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Confessional poetry was considered bold and daring from the late 1950s to the 1980s as it was a break from the more modernist forms of poetry at this time. Confessional poetry is a form of self-revelation in a lot of cases and is extremely personal. (Beach, 154) Anne Sexton is one of the most known poets to use this form, and is considered to be the ‘mother of confessionalism’. Born in 1928 in Massachusetts to a family that was considered ‘well off’, but never happy as it was said the relationship with her parents was tough. At the young age of nineteen, Sexton got married and in 1953 she had her first child. After her first child was born she suffered from a severe mental breakdown which rendered her into a psychiatric hospital. Then, in 1955 she had her second child and again, suffered from postpartum depression, creating a lifelong battle of depression, which ended when she committed suicide at the age of 45.
However, when Sexton was admitted for treatment, her therapist offered her advice to write about her feelings and the things going on in her life. (Poetry Foundation) Thus, began Anne Sexton’s writing career as a well-known confessional poet. Though, it is said that for Sexton, confessionalism is not about past situations that cannot and could not be controlled, but rather a way of producing the truth and understanding it. (Gill, 432) Using a confessional approach in her writing seemed to have an impact on her and more specifically with the depression she had been dealing with most of her life.
'In the beginning, the doctor said, 'Write down your feelings because someday they might mean something to somebody. No matter how despairing you are, other people are going through this who can't express it, and if they should read it they would feel less alone.' And so he gave me my little reason to go on; it shifted around, but that was always a driving, driving force.” (McClatchy, 2)
Although it is clear that Sexton was very depressed, with several attempts of suicide, she still managed to find the little light that helped her keep going and confessional poetry was presumably the only kind of writing that she could write for the most part.
However, Sexton seems to take a different approach in her poem The Truth the Dead Know (1962) which was written around three years after her parents’ deaths. Considering they both died about four months apart, and Sexton did not have an especially close relationship with them, this poem appears to be more of an elegy as it is dedicated to her parents who died, with a touch of confessionalism. The seemingly only confessional components of the poem are from the first stanza,
“Gone, I say and walk from the church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse
It is June. I am tired of being brave.” (Sexton)
Taking on the personal element that confessional poetry offers, she states that rather than riding in the car with her parents, she leaves them alone, almost as if she is trying to get away from them. This is also present in the last stanza in the first two lines, “And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats.” (Sexton) from the second stanza it appears she goes to the sea, with a ‘darling’, but with the first two lines of the last stanza her parents’ death comes back to her mind after she got away from it. Perhaps the last line in the first stanza of her tired of being brave, means she is tired of putting a smile and happy look on her face, pretending that she is not depressed.
While the rest of the poem tells a story for the readers, rather than confessing something personal. Even so, Sexton does not seem to have a problem with that, expressing that the work she does changes over time, and she is not stuck with the one label of being a confessionalist. (Gill, 426) While confessionalism was a theme that came about in the late 1950s to the early ’60s, some were opposed to the form, such as John Holmes who Sexton was learning from at the same time she was studying from Robert Lowell— in 1958. Holmes wanted Sexton to stay away from the confessional form and stick to a more traditional approach to writing, but Sexton stated that she could not simply stay away from it. (McClatchy, 3)
In all, confessionalism was a form that started to take place in the late 1950s, and well-known poets such as Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath adapted to using the style. Whether that be to help cope with the depression they were facing or to tell a ‘truth’ to the people who would read it and help others who may be dealing with the same things they were. Either way, confessional poetry was, and still is, often considered to be a daring form of poetry due to its very personal nature. Sexton’s poem The Truth the Dead Know is an elegy for her parents, which also includes a few confessional components to it as well, possibly revealing that although she did not have a good nor strong relationship with her parents, they still come to her mind, even though she tries to get away from them.
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