to publish my writing,
had in small or large ways

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caused her sudden death.

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I stopped writing.

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Perhaps I was in shock or
afraid of my own writing,

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or perhaps I imagined that
never writing again was penance.

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Two years after
my mother's death,

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I began to write these lectures.

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I started reading and
writing about two topics--

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photography and
confessional poetry.

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When I completed drafts
of these lectures,

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I realized that they were
both about my mother's death,

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although neither of them
mentioned her directly.

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Looking back, I see that I was
trying to exculpate myself.

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I was searching for
antecedents and justifications

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for my practice of writing
accessible autobiographical

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poems and prose about my
mental/emotional state,

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my body, my lived
experience, and for including

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in that writing real people--

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my mother, my children,
my husband, my friends,

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other poets, who I named
or otherwise identified

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with or without their consent.

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My work had always had a kind
of photographic relationship

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to the real--

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to truth, to truth-telling--
and has relied on the excitement

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and/or discomfort of
revealing too much.

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I was trying to align myself
with artists and movements

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in order to find
protection and permission.

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I ended up writing
a third lecture

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about all the ways my
writing had hurt others.

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I made a list of
everything I'd ever

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written that had hurt someone--

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my most provocative and
offensive lines and poems.

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I came to realize that none
of these three lectures

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was working.

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I started over again and
wrote three new lectures.

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The first is The
Poetics of Wrongness,

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in which I define the
poet's role as calling out

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her own and others'
wrongness and subverting

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hierarchical power systems.

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The second is called
A Very Large Charge:

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The Ethics of Say-Everything
Poetry, in which I

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search for a code of ethics
for writing about real people.

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Tonight's lecture is the third
lecture that I've written

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and it is about
Confessional Poetry--

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the origin and evolution of
the term, the problems with it,

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the pleasures of it,
and how a re-examination

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of confessional poetry
might be useful in 2016.

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Part of the confusion
around the term confessional

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is that it originally referred
to a few poets writing

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in a specific time period.

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But the term quickly
began to be used

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to describe a mode, a
style, a quality of poems

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written by many poets
across several decades.

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If that were not
complicated enough,

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confessional became a
derogatory epithet, inherently

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white supremacist, and
later overtly misogynistic,

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and was used as a
gatekeeping strategy.

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Maybe we should just
retire the term.

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But to reject the
term altogether

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is to overlook the extent to
which contemporary poetry is

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profoundly influenced by the
legacy of confessional writing

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and the extent to which
we, who are both drawn to

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and repelled by this legacy, are
newly in need of a poetry that

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employs the elements of what
is often called confessional.

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Like all literary
movements or schools,

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confessional poetry contains
unlikely bedfellows--

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none of whom wanted to be
called confessional, all of whom

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wrote in a range
of styles and modes

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across their writing lives.

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Still, while rereading
the work of the five

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poets most often associated
with confessional poetry--

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Robert Lowell, W.D. Snodgrass,
John Berryman, Anne Sexton,

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and Sylvia Plath--

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and the criticism
of the period, I

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attempted a taxonomy
of attributes.

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Poems that are
called confessional

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rely heavily on
sound and repetition,

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use simple syntax, remark
on the passage of time,

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and are less interested
in condensation

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than most lyric poems.

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They are narrative,
relatively accessible,

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and often include a
mixture of verse and prose.

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They are often emotionally
shrill, self-absorbed,

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hysterical, messy,
and traffic in shame.

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They tend to be long,
often written in series,

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have a strong
awareness of audience,

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and are preoccupied
with religion.

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Many confessional poems
are written by non-Jews

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about Judaism or
Jewish history and have

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a particular fascination
with the Holocaust.

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Some so-called
confessional poems

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contain most of these
attributes, others very few.

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I'm not interested in developing
a confessional-or-not litmus

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test.

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But for the term to
mean anything at all,

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there have to be
shared characteristics.

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And there are.

