An Aggressive Defense of the Confessionals
This is a critical response, though not, perhaps, the critical response you expect. It is my opinion that the articles, namely Nelson’s “Confessional Poetry,” and Thurston’s “Psychotherapy and Confessional Poetry” were grossly biased and perpetuated the stigma on mental health that is still so prevalent today.
Beginning with Nelson, I am diving into the wreck with my book of myths and loaded camera (I am quoting Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck.” See how I can quote a poem and not insult and belittle the poet? Very demure, very mindful). Nelson begins by discussing the poem “Skunk Hour” by Robert Lowell, specifically the fifth and sixth stanzas.
One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind’s not right.
A car radio bleats,
‘Love, O careless Love . . . .’ I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—
This, according to Nelson, is not worth reading for the lyrical value or the beauty of the collection of the words, but is exclusively “this latter image is confessional poetry as we have known and sometimes loved it: a mentally unstable poet in an act of self exposure (31).” God forbid Nelson read the work of Lynn Melnick, the author of Landscapes with Sex and Violence, who knows what mental instability she would diagnose there? It is unprofessional, judgemental, and deeply insulting to call anyone mentally unstable and also perpetuates stigma on mental health.
Also, how is it any of Nelson’s business what the state of Robert Lowell’s mental health was? Does she also devalue Vincent van Gogh’s paintings? John Adams’ “Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America”? Leonardo de Vinci’s Mona Lisa? No, please, let us blindly and without any actual psychological training throw accusations and diagnosis randomly at historical figures!
Thurston will not escape my tarring brush.
He begins his essay, erroneously, with four words: “Confessional poets are crazy.” Pardon my language, but who the fuck is this guy? What right does Thurston have to open his article on an entire school of poetry by stating, verbatim, that “Confessional poets are crazy,”? I find this absolutely abhorrent and irresponsible. He completely discounts all of the exceptional art that was created by Confessional poets and even goes so far as to bring up the unfortunate deaths of two of the Confessional poets as proof of his theory that they are all simply examples of the psychoanalytical practices of the time.
He is a professor who focuses on postwar British and Irish poetry, American political poetry between the two world wars, and Ernest Hemingway. He has no psychoanalytic training. He does not approach Hemingway with the found evidence that brings many to call Hemingway racist, misogynistic, and an abuser of women. Why does he have the right to brand Confessional poets “crazy,” which is a deeply insulting and dehumanizing word?
Thurston quotes Freud like Freud is still relevant in the psychological field. Thurston is not a poet and does not quote any poets. However he does quote Anne Stevenson, the contested biographer of Sylvia Plath who admitted in a letter to The New York Review that she purposefully did not interview any of Plath’s “sympathizers.” Stevenson never met Plath but felt compelled to diagnose her without a shred of medical expertise. What next? Neil Degrasse Tyson commenting on Kim Kardashian’s dating life?
I leave you with a quote from the esteemed poet, Sylvia Plath. “If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.” Unfortunately, I expected more from the authors of our articles today and so I remain disappointed.
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