WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.870 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.870 --> 00:00:04.500 align:middle line:84% Confessional poetry is not just poetry that is personal. 00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:07.380 align:middle line:84% It is not just poetry about taboo subjects. 00:00:07.380 --> 00:00:09.810 align:middle line:84% Confessional poetry contains a quality 00:00:09.810 --> 00:00:12.240 align:middle line:84% of potential self-immolation that 00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:16.170 align:middle line:84% is best understood by imagining this moment when Oedipus 00:00:16.170 --> 00:00:18.480 align:middle line:90% asked Jocasta for the truth. 00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:22.110 align:middle line:84% Jocasta, who knows by this time what has happened, 00:00:22.110 --> 00:00:26.160 align:middle line:84% tries to put Oedipus off when he asks her who he is. 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:30.090 align:middle line:84% "Someone who ignores all this bears life more easily," 00:00:30.090 --> 00:00:31.740 align:middle line:90% Jocasta tells him. 00:00:31.740 --> 00:00:34.800 align:middle line:84% "Oh, you unhappy man, may you never 00:00:34.800 --> 00:00:38.010 align:middle line:90% find out who you really are." 00:00:38.010 --> 00:00:41.400 align:middle line:84% As Schopenhauer knows, and as Sexton explains to Holmes, 00:00:41.400 --> 00:00:44.730 align:middle line:84% the poet and philosopher have both Oedipus and Jocasta 00:00:44.730 --> 00:00:45.510 align:middle line:90% within. 00:00:45.510 --> 00:00:49.810 align:middle line:84% But the true philosopher-poet continues to seek enlightenment 00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:53.700 align:middle line:84% no matter how horrible and despite the forces, defenses, 00:00:53.700 --> 00:00:57.000 align:middle line:84% and psychoanalytic terms that beg our inner Oedipus 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:01.180 align:middle line:90% to please, please stop asking. 00:01:01.180 --> 00:01:02.890 align:middle line:84% Whether it is the search for truth 00:01:02.890 --> 00:01:05.860 align:middle line:84% despite the potential horror that truth may bring, 00:01:05.860 --> 00:01:08.380 align:middle line:84% or the shame of admitting one's sinfulness, 00:01:08.380 --> 00:01:10.750 align:middle line:84% or the sin of breaking a confidence, 00:01:10.750 --> 00:01:14.590 align:middle line:84% confessional poetry is marked by a sense of urgency and risk 00:01:14.590 --> 00:01:17.500 align:middle line:84% to the poet, to the people mentioned in the poem, 00:01:17.500 --> 00:01:21.700 align:middle line:90% and to the poet's readers. 00:01:21.700 --> 00:01:26.170 align:middle line:84% "For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge. 00:01:26.170 --> 00:01:31.210 align:middle line:84% For the hearing of my heart, it really goes. 00:01:31.210 --> 00:01:35.350 align:middle line:84% And there is a charge, a very large charge, 00:01:35.350 --> 00:01:40.120 align:middle line:84% for a word or a touch or a bit of blood," 00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:44.320 align:middle line:84% writes Sylvia Plath in her poem Lady Lazarus. 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:48.070 align:middle line:84% Plath means that there is both an excitement and a cost 00:01:48.070 --> 00:01:50.410 align:middle line:84% for this kind of poem, which often 00:01:50.410 --> 00:01:53.500 align:middle line:84% does feel like the eyeing of the poet's scars. 00:01:53.500 --> 00:01:57.250 align:middle line:84% In Plath's case, the scars often aren't even scars yet, 00:01:57.250 --> 00:01:59.200 align:middle line:90% the wounds are too fresh. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:02.320 align:middle line:84% Reading Plath sometimes feels like watching someone 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:04.750 align:middle line:90% intentionally cut herself. 00:02:04.750 --> 00:02:08.470 align:middle line:84% The experience is exciting, horrifying, compelling, 00:02:08.470 --> 00:02:12.010 align:middle line:90% damaging, and dangerous. 00:02:12.010 --> 00:02:13.900 align:middle line:84% Looking at these poems and poets, 00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:15.580 align:middle line:84% we must try to imagine what it meant 00:02:15.580 --> 00:02:18.820 align:middle line:84% to be writing in the tranquilized '50s, a time 00:02:18.820 --> 00:02:22.840 align:middle line:84% of intense repression when societal expectations about sex 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:27.280 align:middle line:84% and gender were even more rigid than they'd been in the 1920s. 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:31.720 align:middle line:84% We must try to imagine what it felt like in 1960 00:02:31.720 --> 00:02:35.560 align:middle line:84% to admit you'd had an abortion or to speak back to the John 00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:37.750 align:middle line:90% Holmeses of the world. 00:02:37.750 --> 00:02:41.920 align:middle line:84% What may have begun as soul's therapy, talking about the self 00:02:41.920 --> 00:02:44.740 align:middle line:84% in order to create a more integrated self, 00:02:44.740 --> 00:02:47.110 align:middle line:84% began to be seen as a kind of witness 00:02:47.110 --> 00:02:49.870 align:middle line:84% to a shared moment of cultural breakdown, 00:02:49.870 --> 00:02:52.120 align:middle line:84% even though the phrase "Poetry as witness" 00:02:52.120 --> 00:02:55.390 align:middle line:84% had not yet come into common use. 00:02:55.390 --> 00:02:59.170 align:middle line:84% When Lowell wrote, "My mind's not right," 00:02:59.170 --> 00:03:04.780 align:middle line:84% or "I hear my ill spirit sob in each blood cell 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:09.790 align:middle line:84% as if my hand were at its throat, I myself am hell, 00:03:09.790 --> 00:03:16.030 align:middle line:84% nobody's here," or "I keep no rank or station. 00:03:16.030 --> 00:03:23.930 align:middle line:84% Cured, I am frizzled, stale, and small," he had a lot to lose. 00:03:23.930 --> 00:03:28.460 align:middle line:84% But at the same time, it was his straight, white, Mayflower male 00:03:28.460 --> 00:03:32.060 align:middle line:84% privilege that enabled him to risk this kind of writing 00:03:32.060 --> 00:03:35.420 align:middle line:84% and made his trespass noteworthy. 00:03:35.420 --> 00:03:38.390 align:middle line:84% For example, when Rosenthal wrote his review of Lowell, 00:03:38.390 --> 00:03:41.060 align:middle line:84% he made no mention of Ginsberg's "Howl," 00:03:41.060 --> 00:03:45.080 align:middle line:84% also about breakdown, which had violated social norms to such 00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:48.740 align:middle line:84% an extent that the book had provoked an obscenity trial. 00:03:48.740 --> 00:03:50.870 align:middle line:84% It was easy to dismiss Ginsberg's 00:03:50.870 --> 00:03:54.380 align:middle line:84% counterculture poetics as part and parcel of his status 00:03:54.380 --> 00:03:57.620 align:middle line:90% as a degenerate homosexual Jew. 00:03:57.620 --> 00:04:01.100 align:middle line:84% And I think if Lowell, heir apparent of modern poetry, 00:04:01.100 --> 00:04:03.290 align:middle line:84% had not done it first, it would have 00:04:03.290 --> 00:04:08.150 align:middle line:84% been easy to dismiss Sexton and Plath as madwomen thrusting, 00:04:08.150 --> 00:04:13.130 align:middle line:84% as Snodgrass said of Sexton, her needy, vulnerable, vexed female 00:04:13.130 --> 00:04:14.945 align:middle line:90% voice onto the poetry scene. 