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Let's go back a minute.

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The term confessional
as it relates to poetry

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was coined by the
critic M.L. Rosenthal

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in "Poetry as Confession," his
1959 review of Robert Lowell's

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book Life Studies.

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Here's a quote from the review.

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"The use of poetry for the
most naked kind of confession

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grows apace in our day.

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We are now far from
the great romantics

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who spoke directly
of their emotions

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but did not give the game
away, even to themselves.

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They found, instead, cosmic
equations and symbols,

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transcendental
reconciliations, in the course

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of which the poet lost his
personal complaint in the music

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of universal forlornness.

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Eliot and Pound brought us
into the forbidden realm.

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Yet, a certain indirection
masks the poet's actual face.

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Lowell removes the mask.

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His speaker is
unequivocally himself,

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and it is hard not to
think of Life Studies

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as a series of
personal confidences,

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rather shameful that one is
honor-bound not to reveal."

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So poets had always
written about feelings.

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This was not new.

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The romantic poets
had big feelings

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but according to Rosenthal
the romantic poet

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lost his personal
complaint in the music

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of universal forlornness.

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The modernist poet was writing
from an impartial distance

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about and from a self that was
fragmented and ontologically

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unsure and employed a persona
or a mask of the self.

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Poetry, as Eliot wrote, is
not a turning loose of emotion

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but an escape from personality.

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The emotion of
art is impersonal.

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What came to be called
confessional breaks

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from the lyric tradition
of both the romantics

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and the modernists.

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Confessional poetry
is personal poetry

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that stays personal, rather
than becoming universal,

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and in which the speaker of the
poem is unequivocally himself.

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I call this quality I-ness.

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And what happens when
Lowell removes the mask

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and becomes
unequivocally himself?

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About half the book,
Rosenthal writes,

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is essentially a public
discrediting of his father's

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manliness and
character as well as

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of the family and social
milieu of his childhood.

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We hear the poet's psychological
problems as an adult,

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and spy, as
Rosenthal calls them,

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grotesque glimpses
into his marital life.

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So originally, confessional
poetry was poetry in which one,

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the speaker is himself.

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And two, the poet
brings what should

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remain private or personal
into the public sphere.

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Three, the poem's contents
disrupts the social norms

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of its time.

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For example, the
poem contains content

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that was or is considered
grotesque, insane, gendered,

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impolite, subversive, overly
sexual, suicidal, or shameful.

00:09:39.400 --> 00:09:42.310 align:middle line:84%
And four, the poem
feels dangerous,

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in part because it causes the
writer and/or the reader shame.

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When Rosenthal
wrote, "Lowell seems

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to regard poetry
as soul's therapy,"

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he was remarking on something
new in Lowell and in poetry.

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Lowell was disobeying his
inherited Boston Brahmin

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mandate to be discreet
and inconspicuous

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and was defying the tradition
of modern poetry, which

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he had previously exemplified.

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Lowell was a
practicing Catholic--

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he had converted from
Episcopalianism--

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and a diagnosed manic-depressive
who had received treatment

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in and out of mental
institutions for most

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of his adult life.

00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:24.640 align:middle line:90%


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Perhaps Rosenthal,
an avowed humanist

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who grew up speaking Yiddish
in a religious Jewish home,

00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:33.430 align:middle line:84%
was trying to understand
the full weight of what

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it meant to Lowell to sully
his family's reputation

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and undermine his
straight White male

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Protestant privilege by writing
poetry in which he emasculated

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himself and revealed himself
to be emotionally unstable,

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a lousy husband,
a failed father,

00:10:51.400 --> 00:10:54.250 align:middle line:90%
and a pretty unpleasant person.

00:10:54.250 --> 00:10:56.830 align:middle line:84%
But the choice of
the word "confession"

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to describe Lowell's poetry and
of the phrase "soul's therapy"

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confusingly allies the Christian
practice of confession with

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the secular practice
of therapy and poetry.

