Robert Lowell, with Elizabeth Bishop, stands apart as the greatest American poet of the latter half of the twentieth century—and Life Studies and For the Union Dead stand as among his most important volumes. In Life Studies, which was first published in 1959, Lowell moved away from the formality of his earlier poems and started writing in a more confessional vein. The title poem of For the Union Dead concerns the death of the Civil War hero (and Lowell ancestor) Robert Gould Shaw, but it also largely centers on the contrast between Boston's idealistic past and its debased present at the time of its writing, in the early 1960's. Throughout, Lowell addresses contemporaneous subjects in a voice and style that themselves push beyond the accepted forms and constraints of the time.

This book revolves around the confessional poetry genre of English literature and it presents an insightful analysis of poems by Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das. The confessional elements elaborated upon by these authors mirror their respective cultural identities and personal turmoil in their lives. The discerning reader will appreciate their contributions in reference to their varied background and identities, which significantly shaped their thoughts and personalities to give a thrust to the ideas of feminism and confessionalism.

Confessional poetry as a genre was first characterized by the critic M. L. Rosenthal in 1959. It has become a potent force, and its practitioners the poetic voices of our time. The poetry is highly subjective, written with frankness and lack of re­straint, and focuses on the ugliness of life. Its leading practitioners, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, W. D. Snodgrass, and John Berryman, have all been recipients of the highest awards in literature, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. Robert Phillips, a critic and also a poet, here directs our attention to the genre in the first book on the subject. In addition to the poets noted above, he discusses the work of Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, Delmore Schwartz, and Allen Ginsberg. Especially valuable are the author's defi­nition and historical review of the genre and his use of interviews and personal comments. An appraisal of the genre, his book is also a guide to new avenues open to poets writing today.

NEW EDITION 2014 EDITION: Chiu's House of Lovely Animals: Confessional Poetry Written by a Ridiculously Funny Asian American Manic Depressive, Priscilla Lee's second collection of poems, explores the peculiarities of everyday life living with an insane politically incorrect husband and a burrito-eating cat. Irreverent, sometimes funny, sometimes dark, these personal poems deal with identity, marriage, wearing the wrong underwear, and bad Chinese food.

Emily Dickinson, one of the most important American poets of the nineteenth century, remains an intriguing and fascinating writer. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson includes eleven new essays by accomplished Dickinson scholars. They cover Dickinson's biography, publication history, poetic themes and strategies, and her historical and cultural contexts. As a woman poet, Dickinson's literary persona has become incredibly resonant in the popular imagination. She has been portrayed as singular, enigmatic, and even eccentric. At the same time, Dickinson is widely acknowledged as one of the founders of American poetry, an innovative pre-modernist poet as well as a rebellious and courageous woman. This volume introduces new and practised readers to a variety of critical responses to Dickinson's poetry and life, and provides several valuable tools for students, including a chronology and suggestions for further reading.

"The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed--with, around, and against the text of their lives." --

Explores the ways in which American poetry has documented and sometimes helped propel the literary and cultural revolutions of the past sixty-five years.