00:04:14.945 --> 00:04:17.839 align:middle line:90% 00:04:17.839 --> 00:04:22.010 align:middle line:84% This is a necessary slight digression. 00:04:22.010 --> 00:04:25.100 align:middle line:84% For a long time, I puzzled over the whiteness 00:04:25.100 --> 00:04:26.810 align:middle line:90% of confessional poetry. 00:04:26.810 --> 00:04:29.990 align:middle line:84% And to a lesser extent, the straightness. 00:04:29.990 --> 00:04:34.010 align:middle line:84% Why, I wondered, was Plath called confessional but not 00:04:34.010 --> 00:04:35.240 align:middle line:90% Gwendolyn Brooks? 00:04:35.240 --> 00:04:38.810 align:middle line:84% Why is Sharon Olds confessional but not Lucille Clifton? 00:04:38.810 --> 00:04:41.420 align:middle line:90% Why Lowell, but not Ginsberg? 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:43.880 align:middle line:84% When Black poets write with I-ness 00:04:43.880 --> 00:04:46.310 align:middle line:84% about personal private content, they 00:04:46.310 --> 00:04:49.310 align:middle line:90% are mostly called Black poets. 00:04:49.310 --> 00:04:51.350 align:middle line:84% If and when critics actually take their 00:04:51.350 --> 00:04:54.350 align:middle line:84% work seriously enough to write about them. 00:04:54.350 --> 00:04:58.160 align:middle line:84% When LGBTQ poets write urgent, silence equals 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:01.280 align:middle line:84% death, explicitly sexual, bodily poems, 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:03.440 align:middle line:90% they are called queer poets. 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:06.560 align:middle line:84% The confessional label seems restricted to poets 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:09.020 align:middle line:90% with mainstream privilege. 00:05:09.020 --> 00:05:11.420 align:middle line:84% I once asked the poet Shane McCrae 00:05:11.420 --> 00:05:14.720 align:middle line:84% if he considered himself a confessional poet. 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:17.000 align:middle line:84% He'd written that Plath was his earliest, 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:18.680 align:middle line:90% most important influence. 00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:22.130 align:middle line:84% And I saw what I consider to be strong confessional impulses 00:05:22.130 --> 00:05:23.360 align:middle line:90% in his work. 00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:27.360 align:middle line:84% McCrae responded to me via email. 00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:31.310 align:middle line:84% "I do think that it is in some ways impossible for a writer 00:05:31.310 --> 00:05:33.890 align:middle line:84% of color to be a confessional writer, 00:05:33.890 --> 00:05:36.950 align:middle line:84% or at least to be thought of as a confessional writer. 00:05:36.950 --> 00:05:40.580 align:middle line:84% Writers of color, absolutely, can write autobiographically. 00:05:40.580 --> 00:05:43.400 align:middle line:84% But I don't know that that is confessional. 00:05:43.400 --> 00:05:47.360 align:middle line:84% The confessional is the admitting of a step or a fall 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:49.580 align:middle line:90% away from a state of grace. 00:05:49.580 --> 00:05:53.570 align:middle line:84% It is a report of grace momentarily destabilized. 00:05:53.570 --> 00:05:56.120 align:middle line:84% But the assumption behind it is that grace 00:05:56.120 --> 00:05:58.190 align:middle line:90% is the default position. 00:05:58.190 --> 00:06:01.310 align:middle line:84% For writers of color, it is not assumed that grace 00:06:01.310 --> 00:06:03.020 align:middle line:90% is our default position. 00:06:03.020 --> 00:06:09.470 align:middle line:84% We are always tainted by the sin of being oppressed." 00:06:09.470 --> 00:06:12.080 align:middle line:84% In this way, the confessional designation 00:06:12.080 --> 00:06:15.410 align:middle line:84% is inherently a white supremacist construction. 00:06:15.410 --> 00:06:18.320 align:middle line:84% It relies upon the notion that only white people 00:06:18.320 --> 00:06:22.770 align:middle line:84% occupy a state of grace from which to fall. 00:06:22.770 --> 00:06:25.490 align:middle line:84% How is it then that confessional poetry quickly 00:06:25.490 --> 00:06:28.760 align:middle line:84% became associated predominantly with women? 00:06:28.760 --> 00:06:31.370 align:middle line:84% Lowell wrote into a feminized space, 00:06:31.370 --> 00:06:34.340 align:middle line:84% but almost immediately the poems of Sexton and Plath 00:06:34.340 --> 00:06:37.790 align:middle line:84% upstaged and outshone him and the other confessional male 00:06:37.790 --> 00:06:38.600 align:middle line:90% poets. 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:41.960 align:middle line:84% Sexton and Plath garnered a passionate following 00:06:41.960 --> 00:06:46.100 align:middle line:84% among readers and inspired significant anxiety 00:06:46.100 --> 00:06:48.230 align:middle line:90% among critics. 00:06:48.230 --> 00:06:50.240 align:middle line:84% In the introduction to her anthology, 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:54.140 align:middle line:84% Poems from the Women's Movement, Honor Moore writes, 00:06:54.140 --> 00:06:57.350 align:middle line:84% "When Sylvia Plath's Ariel was published in the United States 00:06:57.350 --> 00:07:00.500 align:middle line:90% in 1966, American women noticed. 00:07:00.500 --> 00:07:02.420 align:middle line:84% Not only women who ordinarily read 00:07:02.420 --> 00:07:04.970 align:middle line:84% poems, but housewives and mothers whose ambitions 00:07:04.970 --> 00:07:07.520 align:middle line:84% had awakened when they read Betty Friedan's 00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:10.490 align:middle line:84% The Feminine Mystique a few years earlier." 00:07:10.490 --> 00:07:14.240 align:middle line:84% Plath was identified with the poets ML Rosenthal dubbed 00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:17.240 align:middle line:84% confessional, but that label obscured the significance 00:07:17.240 --> 00:07:19.220 align:middle line:90% of her posthumous volume. 00:07:19.220 --> 00:07:23.060 align:middle line:84% Here was a woman superbly trained in her craft, whose 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:25.790 align:middle line:84% final poems uncompromisingly charted 00:07:25.790 --> 00:07:29.660 align:middle line:84% female rage, ambivalence, and grief in a voice with which 00:07:29.660 --> 00:07:32.960 align:middle line:90% many women identified. 00:07:32.960 --> 00:07:35.240 align:middle line:84% Within a few years, many of the things 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:38.660 align:middle line:84% Rosenthal had noted in Lowell, intense taboo 00:07:38.660 --> 00:07:42.170 align:middle line:84% breaking about the predicament and horror of the lost 00:07:42.170 --> 00:07:44.870 align:middle line:84% self in which an unmasked poet brought 00:07:44.870 --> 00:07:48.290 align:middle line:84% private and personal concerns into the public realm 00:07:48.290 --> 00:07:53.030 align:middle line:84% became a mode or a style or maybe a volume of poetry 00:07:53.030 --> 00:07:56.630 align:middle line:84% that was associated almost entirely with Plath and Sexton 00:07:56.630 --> 00:07:59.480 align:middle line:84% and with poets of the women's movement. 