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Confession, or the
sacrament of reconciliation,

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requires one to examine
one's conscience,

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confess one's sins to a
priest, express contrition

00:11:19.870 --> 00:11:22.540 align:middle line:84%
for these sins, and
ask forgiveness.

00:11:22.540 --> 00:11:24.820 align:middle line:84%
The priest may then
suggest penance

00:11:24.820 --> 00:11:27.130 align:middle line:84%
and will then absolve
the confessor.

00:11:27.130 --> 00:11:29.740 align:middle line:84%
The process of confession
returns a person

00:11:29.740 --> 00:11:33.580 align:middle line:84%
to a post-baptismal
state of righteousness.

00:11:33.580 --> 00:11:36.970 align:middle line:84%
Therapy, and I'm speaking of
Freudian psychoanalysis, which

00:11:36.970 --> 00:11:38.950 align:middle line:84%
was predominant
in Lowell's time,

00:11:38.950 --> 00:11:41.020 align:middle line:84%
is a process in
which a patient works

00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:44.050 align:middle line:84%
to bring unconscious
material into consciousness

00:11:44.050 --> 00:11:47.020 align:middle line:84%
in the context of a
therapeutic relationship.

00:11:47.020 --> 00:11:49.840 align:middle line:84%
Conflicts between the
conscious and unconscious mind

00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:53.470 align:middle line:84%
arise in response to repression,
and this repressed material

00:11:53.470 --> 00:11:57.340 align:middle line:84%
manifests as neurotic
or psychotic behavior

00:11:57.340 --> 00:12:02.320 align:middle line:84%
and mental disturbances such
as anxiety and depression.

00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:06.190 align:middle line:84%
On the surface, confession
and therapy may seem similar.

00:12:06.190 --> 00:12:09.940 align:middle line:84%
One speaks one's sins
to become good again.

00:12:09.940 --> 00:12:14.180 align:middle line:84%
One speaks one's story
to stay sane and healthy.

00:12:14.180 --> 00:12:17.230 align:middle line:84%
But the Freudian notion
of illness or madness

00:12:17.230 --> 00:12:19.930 align:middle line:84%
as being caused by
repressed thoughts

00:12:19.930 --> 00:12:24.820 align:middle line:84%
is antithetical to the Christian
notion of thoughts as sinful.

00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:28.720 align:middle line:84%
There are no good or bad,
sinful or godly thoughts

00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:30.340 align:middle line:90%
in psychoanalysis.

00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:33.640 align:middle line:84%
It is only the repression of
thoughts, a kind of unthinking

00:12:33.640 --> 00:12:35.920 align:middle line:84%
of thoughts, especially
thoughts one thinks

00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:38.980 align:middle line:90%
of as bad, that cause illness.

00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:42.460 align:middle line:84%
Psychoanalysis aims for
integration, understanding,

00:12:42.460 --> 00:12:44.140 align:middle line:90%
wisdom, and maturity.

00:12:44.140 --> 00:12:46.960 align:middle line:84%
Confession aims for
absolution and a return

00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:50.200 align:middle line:84%
to grace or a
state of innocence.

00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:53.260 align:middle line:84%
The conflation of the
Christian practice and therapy

00:12:53.260 --> 00:12:55.330 align:middle line:84%
results in a great
many contradictions

00:12:55.330 --> 00:12:59.200 align:middle line:84%
and confusions as to what
poetry as confession is.

00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:01.330 align:middle line:84%
When Rosenthal
writes, "It is hard

00:13:01.330 --> 00:13:03.670 align:middle line:84%
not to think of Life
Studies as a series

00:13:03.670 --> 00:13:06.640 align:middle line:84%
of personal confidences
rather shameful that one

00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:09.190 align:middle line:84%
is honor bound not
to reveal," what

00:13:09.190 --> 00:13:11.950 align:middle line:90%
is the location of that shame?

