A Confessional Smackdown

Every time I sit down to read Eliot's critical essays the confessional school of poetry comes to my mind. Everything that Eliot says about the "extinction of personality" goes against the almost painfully personal confessional poems written by Plath, Lowell, Sexton, Olds etc. The poems written by these authors are composed solely of personal experience, and the author is the intentional focal point.

So if we are to to take Eliot's assertions about poetry to be true, then it stands to reason that the confessionals can't be skilled poets. In fact, it can almost be inferred that they are not poets at all, based on Eliot's criteria.

I also think that there is a disconnect between Eliot's essay and criticism of confessional poetry. If "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry" then how is one expected to judge confessional works. The poem and the poet are inextricably intertwined. There is no way to look at such a poem objectively. To critique a confessional poem is to critique a person and their feelings and emotions. This can prove to be a problem for both the critic and the writer. Eliot calls for "continuous self-sacrifice" and this is most definitely not something found in Confessional poems. At least not in the sense that Eliot is using it. Confessionals seem to sacrifice another part of themselves, to shamelessly put their hearts on paper.

In a sense, I believe that Eliot is correct. Honest criticism really needs to look at the poem itself, however I also think that this will not always work. Confessional poems, though infused with emotion, are still skillfully written.

"The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates" (Eliot 1095). This is probably the one statement in Eliot's entire essay that completely and utterly undermines confessional poetry. In this case the mind that suffers is the mind which creates. I am currently stuck wondering if one type of poetry is better than another, or if both can simply coexist and be judged using different criteria. Though, I still run into the stumbling block of how to critique confessional poetry without making any statements about the author themselves.