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:01.370 align:middle line:84% Although contemporary critics mostly 00:08:01.370 --> 00:08:04.880 align:middle line:84% did not deem the poets like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, 00:08:04.880 --> 00:08:09.500 align:middle line:84% Muriel Rukeyser, Sonia Sanchez, Denise Levertov, Maxine Kumin, 00:08:09.500 --> 00:08:13.250 align:middle line:84% Anne Waldman, Lucille Clifton, Diane di Prima, June Jordan, 00:08:13.250 --> 00:08:17.540 align:middle line:84% Carolyn Kizer, Marilyn Hacker, and Molly Peacock confessional, 00:08:17.540 --> 00:08:19.970 align:middle line:84% what we now think of as confessional often 00:08:19.970 --> 00:08:21.980 align:middle line:84% comes from the qualities we associate 00:08:21.980 --> 00:08:24.770 align:middle line:90% with the work of these poets. 00:08:24.770 --> 00:08:28.610 align:middle line:84% The lyric was supposed to be a private, universal, impersonal, 00:08:28.610 --> 00:08:29.900 align:middle line:90% overheard address. 00:08:29.900 --> 00:08:32.750 align:middle line:84% But as Alicia Ostriker points out, 00:08:32.750 --> 00:08:36.679 align:middle line:84% privacy's deprivations belonged primarily to women, 00:08:36.679 --> 00:08:38.600 align:middle line:90% and its autonomy to men. 00:08:38.600 --> 00:08:41.270 align:middle line:84% And I would actually say straight men. 00:08:41.270 --> 00:08:45.080 align:middle line:84% The breakdown of privacy by female and male writers 00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:49.280 align:middle line:84% in the 1960s had the effect of destabilizing the privilege 00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:52.490 align:middle line:84% of white, heterosexual men for whom the lyric may 00:08:52.490 --> 00:08:55.400 align:middle line:84% have appeared to investigate universal truths, 00:08:55.400 --> 00:08:57.350 align:middle line:84% but which ignored or devalued what 00:08:57.350 --> 00:09:01.030 align:middle line:84% Carolyn Kizer called, "Merely the private lives of one 00:09:01.030 --> 00:09:03.530 align:middle line:90% half of humanity." 00:09:03.530 --> 00:09:06.320 align:middle line:84% The high value placed on decorum, modesty, 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:08.900 align:middle line:84% and impersonality was a way of maintaining 00:09:08.900 --> 00:09:14.120 align:middle line:84% the status quo of the straight, white male plutocracy. 00:09:14.120 --> 00:09:16.340 align:middle line:84% In her essay "My Name is Darkness", 00:09:16.340 --> 00:09:20.510 align:middle line:84% Sandra Gilbert writes, "The self defining confessional genre 00:09:20.510 --> 00:09:23.330 align:middle line:84% with its persistent assertions of identity 00:09:23.330 --> 00:09:26.390 align:middle line:84% and its emphasis on the central myth of the self 00:09:26.390 --> 00:09:30.620 align:middle line:84% may be distinctively a female poetic mode." 00:09:30.620 --> 00:09:32.720 align:middle line:84% Gilbert explains that the male poet 00:09:32.720 --> 00:09:35.930 align:middle line:84% may manage to be at once private and public, lyrical 00:09:35.930 --> 00:09:38.630 align:middle line:84% and rhetorical, because the personal crisis 00:09:38.630 --> 00:09:42.140 align:middle line:84% of the male poet is felt to be the symbolic embodiment 00:09:42.140 --> 00:09:45.560 align:middle line:84% of the national and cultural crisis. 00:09:45.560 --> 00:09:47.780 align:middle line:84% This ability to be simultaneously 00:09:47.780 --> 00:09:50.540 align:middle line:84% private and public, particular and universal, 00:09:50.540 --> 00:09:54.200 align:middle line:84% was not available to women who had seen themselves only 00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:56.630 align:middle line:84% as muses and as the subjects of poems 00:09:56.630 --> 00:10:00.650 align:middle line:84% rather than the creators of self and art. 00:10:00.650 --> 00:10:02.630 align:middle line:84% One of the primary characteristics 00:10:02.630 --> 00:10:05.510 align:middle line:84% of confessional poetry, private content, 00:10:05.510 --> 00:10:09.650 align:middle line:84% reliance on lived experience, I-ness, direct address, 00:10:09.650 --> 00:10:12.170 align:middle line:84% urgency, and a sense of personal risk. 00:10:12.170 --> 00:10:15.230 align:middle line:84% All of these were projected onto the poems from the Women's 00:10:15.230 --> 00:10:18.650 align:middle line:84% Movement so that it made sense that confessional poetry began 00:10:18.650 --> 00:10:22.640 align:middle line:84% to be seen as a quality of a poem, formal or free verse, 00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:25.970 align:middle line:84% that was personal, political, urgent, risky, accessible, 00:10:25.970 --> 00:10:27.680 align:middle line:90% and subversive. 00:10:27.680 --> 00:10:31.550 align:middle line:84% But to conflate the confessional with a stylistically diverse 00:10:31.550 --> 00:10:33.470 align:middle line:84% poetry in which women speak truth 00:10:33.470 --> 00:10:35.840 align:middle line:84% to power despite enormous pressure 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:39.650 align:middle line:84% is to ignore the important fact that the poets of the women's 00:10:39.650 --> 00:10:42.860 align:middle line:90% movement were not confessing. 00:10:42.860 --> 00:10:45.170 align:middle line:90% Confession is the wrong word. 00:10:45.170 --> 00:10:47.360 align:middle line:84% These poets were not saying, bless me 00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:48.890 align:middle line:90% father for I have sinned. 00:10:48.890 --> 00:10:51.590 align:middle line:84% They were not asking for forgiveness. 00:10:51.590 --> 00:10:53.940 align:middle line:90% Listen. 00:10:53.940 --> 00:10:55.500 align:middle line:90% "I am not wrong. 00:10:55.500 --> 00:10:57.360 align:middle line:90% Wrong is not my name. 00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:00.330 align:middle line:84% My name is my own, my own, my own. 00:11:00.330 --> 00:11:03.240 align:middle line:84% And I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this. 00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:06.570 align:middle line:84% But I can tell you that from now on, my resistance, 00:11:06.570 --> 00:11:10.440 align:middle line:84% my simple and daily and nightly self determination, 00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:14.670 align:middle line:84% may very well cost you your life." 00:11:14.670 --> 00:11:16.260 align:middle line:90% June Jordan. 00:11:16.260 --> 00:11:21.690 align:middle line:84% Or, "Whoever despises the clitoris, despises the penis. 00:11:21.690 --> 00:11:24.930 align:middle line:84% Whoever despises the penis, despises the cunt. 00:11:24.930 --> 00:11:28.920 align:middle line:84% Whoever despises the cunt, despises the life of the child. 00:11:28.920 --> 00:11:31.980 align:middle line:84% Who will speak these days if not I? 00:11:31.980 --> 00:11:33.750 align:middle line:90% If not you?" 00:11:33.750 --> 00:11:36.450 align:middle line:90% Muriel Rukeyser. 00:11:36.450 --> 00:11:39.150 align:middle line:84% "And when we speak we are afraid. 00:11:39.150 --> 00:11:41.670 align:middle line:84% Our words will not be heard nor welcomed. 