00:13:11.950 --> 00:13:15.310 align:middle line:84%
Is it in the nature of
the secrets Lowell reveals

00:13:15.310 --> 00:13:18.010 align:middle line:84%
or in his use of the
poem as a public space

00:13:18.010 --> 00:13:20.260 align:middle line:90%
for private material?

00:13:20.260 --> 00:13:22.690 align:middle line:84%
Is it the shameful
content of a poem

00:13:22.690 --> 00:13:25.000 align:middle line:84%
or the expression
of private content

00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:27.580 align:middle line:90%
that makes a poem confessional?

00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:31.720 align:middle line:84%
And if it is the first,
shameful according to whom?

00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:32.740 align:middle line:90%
To God?

00:13:32.740 --> 00:13:33.940 align:middle line:90%
To the state?

00:13:33.940 --> 00:13:35.920 align:middle line:90%
To the mainstream?

00:13:35.920 --> 00:13:38.830 align:middle line:84%
By this measure, any
poem written in America

00:13:38.830 --> 00:13:43.330 align:middle line:84%
in the 1950s or 60s that
included homoerotic content

00:13:43.330 --> 00:13:45.700 align:middle line:84%
should be considered
confessional.

00:13:45.700 --> 00:13:48.430 align:middle line:84%
But Allen Ginsberg is
only sometimes considered

00:13:48.430 --> 00:13:52.450 align:middle line:84%
confessional and Frank
O'Hara almost never.

00:13:52.450 --> 00:13:54.730 align:middle line:84%
And what is the
role of the reader?

00:13:54.730 --> 00:13:57.340 align:middle line:84%
In "Poetry as
Confession," is the reader

00:13:57.340 --> 00:14:01.660 align:middle line:84%
a psychoanalysist priest who
offers absolution and provides

00:14:01.660 --> 00:14:03.280 align:middle line:90%
a therapeutic context?

00:14:03.280 --> 00:14:05.980 align:middle line:84%
Or is the reader a
voyeur witness intruding

00:14:05.980 --> 00:14:08.950 align:middle line:84%
upon what should be a
confidential exchange

00:14:08.950 --> 00:14:12.250 align:middle line:84%
between poet and
priest-therapist?

00:14:12.250 --> 00:14:14.170 align:middle line:90%
These confusions matter.

00:14:14.170 --> 00:14:17.620 align:middle line:84%
The poem, in one case, is a
sign of health and, in another,

00:14:17.620 --> 00:14:19.420 align:middle line:90%
a catalog of sins.

00:14:19.420 --> 00:14:22.090 align:middle line:84%
The poem is either a
site of communication

00:14:22.090 --> 00:14:25.570 align:middle line:84%
between poet and other or
it is an intercepted broken

00:14:25.570 --> 00:14:27.610 align:middle line:90%
confidence.

00:14:27.610 --> 00:14:30.400 align:middle line:84%
One thing that confession
and therapy have in common

00:14:30.400 --> 00:14:32.770 align:middle line:84%
is that both require the
presence of another human

00:14:32.770 --> 00:14:33.910 align:middle line:90%
being.

00:14:33.910 --> 00:14:37.810 align:middle line:84%
In this way, Rosenthal's
metaphor is apt and useful.

00:14:37.810 --> 00:14:41.170 align:middle line:84%
Confessional poems are
often addressed to someone--

00:14:41.170 --> 00:14:44.320 align:middle line:84%
a priest, a therapist, a
lover, a friend, a child,

00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:45.460 align:middle line:90%
or the reader--

00:14:45.460 --> 00:14:48.430 align:middle line:84%
in ways that break with
traditional apostrophe

00:14:48.430 --> 00:14:50.230 align:middle line:90%
in the lyric.

