Spoon River, Day 2; Monologue Poem Draft Due!, Confessional Poetry

During period 3, please gather in the groups you were in last class and continue reading the poems in the Spoon River anthology. Continue reading until you hear the first bell, then finish up and complete the rest of this book on your own as homework.

What you've been reading are a traditional style of poetry where a single character "speaks" as in a monologue. In fact, the type of poem that has a single speaker telling "us, the reader" something about his/her life is called a monologue poem.

Often this monologue is a confession or disclosing a secret. When this occurs we call this a CONFESSIONAL poem. Here are a few samples of contemporary confessional poems:

During 4th period, please complete your character death poem. The poem and its rules can be found below. If you finish early, please write a second "confessional" poem modeled on the samples here.

Confessional Poetry

Confessional poetry: reveals a personal secret or feeling. This is the only type of poem you can consider the author to be the speaker. Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or "I." This style of writing emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass.

• Confessional poetry is often controversial or even unsettling to read.

• The confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century dealt with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in American poetry. Private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an autobiographical manner. Sexton in particular was interested in the psychological aspect of poetry, having started writing at the suggestion of her therapist.

• The confessional poets were not merely recording their emotions on paper; craft and construction were extremely important to their work. While their treatment of the poetic self may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of prosody.

• The confessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s pioneered a type of writing that forever changed the landscape of American poetry. The tradition of confessional poetry has been a major influence on generations of writers.

Here are a few examples of either political or confessional poetry:

Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
My First Memory by Nikki Giovanni
Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

Now it's your turn. Write a confessional poem. When you complete your poem draft, please proofread it, and turn it in for credit.

HOMEWORK: Please complete The Spoon River Anthology.