Hi Anny,
I think you have a point here. It seems, to me anyway, significant
that the "confessional" poets, that particular generation of
Lowell, Plath, Sexton, Barryman, Lowell, was also the most
psychoanalyzed and grew up in a particular time in the U.S.
when there was an exceedingly rigid social norm and an
aggressive use of psychology to fit the deviant to that norm, which
the psychologist and critic of psychology as much of it
was practiced then, Thomas Szasz described (and I'm paraphrasing)
as "having someone stuck in a pipe in which he could barely turn
around, and the purpose of the psychologist was to make him
comfortable in that pipe" !
That's one of the issues, too, I think with these recently discussed
studies that diagnosis posthumously or on the basis of biography.
Since I'd think that, as far as publishing goes and generating
interest, there would be an emphasis upon and exagerration of
mental illness or difficulties in the biography of a poet,
when such things would be elided or ignored in the biography
of a ceo or supreme court justice.
Well, and the emphasis and exagerration might also exert
pressure upon the work, the expectation that it be more
"mad" or confessional. It seems to have in the case of Sexton,
and surely that's a factor in Plath's fame, which Rukeyser
wryly commented upon in her short poem: "I'd rather be alive/
and be Muriel/ than be dead/ and be Ariel."
Take care,
Rebecca
-------Original Message-------
From: Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 08/23/03 11:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: psychology
>
> I noted this down today from the interview of Christina Daub with BillyCollins, the notable voice of the Poet thus on Fulcrum states:
“Psychology has confined or limited the imaginative possibilities for
poetry”
(inventing to give an idea of how he explained these words) Shakespeare
Dante did not speak of their mothers fathers sisters or brothers or
children...., and I am adding, it sort of justifies confessionalism, adds to it and
promotes it.
If moreover, as Rebecca says, papers like those by Pennybacker are made
definitive, there you have all sorts of tangible limits. xxx
>
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