Abstract
This article examines the notion of “fabricated honesty” in American Confessional poetry of the 1960s through a close reading of Anne Sexton’s “Briar Rose” (from Transformations) and Robert Lowell’s “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow” (from Life Studies). Being forewarned that there is a connection between the poet’s life and the text, the reader expects the poetry to be a lyrical autobiography of the writer. Such a conclusion is a very basic misunderstanding about Confessional poetry, which can never be simply described as an act of literary confiding. The Confessionals used their biographies but changed facts to achieve a particular artistic aim. The study demonstrates how both poets forge biography — Sexton through the lens of fairy tale and trauma, Lowell through seemingly precise personal detail — to create the impression of confession while maintaining artistic control.
Keywords: Confessional poetry, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, “Briar Rose,” “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow,” Life Studies, Transformations, fabricated honesty, biography, autobiography
Forging a Biography
The notion of confession brings to mind certain connotations. It is usually associated with the idea of honestly confiding some secrets. The same associations come to mind in connection with the term of the American Confessional poetry of the 1960s. The reader expects the poetry to be a lyrical autobiography of the writer or, at least, to provide some real details from their life. Such a conclusion is a very basic misunderstanding about Confessional poetry. The Confessionals used their biographies, but changed any facts they wished in order to achieve a particular artistic aim. Analyzing Confessional poetry one must bear in mind that even though the word “confessional” may suggest the true experience, the noun “poetry” indicates something quite opposite.
Anne Sexton — “Briar Rose” (Sleeping Beauty)
Of the three poets discussed here, Anne Sexton’s biography has probably the biggest influence on her art, not because of writing down all the facts that happened, but because of distorting them for the sake of her poetry. She had been raised in Boston in a family that she later described as pathological. Her problems with mental health started at the age of twenty five and lasted for the rest of the poet’s life. One of the very ambiguous and controversial topics of her writing is the sexual abuse that allegedly took place when she was a girl.
The problem of incest is one of the themes in the book Transformations. Sexton used fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and presented her own vision of these stories. Famous female characters like Cinderella or Snow White are put into a social and feminist context which transforms the traditional gender image. The first stanza presents an image of a girl under hypnosis — confused and defenseless. The fourth stanza gives the picture of what happened when Sleeping Beauty pricked herself on the spinning wheel. Crucial to the question how much Sexton’s biography influenced her poetry is the last stanza of “Briar Rose,” where the narrator reveals her own voice — a direct story told by the abused girl who describes her drunk father molesting her every night.
Robert Lowell — “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow”
The first poem of Life Studies has been not incidentally chosen as the initial one. “My Last Afternoon…” is a highly personal text that describes, in fact, Lowell’s family life and his true memories from childhood. The author scrupulously specified names, dates and places, which makes the poem even more plausible. Lowell, however, “admits to having invented facts in order to give the whole a greater coherence — but the seeming factual precision gives the poem the impression of being true.” The annalistic exactness appears at the very beginning of the text, where the date and the place are given — in 1922 Lowell was five years old.
The last verses of the text confirm its sentimental character and the importance of images. These lines present the small speaker who sees the dead uncle in his mind’s eye and describes him very precisely. This “untypical” of Lowell’s poem inscribes in family stories that have been changed or reconstructed to achieve the artistic aims or simply the coherence needed to make the poem more plausible.
Works Cited
- Axelrod, S. G. Robert Lowell. Life and Art. New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1979.
- Colburn, Steve, ed. Anne Sexton: Telling the tale. The University of Michigan Press. 1988.
- Lowell, Robert. Life studies. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.
- Markey, Janice. A new tradition? The poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich, a study of feminism and poetry. Frankfurt am Main and New York. Peter Lang, 1985.
- Middlebrook, Diane. Anne Sexton: A biography. New York. Vintage Books. 1992.
- Wood Middlebrook, Diane, and Hume George, Diana, eds. The selected poems of Anne Sexton. New York. Mariner Books, 2000.
- Yezzi, David. “Confessional poetry and the artifice of honesty”, The New Criterion, 20 December 2010: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Confessional-poetry---the-artifice-of-honesty-3026