Volume III Special Issue I January 2023

Name of Author : Md Sadruzzama Sadar

Title of the paper : Poetic Politics in the Confessional Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Abstract: This paper critically examines the cultural shifts the confessional poet mainly Sylvia Plath brought in postwar American poetry. Under the rubric of postwar isolation ongoing developmental practices induced by Fordist culture whatever psychic disturbances the contemporary generations encountered, are reflected in Plath’s poetry. Unlike St. Augustine’s sacramental confession, confessional poetry primarily aims at autobiographical self-exploration in essence. Yet, the confessional poetry departs from the life writing with its sharpdelving into the poet’s life. The kernel point of this paper is to discuss the way the poet debunk the boundary between private and public domain and the way they prefer to write on socially stigmatized issues like alcoholism, mental illness, adultery, suicidal thought, and depression. By exploring these issues, I argue that confessional poetry penetrates into the poetics of politics under post modernism which blurs the border line of raw and cooked, decent and profane matters. While examining the selected poems of Plath, the cathartic motto of the poet has been highly focused when they express their troubled experiences which were indecent in the past.

Keywords : Confessional Poetry, Cathartic Expiation, Troubled Mind, Impersonality, Politics, and Autobiographical Lyric

DOI :

Page Number : 117-120