00:11:41.670 --> 00:11:45.340 align:middle line:84% And when we are silent, we are still afraid. 00:11:45.340 --> 00:11:49.260 align:middle line:84% So it is better to speak remembering we were never 00:11:49.260 --> 00:11:51.870 align:middle line:90% meant to survive." 00:11:51.870 --> 00:11:54.980 align:middle line:90% Audre Lorde. 00:11:54.980 --> 00:11:59.630 align:middle line:84% "But because a woman is acceptable if she is weak. 00:11:59.630 --> 00:12:01.670 align:middle line:90% Acceptable if she is a victim. 00:12:01.670 --> 00:12:06.080 align:middle line:84% Acceptable also if she is an angry victim, shrew, witch. 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:08.750 align:middle line:90% A woman's sorrow is acceptable. 00:12:08.750 --> 00:12:12.380 align:middle line:84% A deodorized, sanitized, sterilized, antiperspirant, 00:12:12.380 --> 00:12:17.060 align:middle line:84% grinning, efficient woman is certainly acceptable. 00:12:17.060 --> 00:12:20.870 align:middle line:84% But who can tolerate the power of a woman close 00:12:20.870 --> 00:12:24.830 align:middle line:84% to a child riding our tides into the sand 00:12:24.830 --> 00:12:27.973 align:middle line:90% dunes of the public spaces?" 00:12:27.973 --> 00:12:28.640 align:middle line:90% Alicia Ostriker. 00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:31.240 align:middle line:90% 00:12:31.240 --> 00:12:36.610 align:middle line:84% "Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried 00:12:36.610 --> 00:12:40.060 align:middle line:90% to kill me and has failed." 00:12:40.060 --> 00:12:40.960 align:middle line:90% Lucille Clifton. 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:43.490 align:middle line:90% 00:12:43.490 --> 00:12:45.920 align:middle line:84% I draw your attention to the conflation 00:12:45.920 --> 00:12:48.410 align:middle line:84% of confessional poetry and the women's movement 00:12:48.410 --> 00:12:50.340 align:middle line:90% for several reasons. 00:12:50.340 --> 00:12:52.730 align:middle line:84% First of all, it was the energy and passion 00:12:52.730 --> 00:12:55.970 align:middle line:84% of the Women's Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay 00:12:55.970 --> 00:12:59.990 align:middle line:84% Rights Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War Protests, that 00:12:59.990 --> 00:13:03.890 align:middle line:84% gave Sexton, Plath, Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn 00:13:03.890 --> 00:13:06.800 align:middle line:84% Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and poetry itself 00:13:06.800 --> 00:13:09.020 align:middle line:90% a feeling of urgency. 00:13:09.020 --> 00:13:11.690 align:middle line:84% What interest there is today in confessional poetry 00:13:11.690 --> 00:13:14.120 align:middle line:84% comes largely from its eventual connection 00:13:14.120 --> 00:13:18.140 align:middle line:84% with social activism, counterculture, and protest. 00:13:18.140 --> 00:13:21.950 align:middle line:84% People of every age are drawn to such energy as our poets 00:13:21.950 --> 00:13:24.890 align:middle line:84% and poetry readers who often seek out poetry 00:13:24.890 --> 00:13:28.550 align:middle line:84% because they feel marginalized, silenced, disenfranchised, 00:13:28.550 --> 00:13:30.860 align:middle line:90% and alienated. 00:13:30.860 --> 00:13:34.370 align:middle line:84% Many poets in my generation found Sexton and Plath 00:13:34.370 --> 00:13:37.760 align:middle line:84% on our mother's shelves or in used bookstores. 00:13:37.760 --> 00:13:41.450 align:middle line:84% These poems woke us up, disturbed and delighted us. 00:13:41.450 --> 00:13:45.770 align:middle line:84% The poems felt both forbidden and instructional 00:13:45.770 --> 00:13:49.100 align:middle line:84% like our parents' Joy of Sex or our mothers' Our 00:13:49.100 --> 00:13:51.200 align:middle line:90% Bodies, Ourselves. 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:54.230 align:middle line:84% These were the poems that made us want to write. 00:13:54.230 --> 00:13:57.380 align:middle line:84% We wore these poems like a badge of honor 00:13:57.380 --> 00:14:01.100 align:middle line:84% until we went to college, where most English departments still 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:03.890 align:middle line:84% exalted Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Stevens, 00:14:03.890 --> 00:14:07.430 align:middle line:84% Eliot, and Pound, and left only a few minutes each semester 00:14:07.430 --> 00:14:11.000 align:middle line:84% for HD, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:13.220 align:middle line:84% We sewed these confessional poems 00:14:13.220 --> 00:14:15.440 align:middle line:84% into the inner linings of our minds, 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:17.450 align:middle line:84% and went to graduate school where 00:14:17.450 --> 00:14:20.150 align:middle line:84% we were told that these were not serious poems 00:14:20.150 --> 00:14:23.230 align:middle line:84% and not written by serious poets. 00:14:23.230 --> 00:14:26.440 align:middle line:84% Some of us had loved the realness of these poems, 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:28.900 align:middle line:84% but were taught that real poems should not 00:14:28.900 --> 00:14:31.660 align:middle line:90% be shrill, direct, political. 00:14:31.660 --> 00:14:38.100 align:middle line:84% Real poems, we were told, should not be about or for anything. 00:14:38.100 --> 00:14:40.650 align:middle line:84% Many poets of my generation came to poetry 00:14:40.650 --> 00:14:44.670 align:middle line:84% because of Plath, Sexton, Rich, Olds, Clifton, Maya Angelou, 00:14:44.670 --> 00:14:46.080 align:middle line:90% Jordan, Ginsberg. 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:49.170 align:middle line:84% But our beloved poets were considered important only 00:14:49.170 --> 00:14:52.140 align:middle line:84% in women's studies, African-American studies, queer 00:14:52.140 --> 00:14:54.720 align:middle line:84% studies departments, if our universities even 00:14:54.720 --> 00:14:56.880 align:middle line:90% had such departments. 00:14:56.880 --> 00:14:58.560 align:middle line:84% But poets who had fought to bring 00:14:58.560 --> 00:15:00.630 align:middle line:84% the personal into the private sphere 00:15:00.630 --> 00:15:02.700 align:middle line:90% became our private pleasures. 00:15:02.700 --> 00:15:06.240 align:middle line:84% While Harold Bloom, Marjorie Perloff, and Helen Vendler 00:15:06.240 --> 00:15:09.540 align:middle line:84% said poetry was not big enough or flexible enough 00:15:09.540 --> 00:15:12.730 align:middle line:90% to include these people. 00:15:12.730 --> 00:15:16.290 align:middle line:84% Poetry only had room for Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, 00:15:16.290 --> 00:15:19.080 align:middle line:84% John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, and only 00:15:19.080 --> 00:15:22.590 align:middle line:84% when she was being very, very mythic. 00:15:22.590 --> 00:15:24.990 align:middle line:84% Many of us loved these poets too, 00:15:24.990 --> 00:15:29.070 align:middle line:84% but had not imagined that one should love poets monogamously, 00:15:29.070 --> 00:15:32.790 align:middle line:90% stingily, exclusively. 