00:14:50.230 --> 00:14:52.300 align:middle line:84%
In the lyric,
"apostrophe," which

00:14:52.300 --> 00:14:54.950 align:middle line:84%
comes from the Greek
word "to turn away,"

00:14:54.950 --> 00:14:58.480 align:middle line:84%
meaning that the orator turns
away to address an individual,

00:14:58.480 --> 00:15:02.590 align:middle line:84%
is most often a trope of address
to a dead, absent, inanimate

00:15:02.590 --> 00:15:04.510 align:middle line:90%
other or self.

00:15:04.510 --> 00:15:07.190 align:middle line:84%
Most confessional
poems are narrative,

00:15:07.190 --> 00:15:09.880 align:middle line:84%
which is to say they
describe a sequence of events

00:15:09.880 --> 00:15:11.710 align:middle line:90%
told by a narrator.

00:15:11.710 --> 00:15:14.140 align:middle line:84%
In confessional poems,
the narrator or speaker

00:15:14.140 --> 00:15:16.060 align:middle line:90%
is almost always the poet.

00:15:16.060 --> 00:15:18.940 align:middle line:84%
Lyric poetry, on the other
hand, doesn't usually

00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:22.210 align:middle line:84%
tell a story about what
happened but is itself

00:15:22.210 --> 00:15:24.460 align:middle line:90%
the event, the occasion.

00:15:24.460 --> 00:15:28.030 align:middle line:84%
Narrative, like folk tale,
is how we explain ourselves

00:15:28.030 --> 00:15:32.620 align:middle line:84%
to others and is, therefore,
inherently a public enterprise.

00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:35.710 align:middle line:84%
Lyrics, from the tradition
of singing or anything

00:15:35.710 --> 00:15:37.750 align:middle line:84%
that can be accompanied
by the lyre,

00:15:37.750 --> 00:15:40.090 align:middle line:84%
are concerned with
the private and are

00:15:40.090 --> 00:15:43.510 align:middle line:84%
how we explain
ourselves to ourselves.

00:15:43.510 --> 00:15:46.750 align:middle line:84%
In a lyric, the poet
is a prophet or oracle,

00:15:46.750 --> 00:15:48.730 align:middle line:90%
a voice overheard.

00:15:48.730 --> 00:15:50.740 align:middle line:84%
In a confessional
narrative poem,

00:15:50.740 --> 00:15:54.430 align:middle line:84%
the poet most often speaks
to a specific real person

00:15:54.430 --> 00:15:58.330 align:middle line:84%
and, thus, breaks from the lyric
notion that eloquence is heard,

00:15:58.330 --> 00:16:00.940 align:middle line:90%
poetry is overheard.

00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:03.400 align:middle line:84%
This is part of what gives
confessional poetry a sense

00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:05.480 align:middle line:90%
of realness and intimacy.

00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:07.300 align:middle line:84%
It is also part of
what can position

00:16:07.300 --> 00:16:10.330 align:middle line:90%
the reader as a voyeur.

00:16:10.330 --> 00:16:14.770 align:middle line:84%
Anne Sexton's poems are full
of this kind of direct address.

00:16:14.770 --> 00:16:17.440 align:middle line:84%
"You, Doctor Martin" is
the first poem in her book

00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:21.520 align:middle line:84%
To Bedlam and Part Way Back and
begins, "You, Doctor Martin,

00:16:21.520 --> 00:16:25.630 align:middle line:90%
walk from breakfast to madness."

00:16:25.630 --> 00:16:28.750 align:middle line:84%
Whereas Wallace Stevens was
interested in the imagination's

00:16:28.750 --> 00:16:32.290 align:middle line:84%
ability to press back against
the pressure of reality,

00:16:32.290 --> 00:16:35.900 align:middle line:84%
Sexton's poems often work
to press her reality--

00:16:35.900 --> 00:16:39.760 align:middle line:84%
her voice, her will, her
physical female presence

00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:44.590 align:middle line:84%
against a male interlocutor who
is limiting or suppressing her.

