Children ‘like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling’
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AQA (A): Paper 1: ‘Love poetry through the ages’ anthology
In ‘Poetry as Confession’, M. L. Rosenthal’s influential review of Robert Lowell’s seminal collection Life Studies (1959), a new term was added to the critical lexicon — ‘confessional poetry’. Yet this label needs nuanced application if it is to be used in reading post-Second World War American poets like Anne Sexton. As Jo Gill’s book on Sexton (2007) highlights, the confessional mode should not be directly linked to the poet’s own life; instead, it is an aesthetic register that deploys a cast of poetic personae who speak directly to contemporary American realities.
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