00:15:32.790 --> 00:15:36.360 align:middle line:84% My aim is not to convince you to love confessional poetry, 00:15:36.360 --> 00:15:38.550 align:middle line:84% but only to say that your feelings about it 00:15:38.550 --> 00:15:41.190 align:middle line:84% are likely influenced by the intensely 00:15:41.190 --> 00:15:43.710 align:middle line:84% misogynistic, homophobic, and racist 00:15:43.710 --> 00:15:46.680 align:middle line:84% critical response to the original confessional poets, 00:15:46.680 --> 00:15:49.560 align:middle line:90% especially Sexton and Plath. 00:15:49.560 --> 00:15:53.610 align:middle line:84% From a review of Sexton: "Never has there been so much 00:15:53.610 --> 00:15:55.830 align:middle line:84% interest in reading and writing poetry, 00:15:55.830 --> 00:15:57.840 align:middle line:84% and never have publishers spent so much 00:15:57.840 --> 00:16:02.460 align:middle line:84% money publishing it with almost total disregard for quality." 00:16:02.460 --> 00:16:07.710 align:middle line:84% A review of Plath: "Many an uneasy husband notes his wife's 00:16:07.710 --> 00:16:11.280 align:middle line:84% eyes widen and become glaucous, almost erotic, 00:16:11.280 --> 00:16:13.440 align:middle line:90% at the mention of Plath's name. 00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:15.990 align:middle line:84% What is the magnetic pull, the heady vertigo 00:16:15.990 --> 00:16:18.720 align:middle line:84% of this particular poet and her suicide? 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:22.260 align:middle line:84% The love she inspires has a necrophiliac ardor. 00:16:22.260 --> 00:16:25.290 align:middle line:84% Many of her admirers, like James Dean's fans, 00:16:25.290 --> 00:16:28.860 align:middle line:84% react more to the romantic agony inherent in the myth 00:16:28.860 --> 00:16:31.470 align:middle line:90% than to the art itself." 00:16:31.470 --> 00:16:34.740 align:middle line:84% Another review of Plath: "Sylvia Plath 00:16:34.740 --> 00:16:37.560 align:middle line:84% was a sick woman who made art of her sickness. 00:16:37.560 --> 00:16:41.220 align:middle line:84% Some young people having limited experience need literature 00:16:41.220 --> 00:16:43.350 align:middle line:84% to help them feel bad, and they will 00:16:43.350 --> 00:16:46.470 align:middle line:90% celebrate Plath for a while." 00:16:46.470 --> 00:16:49.530 align:middle line:84% Another review of Sexton: "Who will buy this book? 00:16:49.530 --> 00:16:51.990 align:middle line:84% I think from hearing them speak at poetry readings 00:16:51.990 --> 00:16:55.500 align:middle line:84% and in poetry workshops, it is primarily young girls and women 00:16:55.500 --> 00:16:58.110 align:middle line:84% who admire Sexton for all the wrong reasons, 00:16:58.110 --> 00:17:01.860 align:middle line:84% making her a martyr to art and feminism, who seem out 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:04.920 align:middle line:84% of their own needs to identify with her pathological 00:17:04.920 --> 00:17:08.670 align:middle line:84% self-loathing and to romanticize it into heroism. 00:17:08.670 --> 00:17:10.710 align:middle line:84% It is very little to do with poetry. 00:17:10.710 --> 00:17:15.349 align:middle line:84% And it does neither poetry nor Anne Sexton a service." 00:17:15.349 --> 00:17:20.690 align:middle line:84% Helen Vendler on Sexton: "The relentless centrality of the I, 00:17:20.690 --> 00:17:23.900 align:middle line:84% almost always indoors, alone, contemplating 00:17:23.900 --> 00:17:27.710 align:middle line:84% its own anguish, even if sometimes in farcical terms, 00:17:27.710 --> 00:17:32.000 align:middle line:90% is finally exasperating." 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.750 align:middle line:84% From the beginning, the term confessional inspired concern. 00:17:35.750 --> 00:17:38.810 align:middle line:84% Concern for Lowell's soul, for the feelings of those 00:17:38.810 --> 00:17:41.300 align:middle line:84% he exposed, for his mental health, 00:17:41.300 --> 00:17:43.160 align:middle line:84% for the effect of this kind of poetry 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:45.800 align:middle line:84% and its readers and the genre itself. 00:17:45.800 --> 00:17:48.170 align:middle line:84% This anxiety reached a fevered pitch 00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:50.690 align:middle line:84% during the backlash against the Women's Movement, 00:17:50.690 --> 00:17:53.750 align:middle line:84% and inspired a critical panic over what confessional 00:17:53.750 --> 00:17:55.730 align:middle line:90% would do to poetry. 00:17:55.730 --> 00:17:57.770 align:middle line:84% This alarm can only be understood 00:17:57.770 --> 00:18:01.760 align:middle line:84% in the context of the latent or blatant misogyny of critics 00:18:01.760 --> 00:18:03.980 align:middle line:84% whose condemnation of the confessional 00:18:03.980 --> 00:18:07.550 align:middle line:84% serves to defend the heteropatriarchy. 00:18:07.550 --> 00:18:09.920 align:middle line:84% The fear of powerful women and the need 00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:13.610 align:middle line:84% to contain and control or extinguish female power 00:18:13.610 --> 00:18:15.980 align:middle line:84% is older than marriage or monotheism, 00:18:15.980 --> 00:18:19.820 align:middle line:84% which is to say it is as old as the patriarchy. 00:18:19.820 --> 00:18:22.580 align:middle line:84% Concern about and for women readers 00:18:22.580 --> 00:18:25.640 align:middle line:84% is as old as the moment women first learned to read 00:18:25.640 --> 00:18:28.370 align:middle line:84% and certainly predates the particular anxiety 00:18:28.370 --> 00:18:32.330 align:middle line:84% about and for Plath and Sexton's readers. 00:18:32.330 --> 00:18:35.000 align:middle line:84% During the Victorian era, medical authorities 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:37.010 align:middle line:84% were concerned that women who engaged 00:18:37.010 --> 00:18:41.210 align:middle line:84% in excessive and unsupervised reading of popular fiction 00:18:41.210 --> 00:18:45.560 align:middle line:84% would experience early menstruation, painful menses, 00:18:45.560 --> 00:18:49.040 align:middle line:84% infertility, as well as nervousness, insanity, 00:18:49.040 --> 00:18:52.190 align:middle line:90% and even premature death. 00:18:52.190 --> 00:18:55.490 align:middle line:84% Women poets and novelists were outselling men 00:18:55.490 --> 00:18:57.800 align:middle line:84% when Nathaniel Hawthorne made his remark 00:18:57.800 --> 00:18:59.930 align:middle line:84% about the mob of scribbling women 00:18:59.930 --> 00:19:02.840 align:middle line:90% who were ruining literature. 00:19:02.840 --> 00:19:06.440 align:middle line:84% The concern for the common, i.e. female reader, 00:19:06.440 --> 00:19:09.140 align:middle line:84% for the husbands of Plath's readers, 00:19:09.140 --> 00:19:13.640 align:middle line:84% for academia, for more serious male writers, and for poetry, 00:19:13.640 --> 00:19:16.400 align:middle line:84% as if confessional poets were infecting the genre 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:20.030 align:middle line:84% with a terminal illness, takes hold at the same time 00:19:20.030 --> 00:19:24.830 align:middle line:84% that an extraordinary tide of female poets entered the scene. 00:19:24.830 --> 00:19:27.830 align:middle line:84% Sadly, this kind of critical assessment 00:19:27.830 --> 00:19:30.980 align:middle line:90% continues apace in our day. 