00:16:44.590 --> 00:16:47.800 align:middle line:84%
The power of Sexton's
poems comes as much or more

00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:51.610 align:middle line:84%
from their direct address
and the discomfort engendered

00:16:51.610 --> 00:16:55.570 align:middle line:84%
by such an address than from
her taboo to personal content

00:16:55.570 --> 00:16:57.640 align:middle line:90%
or I-ness.

00:16:57.640 --> 00:17:00.130 align:middle line:84%
In her long poem
"The Double Image,"

00:17:00.130 --> 00:17:03.280 align:middle line:84%
Sexton directly addresses
her daughter, Joyce,

00:17:03.280 --> 00:17:06.220 align:middle line:84%
who was four years
old at the time.

00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:09.730 align:middle line:84%
Sexton describes intense
guilt around her separations

00:17:09.730 --> 00:17:13.210 align:middle line:84%
from Joyce, which were caused
by Sexton's suicide attempts

00:17:13.210 --> 00:17:15.310 align:middle line:90%
and hospitalizations.

00:17:15.310 --> 00:17:17.770 align:middle line:84%
Sexton explores the
tangled relationship

00:17:17.770 --> 00:17:20.200 align:middle line:84%
between herself and
Joyce and between Sexton

00:17:20.200 --> 00:17:21.970 align:middle line:84%
and her own mother,
with whom she

00:17:21.970 --> 00:17:24.520 align:middle line:84%
went to live like
an angry guest,

00:17:24.520 --> 00:17:29.470 align:middle line:84%
like a partly mended
thing and outgrown child.

00:17:29.470 --> 00:17:32.770 align:middle line:84%
"The Double Image" reveals that
Sexton's mother never forgave

00:17:32.770 --> 00:17:36.490 align:middle line:84%
Sexton for attempting suicide
and accused her daughter

00:17:36.490 --> 00:17:38.650 align:middle line:90%
of giving her cancer.

00:17:38.650 --> 00:17:40.750 align:middle line:84%
In the poem, Sexton
and her mother

00:17:40.750 --> 00:17:44.440 align:middle line:84%
have their portraits painted
and hung on opposite walls.

00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:46.660 align:middle line:84%
Sexton describes her
mother's portrait

00:17:46.660 --> 00:17:50.740 align:middle line:84%
as, "My mocking mirror,
my overthrown love,

00:17:50.740 --> 00:17:53.440 align:middle line:90%
my first image."

00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:57.610 align:middle line:84%
The long poem ends
with Sexton admitting,

00:17:57.610 --> 00:18:02.950 align:middle line:84%
"I didn't want a boy, only
a girl, a small milky mouse

00:18:02.950 --> 00:18:06.490 align:middle line:84%
of a girl, already
loved, already loud

00:18:06.490 --> 00:18:09.070 align:middle line:90%
in the house of herself.

00:18:09.070 --> 00:18:11.350 align:middle line:90%
We named you Joy.

00:18:11.350 --> 00:18:15.700 align:middle line:84%
I, who was never quite
sure about being a girl,

00:18:15.700 --> 00:18:21.040 align:middle line:84%
needed another life,
another image to remind me.

00:18:21.040 --> 00:18:24.100 align:middle line:90%
And this was my worst guilt--

00:18:24.100 --> 00:18:27.280 align:middle line:84%
you could not cure
nor soothe it.

00:18:27.280 --> 00:18:32.200 align:middle line:90%
I made you to find me."

00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:36.460 align:middle line:84%
Personal confidences and private
details abound in this poem.

00:18:36.460 --> 00:18:39.850 align:middle line:84%
And the confession at the end,
that Sexton made her daughter

00:18:39.850 --> 00:18:41.980 align:middle line:84%
to find herself,
to save herself,

00:18:41.980 --> 00:18:45.130 align:middle line:84%
is a brave and horrible
thing to say to a child,

00:18:45.130 --> 00:18:49.390 align:middle line:84%
and also one that feels, to my
mind, deeply common and true,

00:18:49.390 --> 00:18:53.380 align:middle line:84%
even when one is not suicidal
or profoundly disturbed.

