Andrew wrote:
>
> What I'm *not* talking about is personal, emotional content in
> poetry. To object to that would be plain silly. What I *am* talking
> about is the level of transformation which takes place between
> the private psyche and the public poem, which your quotation
> of Eliot highlights exceptionally well. Possibly the best example
> of the transformative process there is.
>
> My reservations are with confessional poems of the type which
> Plath had great talent for (and which Anne Sexton had none) --
> in other words, to what extent are the private, un-self-censored
> agonies of a writer suitable for poetry? At what point does this
> type of poetry become self-indulgent or misplaced? How far
> does it either consciously or unconsciously draw attention to
> the writer more than it does to the poem itself? How far is
> the writer in control of their subconscious spillage? In the final
> analysis it's a question of maturity, surely.
I don'y buy this argument. You *are* talking about the personal,
emotional content of the poetry and by your own lights being silly.
You say what you are talking about is the level of transformation of
the private experience and the public text, but you can only talk about
that transformation on the basis of what's there in the public text,
crucially its personal, emotional content.
You consider it has been 'spilled', but that's just a guess. I suggest you
are trying to shift a moral objection (Plath's bad manners) into a craft
one and as a result promulgating just the kind of literary gentility that
those who most welcomed Plath at the time of Ariel rightly despised.
But this is such an old story. I wonder why it's so interesting to listees.
A more recent and in that respect more intensely felt loss, whose
work defines one direction the 'confessional' took post-Plath, who
also moved across the Atlantic, whose claim on the canon is surely at
least as strong, whose feminism is at least as interesting , is that of
Kathy Acker.
Wystan
>
> I feel, personally, that a writer has a tremendous amount of
> responsibility with regard to what they put in print -- there is
> a civic function here. If writers are not their 'better selves' in
> their work, but only caricatures of their worst selves, haven't we
> a right to complain?
>
> Elizabeth Jennings was in no less need of poetry than Plath,
> but I see none of the excesses. No spilling of the guts. Which
> is what makes her work inspirational as opposed to objectionable.
>
> >women were concerned about Thalidomide<
>
> Again, with reference to my earlier post, no one is doubting
> that concern and no one is questioning the right to approach
> it in literature. My distaste for the Plath poem arises from the
> style in which she did it. I would also question her motivation
> for doing so, as mentioned earlier.
>
>
> All the best,
>
>
> Andy
>
>
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