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:34.940 align:middle line:84% From a 2010 review of Sharon Olds: 00:19:34.940 --> 00:19:37.940 align:middle line:84% "Stylistically invariant since 1980, 00:19:37.940 --> 00:19:40.040 align:middle line:84% Olds writes about the female body 00:19:40.040 --> 00:19:43.340 align:middle line:84% in a deterministic, shamanistic, medieval manner. 00:19:43.340 --> 00:19:46.460 align:middle line:84% Infantilization packaged in pseudo-confession 00:19:46.460 --> 00:19:47.810 align:middle line:90% is her specialty. 00:19:47.810 --> 00:19:51.860 align:middle line:84% Her poetry defines feminism turned upon itself, chewing up 00:19:51.860 --> 00:19:57.050 align:middle line:84% its own hot and bothered cadaver exposed since the 1970s. 00:19:57.050 --> 00:19:59.630 align:middle line:84% Female poets and workshops around the country 00:19:59.630 --> 00:20:02.570 align:middle line:84% idolize her, collaborate in the masochism, 00:20:02.570 --> 00:20:04.460 align:middle line:84% because they say she has freed them 00:20:04.460 --> 00:20:06.800 align:middle line:84% to talk about taboo subjects, she 00:20:06.800 --> 00:20:10.790 align:middle line:84% empowered them, has given confessionalism such a bad name 00:20:10.790 --> 00:20:13.790 align:middle line:90% it can't possibly recover." 00:20:13.790 --> 00:20:17.000 align:middle line:84% Or one of my favorite reviews of my own books on GoodReads: 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:21.530 align:middle line:84% "Zucker's voice has force, and some of these poems 00:20:21.530 --> 00:20:24.740 align:middle line:84% are vivid in their emotional violence and disjointed verse. 00:20:24.740 --> 00:20:27.500 align:middle line:84% A lot of it, however, feels confessional in the worst sense 00:20:27.500 --> 00:20:30.650 align:middle line:84% of the word, rote, self-absorbed, hysterical, 00:20:30.650 --> 00:20:32.810 align:middle line:90% and lyrically sloppy. 00:20:32.810 --> 00:20:34.970 align:middle line:84% The author's high strung personality 00:20:34.970 --> 00:20:36.860 align:middle line:90% becomes numbing after a while. 00:20:36.860 --> 00:20:38.690 align:middle line:84% It's like being verbally assaulted 00:20:38.690 --> 00:20:42.530 align:middle line:84% at top speed for an hour straight." 00:20:42.530 --> 00:20:45.440 align:middle line:84% I think it is not a coincidence that more abstract 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:47.600 align:middle line:84% theory-based practices like language 00:20:47.600 --> 00:20:50.900 align:middle line:84% poetry and conceptual and avant garde movements 00:20:50.900 --> 00:20:53.000 align:middle line:84% gained prominence at the same time 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:56.180 align:middle line:84% that critics were wringing their hands over these scribbling 00:20:56.180 --> 00:20:57.920 align:middle line:90% or shrieking women. 00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:00.650 align:middle line:84% In questioning the nature of truth, sincerity, 00:21:00.650 --> 00:21:04.100 align:middle line:84% and authorship, language poetry temporarily subsumed 00:21:04.100 --> 00:21:07.910 align:middle line:84% the I. Poems were spoken again into the void 00:21:07.910 --> 00:21:10.430 align:middle line:84% just when confessional poetry, misnomer 00:21:10.430 --> 00:21:14.450 align:middle line:84% that it was, an autobiographical transparent poetry by women 00:21:14.450 --> 00:21:18.710 align:middle line:84% and poets of color and queer writers, became popular. 00:21:18.710 --> 00:21:21.350 align:middle line:84% Beginning in the '80s and '90s, poets 00:21:21.350 --> 00:21:23.390 align:middle line:84% who wanted to be taken seriously but also 00:21:23.390 --> 00:21:26.600 align:middle line:84% wanted to include narrative and emotional content, used 00:21:26.600 --> 00:21:30.500 align:middle line:84% elliptical strategies to tell the truth, but tell it slant. 00:21:30.500 --> 00:21:33.080 align:middle line:84% Stephen Burt, who coined the term elliptical, 00:21:33.080 --> 00:21:36.800 align:middle line:84% explains that poets like Emily Dickinson, John Berryman, John 00:21:36.800 --> 00:21:39.950 align:middle line:84% Ashbery, Susan Wheeler, CD Wright, Claudia Rankine, 00:21:39.950 --> 00:21:43.490 align:middle line:84% and others, quote, "Try to manifest a person who 00:21:43.490 --> 00:21:46.310 align:middle line:84% speaks the poem and reflects the poet 00:21:46.310 --> 00:21:48.650 align:middle line:84% while using all the verbal gizmos 00:21:48.650 --> 00:21:50.720 align:middle line:84% developed over the last few decades 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:55.940 align:middle line:84% to undermine the coherence of speaking selves," close quote. 00:21:55.940 --> 00:21:58.850 align:middle line:84% Although the work of many so-called elliptical poets 00:21:58.850 --> 00:22:01.980 align:middle line:84% had real political force and power behind it, 00:22:01.980 --> 00:22:05.180 align:middle line:84% the trickle down effect was that MFA students and others 00:22:05.180 --> 00:22:07.370 align:middle line:84% studying and reading this work began 00:22:07.370 --> 00:22:11.150 align:middle line:84% to use I in a low stakes or no stakes way. 00:22:11.150 --> 00:22:13.940 align:middle line:84% Many of these poems were accessible and transparent 00:22:13.940 --> 00:22:16.650 align:middle line:84% like confessional poetry and had the narrative chattiness 00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:17.970 align:middle line:90% of New York School poems. 00:22:17.970 --> 00:22:22.800 align:middle line:84% But these poems were so allergic to sincerity and sentimentality 00:22:22.800 --> 00:22:26.130 align:middle line:84% that they hardly ever strayed from an apolitical, apathetic, 00:22:26.130 --> 00:22:28.320 align:middle line:90% flat affect style. 00:22:28.320 --> 00:22:30.330 align:middle line:84% David Trinidad calls these poems, 00:22:30.330 --> 00:22:32.970 align:middle line:90% "Twists and turns of nothing." 00:22:32.970 --> 00:22:34.920 align:middle line:84% They are poems addressed to no one, 00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:38.880 align:middle line:84% about no one, in which nothing is at stake. 00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:41.880 align:middle line:84% Many of the things that compelled Lowell, Sexton, 00:22:41.880 --> 00:22:46.590 align:middle line:84% and Plath, mental illness, surveillance, imperialism, war, 00:22:46.590 --> 00:22:51.240 align:middle line:84% family, violence, have followed us into the 21st century. 00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:53.220 align:middle line:84% And the poets I care about are still 00:22:53.220 --> 00:22:55.380 align:middle line:90% writing about these things. 00:22:55.380 --> 00:22:57.720 align:middle line:84% The poets I care about are also writing 00:22:57.720 --> 00:23:01.020 align:middle line:84% about the systematic institutional violence against 00:23:01.020 --> 00:23:03.820 align:middle line:84% and discrimination of people of color, 00:23:03.820 --> 00:23:07.890 align:middle line:84% LGBTQ people, undocumented immigrants, poor people, 00:23:07.890 --> 00:23:11.040 align:middle line:84% and people with disabilities, as well as about the prison 00:23:11.040 --> 00:23:15.210 align:middle line:84% industrial system, and the destruction of the environment. 00:23:15.210 --> 00:23:19.140 align:middle line:84% Who decides what one can or should write about? 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:21.330 align:middle line:90% Who gets to write from the I? 00:23:21.330 --> 00:23:23.730 align:middle line:90% Who has the right to speak? 