00:18:53.380 --> 00:18:57.430 align:middle line:84%
The guilt, rage, jealousy,
joy, love, pleasure

00:18:57.430 --> 00:19:00.280 align:middle line:84%
of the cracked mirror
of mother/daughterhood

00:19:00.280 --> 00:19:04.480 align:middle line:90%
is both taboo and archetypal.

00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:06.310 align:middle line:84%
Sexton wrote "The
Double Image" while

00:19:06.310 --> 00:19:10.090 align:middle line:84%
studying with John Holmes,
her first workshop teacher.

00:19:10.090 --> 00:19:15.640 align:middle line:84%
Holmes was dismayed and angry
when Sexton read him the poem

00:19:15.640 --> 00:19:17.950 align:middle line:90%
and told her not to publish it.

00:19:17.950 --> 00:19:21.190 align:middle line:84%
Sexton's poem, "For
John, Who Begs Me Not

00:19:21.190 --> 00:19:24.250 align:middle line:84%
To Enquire Further,"
is Sexton's response

00:19:24.250 --> 00:19:26.620 align:middle line:84%
to Holmes, who had
characterized Sexton

00:19:26.620 --> 00:19:31.060 align:middle line:84%
as a guilty, suicidal, deranged,
excessive spectacle to Sexton

00:19:31.060 --> 00:19:34.030 align:middle line:84%
directly and to her
friends and peers.

00:19:34.030 --> 00:19:37.180 align:middle line:84%
In a letter to Sexton's
friend, Maxine Kumin,

00:19:37.180 --> 00:19:43.180 align:middle line:84%
Holmes wrote, "Sexton writes so
absolutely selfishly of herself

00:19:43.180 --> 00:19:45.670 align:middle line:90%
to bear and shock and confess.

00:19:45.670 --> 00:19:48.070 align:middle line:84%
Her motives are
wrong artistically

00:19:48.070 --> 00:19:50.260 align:middle line:84%
and finally, the
self-preoccupation

00:19:50.260 --> 00:19:54.400 align:middle line:90%
comes to be simply damn boring."

00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:57.400 align:middle line:84%
"For John, Who Begs Me
Not To Enquire Further,"

00:19:57.400 --> 00:20:00.220 align:middle line:84%
is an ars poetica for
Sexton's own poems

00:20:00.220 --> 00:20:02.440 align:middle line:84%
and for confessional
poems, as well as

00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:06.880 align:middle line:84%
a straightforward attempt
to save face and save self.

00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:11.260 align:middle line:84%
The title refers to the epigraph
of To Bedlam and Part Way Back,

00:20:11.260 --> 00:20:15.460 align:middle line:84%
which is a quote
from a letter in 1815

00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.010 align:middle line:90%
from Schopenhauer to Goethe.

00:20:18.010 --> 00:20:20.440 align:middle line:90%
Here's the epigraph.

00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:22.930 align:middle line:84%
"It is the courage to
make a clean breast of it

00:20:22.930 --> 00:20:26.710 align:middle line:84%
in the face of every question
that makes the philosopher.

00:20:26.710 --> 00:20:29.680 align:middle line:84%
He must be like
Sophocles's Oedipus, whose

00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:32.950 align:middle line:84%
seeking enlightenment
concerning his terrible fate

00:20:32.950 --> 00:20:36.910 align:middle line:84%
pursues his indefatigable
inquiry, even when he

00:20:36.910 --> 00:20:41.080 align:middle line:84%
divines that appalling horror
awaits him in the answer.

00:20:41.080 --> 00:20:43.120 align:middle line:84%
But most of us
carry in our heart

00:20:43.120 --> 00:20:46.660 align:middle line:84%
the Jocasta, who begs
Oedipus for God's sake

00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:49.350 align:middle line:90%
not to inquire further."

00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:50.000 align:middle line:90%