Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T18:39:32.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 44 - Psychoanalytic Poetics

from Part IV - Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2014

Alfred Bendixen
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Stephen Burt
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

W.H. Auden's scenario implies that psychoanalysis will produce a new poem. Poets protested that the term confessional ignored meticulous craftsmanship and knowing self-dramatization. Poets from midcentury have explored psychoanalytic models of personhood, voice, and dialogue to complicate models of lyric expressivity. Mouths recur throughout Plath's poetry, mediating between the realm of bodies, blood, and wounds and the potentially more ethereal realm of voice. The sequence of poems about beekeeping that closes Sylvia Plath's Ariel manuscript links poetic creation with organic production and reproduction. To speak because one is shattered might be to utter a cry of emotional devastation. Although it might equally be to recognize that to speak is to be open to, and broken open by, the conditions of speech: psychoanalytic, linguistic, social, and historical. In the new century, the divide between sincere lyric and experimental poetry has been perceived to have broken down.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×