00:23:23.730 --> 00:23:28.020 align:middle line:84% How can I name themself as specifically and honestly 00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:30.300 align:middle line:84% as possible in a way that does not 00:23:30.300 --> 00:23:34.950 align:middle line:84% make a you that is othered in racist, homophobic, or 00:23:34.950 --> 00:23:37.650 align:middle line:90% oppressive ways? 00:23:37.650 --> 00:23:39.990 align:middle line:84% The question of who gets to say what 00:23:39.990 --> 00:23:44.370 align:middle line:84% and in what way is central to most poets writing today. 00:23:44.370 --> 00:23:47.250 align:middle line:84% Issues around permission and taxonomies, 00:23:47.250 --> 00:23:50.070 align:middle line:84% as well as how one is perceived if one writes out 00:23:50.070 --> 00:23:54.300 align:middle line:84% of or against lived experience underlie our conversations 00:23:54.300 --> 00:23:57.900 align:middle line:84% about what poems should look like or sound like, what poems 00:23:57.900 --> 00:24:01.350 align:middle line:84% are for, who poems are for, and the relationship 00:24:01.350 --> 00:24:05.430 align:middle line:84% between poetry, identity, and politics, which is, I think, 00:24:05.430 --> 00:24:09.540 align:middle line:84% our most urgent American conversation. 00:24:09.540 --> 00:24:12.210 align:middle line:84% Over the years, students have asked me, 00:24:12.210 --> 00:24:14.670 align:middle line:84% can I write about my ex-boyfriend? 00:24:14.670 --> 00:24:16.920 align:middle line:84% Can I write about being from the South? 00:24:16.920 --> 00:24:19.800 align:middle line:84% Can I write about my difficult feelings about my mother? 00:24:19.800 --> 00:24:20.760 align:middle line:90% My brother? 00:24:20.760 --> 00:24:21.570 align:middle line:90% Sex? 00:24:21.570 --> 00:24:22.470 align:middle line:90% Depression? 00:24:22.470 --> 00:24:23.310 align:middle line:90% Coming out? 00:24:23.310 --> 00:24:24.330 align:middle line:90% Blackness? 00:24:24.330 --> 00:24:25.860 align:middle line:90% My Asian ancestry? 00:24:25.860 --> 00:24:27.150 align:middle line:90% My father's death? 00:24:27.150 --> 00:24:28.110 align:middle line:90% Gun violence? 00:24:28.110 --> 00:24:28.740 align:middle line:90% Race? 00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:29.820 align:middle line:90% The Middle Passage? 00:24:29.820 --> 00:24:31.440 align:middle line:90% Rape? 00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:33.690 align:middle line:84% Students ask if they can write about things 00:24:33.690 --> 00:24:36.840 align:middle line:84% that have or have not happened to them, that for one 00:24:36.840 --> 00:24:39.810 align:middle line:84% reason or another, they are afraid to write about. 00:24:39.810 --> 00:24:42.480 align:middle line:90% Of course, I always say. 00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:44.220 align:middle line:84% And students bring me these poems 00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:46.800 align:middle line:84% and hold them out in a shaky hand. 00:24:46.800 --> 00:24:50.160 align:middle line:84% I've never written about this before or I'm not sure 00:24:50.160 --> 00:24:53.370 align:middle line:84% this is even a poem, they often say. 00:24:53.370 --> 00:24:55.140 align:middle line:84% Students come to me because I've written 00:24:55.140 --> 00:24:57.150 align:middle line:84% about the things that scare me most and have 00:24:57.150 --> 00:24:58.920 align:middle line:90% asked them to do the same. 00:24:58.920 --> 00:25:02.250 align:middle line:84% I've written about myself and my family, my body, 00:25:02.250 --> 00:25:06.090 align:middle line:84% my feelings in overtly autobiographical ways. 00:25:06.090 --> 00:25:10.260 align:middle line:84% Until recently, this had not been very difficult for me. 00:25:10.260 --> 00:25:14.010 align:middle line:84% As a Jew, I was taught that only actions are sinful, 00:25:14.010 --> 00:25:15.390 align:middle line:90% never thoughts. 00:25:15.390 --> 00:25:17.610 align:middle line:84% And I come from a long line of truth 00:25:17.610 --> 00:25:20.310 align:middle line:84% telling wordsmiths and provocateurs. 00:25:20.310 --> 00:25:24.270 align:middle line:84% Lenny Bruce, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, 00:25:24.270 --> 00:25:27.600 align:middle line:90% Bob Dylan, Sacha Baron Cohen. 00:25:27.600 --> 00:25:32.280 align:middle line:84% Art was always associated for me with shock rather than comfort. 00:25:32.280 --> 00:25:34.740 align:middle line:84% And I always felt it was more important to say 00:25:34.740 --> 00:25:38.160 align:middle line:84% what needed to be said than to make something beautiful. 00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:42.150 align:middle line:84% For a long time, being called confessional did not offend me. 00:25:42.150 --> 00:25:44.280 align:middle line:84% I did not, at first, understand the extent 00:25:44.280 --> 00:25:45.810 align:middle line:84% to which being called confessional 00:25:45.810 --> 00:25:48.600 align:middle line:84% depends upon my white privilege, and I did not 00:25:48.600 --> 00:25:51.690 align:middle line:84% mind being called a woman poet or even a mommy poet 00:25:51.690 --> 00:25:54.690 align:middle line:84% because I'm comfortable with the way my poetry arises out 00:25:54.690 --> 00:25:56.880 align:middle line:90% of my female experience. 00:25:56.880 --> 00:26:00.180 align:middle line:84% But writing confessionally does have costs. 00:26:00.180 --> 00:26:02.790 align:middle line:90% It has its charge. 00:26:02.790 --> 00:26:04.890 align:middle line:84% There is pressure to write confessionally 00:26:04.890 --> 00:26:07.530 align:middle line:84% because this is the kind of writing that brought many of us 00:26:07.530 --> 00:26:10.050 align:middle line:84% to poetry, and we know how pleasurable 00:26:10.050 --> 00:26:12.150 align:middle line:90% it can be for the audience. 00:26:12.150 --> 00:26:16.890 align:middle line:84% Some of us want to write for and to a less rarefied audience. 00:26:16.890 --> 00:26:19.170 align:middle line:84% And transparent, autobiographical, 00:26:19.170 --> 00:26:23.490 align:middle line:84% socially-oriented poetry appeals to a more general audience. 00:26:23.490 --> 00:26:25.830 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, there is pressure 00:26:25.830 --> 00:26:28.140 align:middle line:84% to eschew directness and narrative, 00:26:28.140 --> 00:26:31.920 align:middle line:84% to explore or embrace the kind of difficulty and direction 00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:34.860 align:middle line:84% that we've been taught distinguishes poetry 00:26:34.860 --> 00:26:39.480 align:middle line:84% and prose from serious writing, and serious writing 00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:42.210 align:middle line:90% from populist writing. 00:26:42.210 --> 00:26:44.730 align:middle line:84% It is a mistake to think that ML Rosenthal's 00:26:44.730 --> 00:26:48.960 align:middle line:84% poetry as confession review described a school or movement. 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:51.210 align:middle line:84% But I do think Rosenthal absolutely 00:26:51.210 --> 00:26:54.510 align:middle line:84% noticed a moment in the history of American poetry 00:26:54.510 --> 00:26:56.940 align:middle line:84% in which poets started to sound different, 00:26:56.940 --> 00:26:59.040 align:middle line:84% started to use poems differently, 00:26:59.040 --> 00:27:02.610 align:middle line:84% started to want something different from poems. 