Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics

Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics PDF Author: Jo Gill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813031750
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Given the amount of scholarship on twentieth-century poetry, there has been remarkably little published about Anne Sexton, even though her work is considered to be as important as that of such contemporaries as Sylvia Plath and W. H. Auden. By offering new and provocative readings of her entire oeuvre, Jo Gill provides a long overdue critical appreciation of Anne Sexton and presents a radical rethinking of the confessional mode of poetry and a recuperation of Sexton's place in it. Gill makes substantial use of Sexton's archive of unpublished diaries, drafts, correspondence, lectures, interviews, stage readings, and book annotations, as well as a little-known television documentary on Sexton. She also uses techniques that have not been previously applied to Sexton's poetry to increase our understanding of the poet's life and work. Employing new--principally poststructuralist--literary theories and critical practices, Gill offers new readings of Sexton's complex and ambitious poems. She discusses the diversity and richness of Sexton's writing across her career, shows the relevance of the often-ignored later poems, and places Sexton's work in its specific historical, political, and ideological contexts.

Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics

Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics PDF Author: Jo Gill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813031750
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Given the amount of scholarship on twentieth-century poetry, there has been remarkably little published about Anne Sexton, even though her work is considered to be as important as that of such contemporaries as Sylvia Plath and W. H. Auden. By offering new and provocative readings of her entire oeuvre, Jo Gill provides a long overdue critical appreciation of Anne Sexton and presents a radical rethinking of the confessional mode of poetry and a recuperation of Sexton's place in it. Gill makes substantial use of Sexton's archive of unpublished diaries, drafts, correspondence, lectures, interviews, stage readings, and book annotations, as well as a little-known television documentary on Sexton. She also uses techniques that have not been previously applied to Sexton's poetry to increase our understanding of the poet's life and work. Employing new--principally poststructuralist--literary theories and critical practices, Gill offers new readings of Sexton's complex and ambitious poems. She discusses the diversity and richness of Sexton's writing across her career, shows the relevance of the often-ignored later poems, and places Sexton's work in its specific historical, political, and ideological contexts.

The Art of Confession

The Art of Confession PDF Author: Christopher Grobe
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479882089
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed--with, around, and against the text of their lives." --

Transformations

Transformations PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150403435X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton morphs classic fairy tales into dark critiques of the cultural myths underpinning modern society Anne Sexton breathes new life into sixteen age-old Brothers Grimm fairy tales, reimagining them as poems infused with contemporary references, feminist ideals, and morbid humor. Grounded by nods to the ordinary—a witch’s blood “began to boil up/like Coca-Cola” and Snow White’s bodice is “as tight as an Ace bandage”—Sexton brings the stories out of the realm of the fantastical and into the everyday world. Stripping away their magical sheen, she exposes the flawed notions of family, gender, and morality within the stories that continue to pervade our collective psyche. Sexton is especially critical of what follows these tales’ happily-ever-after endings, noting that Cinderella never has to face the mundane struggles of marriage and growing old, such as “diapers and dust,” “telling the same story twice,” or “getting a middle-aged spread,” and that after being awakened Sleeping Beauty would likely be plagued by insomnia, taking “knock-out drops” behind the prince’s back. Deconstructed into vivid, visceral, and often highly amusing poems, these fairy tales reflect themes that have long fascinated Sexton—the claustrophobic anxiety of domestic life, the limited role of women in society, and a psychological strife more dangerous than any wicked witch or poisoned apple.

The Confessional Poets

The Confessional Poets PDF Author: Robert Phillips
Publisher: Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Confessional poetry as a genre was first characterized by the critic M. L. Rosenthal in 1959. It has become a potent force, and its practitioners the poetic voices of our time. The poetry is highly subjective, written with frankness and lack of re­straint, and focuses on the ugliness of life. Its leading practitioners, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, W. D. Snodgrass, and John Berryman, have all been recipients of the highest awards in literature, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. Robert Phillips, a critic and also a poet, here directs our attention to the genre in the first book on the subject. In addition to the poets noted above, he discusses the work of Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, Delmore Schwartz, and Allen Ginsberg. Especially valuable are the author's defi­nition and historical review of the genre and his use of interviews and personal comments. An appraisal of the genre, his book is also a guide to new avenues open to poets writing today.

Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton PDF Author: Diane Middlebrook
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679741828
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.

Life Studies and For the Union Dead

Life Studies and For the Union Dead PDF Author: Robert Lowell
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374530963
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Robert Lowell, with Elizabeth Bishop, stands apart as the greatest American poet of the latter half of the twentieth century—and Life Studies and For the Union Dead stand as among his most important volumes. In Life Studies, which was first published in 1959, Lowell moved away from the formality of his earlier poems and started writing in a more confessional vein. The title poem of For the Union Dead concerns the death of the Civil War hero (and Lowell ancestor) Robert Gould Shaw, but it also largely centers on the contrast between Boston's idealistic past and its debased present at the time of its writing, in the early 1960's. Throughout, Lowell addresses contemporaneous subjects in a voice and style that themselves push beyond the accepted forms and constraints of the time.

Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

Selected Poems of Anne Sexton PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618057047
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A selection of poems by contemporary American author Anne Sexton, drawn primarily from eight previously published collections.

All My Pretty Ones

All My Pretty Ones PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
A gifted poet reveals the poignancy and plaintive charm of common experiences.

To Bedlam and Part Way Back

To Bedlam and Part Way Back PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
In part three of Alice's adventure through the stacks, she has learned much on her journey. She takes a moment to ponder the meaning of words.

The Awful Rowing Toward God

The Awful Rowing Toward God PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
In this powerful new collection, one of our most dazzlingly inventive and prolific poets tackles a universal theme: the agonizing search for God that is part and parcel of the livse of all of us. As always, Anne Sexton's latest work derives from intense personal experience. She explores the dilemmas and triumphs, and the agony and the peace of her highly unorthodox faith, sharing all her findings with her readers as the quest progresses. Anne Sexton's poetry speaks to our most passionate yearnings for love and our deepest fears of evil and death. The uncompromising honesty and vividness of "The Awful Rowing Toward God" confirms her stature as one of the most compelling voices of our time. -- From publisher's description.