00:27:02.610 --> 00:27:05.550 align:middle line:84% What if, though, instead of spotlighting 00:27:05.550 --> 00:27:09.030 align:middle line:84% the publication of Life Studies as the pivotal moment, 00:27:09.030 --> 00:27:15.240 align:middle line:84% Rosenthal or someone else had chosen October 7, 1955, 00:27:15.240 --> 00:27:19.830 align:middle line:84% the date Ginsberg read Howl aloud for the first time. 00:27:19.830 --> 00:27:23.040 align:middle line:84% Michael McClure, present at that San Francisco reading, 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:25.470 align:middle line:90% described it like this. 00:27:25.470 --> 00:27:28.050 align:middle line:84% "Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which 00:27:28.050 --> 00:27:31.950 align:middle line:84% left us standing in wonder or cheering and wondering. 00:27:31.950 --> 00:27:35.760 align:middle line:84% But knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, 00:27:35.760 --> 00:27:38.010 align:middle line:84% that a human voice and body had been 00:27:38.010 --> 00:27:42.390 align:middle line:84% hurled against the harsh wall of America." 00:27:42.390 --> 00:27:44.520 align:middle line:84% I don't know what word Rosenthal would 00:27:44.520 --> 00:27:48.000 align:middle line:84% have used to describe Ginsberg's barrier-breaking poem, 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:51.210 align:middle line:84% but I doubt he would have used confession. 00:27:51.210 --> 00:27:54.510 align:middle line:84% If Rosenthal had asked me, even though I wasn't born yet, 00:27:54.510 --> 00:27:57.510 align:middle line:84% I would have suggested disobedience. 00:27:57.510 --> 00:28:00.480 align:middle line:84% Even though Alice Notley hadn't written the Poetics 00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:02.910 align:middle line:90% of Disobedience yet. 00:28:02.910 --> 00:28:06.330 align:middle line:84% Ginsberg brought taboo, personal, sexual content 00:28:06.330 --> 00:28:07.800 align:middle line:90% into the public realm. 00:28:07.800 --> 00:28:11.460 align:middle line:84% Ginsberg was unmistakably, unequivocally, irrepressibly 00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:12.990 align:middle line:90% himself in his poems. 00:28:12.990 --> 00:28:16.350 align:middle line:84% His poems are spoken to real people, to God, to the state, 00:28:16.350 --> 00:28:17.280 align:middle line:90% to me. 00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:21.010 align:middle line:84% And though at times they are deranged, they are not ashamed. 00:28:21.010 --> 00:28:23.790 align:middle line:90% They do not ask for forgiveness. 00:28:23.790 --> 00:28:26.280 align:middle line:84% I don't know if poetry or the world 00:28:26.280 --> 00:28:28.200 align:middle line:84% would have been any different if I were now 00:28:28.200 --> 00:28:30.540 align:middle line:84% writing about a movement or a moment called 00:28:30.540 --> 00:28:34.770 align:middle line:84% Disobedient Poetry rather than Confessional Poetry. 00:28:34.770 --> 00:28:37.780 align:middle line:84% But in my fantasy of this alternate history, 00:28:37.780 --> 00:28:41.440 align:middle line:84% Alice Notley, Anne Carson, CD Wright, Bernadette Mayer, 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:45.160 align:middle line:84% Claudia Rankine, DA Powell, Sharon Olds, June Jordan, 00:28:45.160 --> 00:28:48.820 align:middle line:84% Adrienne Rich, Eileen Myles, Morgan Parker, Danez Smith, 00:28:48.820 --> 00:28:53.050 align:middle line:84% Arielle Greenberg, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Ross Gay, and so many 00:28:53.050 --> 00:28:55.360 align:middle line:90% others are in it. 00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:59.230 align:middle line:84% No one wastes time accusing these poets of narcissism, 00:28:59.230 --> 00:29:02.440 align:middle line:84% hysteria, directness, accessibility, 00:29:02.440 --> 00:29:05.950 align:middle line:84% or for their difficulty, because these poems run 00:29:05.950 --> 00:29:08.830 align:middle line:84% on the engine of risk, which is different from the engine 00:29:08.830 --> 00:29:10.930 align:middle line:90% of shame. 00:29:10.930 --> 00:29:14.050 align:middle line:84% In the end of her book, End of the Sentimental Journey, 00:29:14.050 --> 00:29:20.380 align:middle line:84% Sarah Vap writes, "I am against being against the sentimental. 00:29:20.380 --> 00:29:21.760 align:middle line:90% This helps me. 00:29:21.760 --> 00:29:24.970 align:middle line:84% I cannot say that I'm for the confessional. 00:29:24.970 --> 00:29:27.490 align:middle line:84% What I can say is that I am against being 00:29:27.490 --> 00:29:30.040 align:middle line:90% against the confessional. 00:29:30.040 --> 00:29:32.140 align:middle line:84% To be against the confessional is 00:29:32.140 --> 00:29:34.210 align:middle line:84% to be against writing about women, 00:29:34.210 --> 00:29:36.850 align:middle line:84% and women's bodies, people of color, 00:29:36.850 --> 00:29:39.790 align:middle line:84% and the bodies of people of color, queerness, 00:29:39.790 --> 00:29:43.600 align:middle line:84% trans bodies, differently abled bodies, individuality, 00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:48.070 align:middle line:84% oppression, perversity, diversity, class, the domestic, 00:29:48.070 --> 00:29:51.430 align:middle line:84% the non-normative, the personal, the political, the specific, 00:29:51.430 --> 00:29:54.175 align:middle line:84% the urgent, the spiritual, the banal, the direct, 00:29:54.175 --> 00:29:58.030 align:middle line:84% the relational, the screamed, the whispered. 00:29:58.030 --> 00:30:01.750 align:middle line:84% To be against the confessional is to be against coming out. 00:30:01.750 --> 00:30:04.570 align:middle line:84% Against emphatically bringing the unwanted 00:30:04.570 --> 00:30:08.980 align:middle line:84% and repressed and hated and oppressed into public view 00:30:08.980 --> 00:30:11.050 align:middle line:90% into the poem." 00:30:11.050 --> 00:30:13.930 align:middle line:84% "Poetry," wrote Audre Lorde, "is the way 00:30:13.930 --> 00:30:18.730 align:middle line:84% we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought." 00:30:18.730 --> 00:30:22.640 align:middle line:84% Alice Notley wrote, "Staying alert to all the ways 00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:26.200 align:middle line:84% one is coerced into denying experience, sense, 00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:29.860 align:middle line:90% and reason is a huge task." 00:30:29.860 --> 00:30:33.430 align:middle line:84% I am not advocating for any one kind of poetry. 00:30:33.430 --> 00:30:36.610 align:middle line:84% I want neither a prohibition of lived experience, 00:30:36.610 --> 00:30:38.980 align:middle line:84% nor a tyranny of lived experience. 00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:42.580 align:middle line:84% I want a poetry to lead us into less binary 00:30:42.580 --> 00:30:47.050 align:middle line:84% ways of thinking and living and writing and reading. 00:30:47.050 --> 00:30:51.730 align:middle line:84% I want a poetry that is catholic only in its lowercase sense, 00:30:51.730 --> 00:30:56.920 align:middle line:84% liberal, diverse, inclusive, and all embracing. 00:30:56.920 --> 00:30:58.500 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:30:58.500 --> 00:30:59.000 align:middle line:90%