Silvia Plath: Plath and Berry Confessional Life

Plath and Berry Confessional life

  When you talk about path you think in a writer that transmits a lot of feelings through her poems. Furthermore she was a writer that inspires a lot of people in their life based in her poems meanings. Also she was one of the primary poets that impulse and started the confessional style. At the other hand I will talk about John Berryman who was a writer that as Plath wrote a lot of poems describing his life and situation that he had to pass during his life. He is considered a confessional poet, and as Plath he was one of the most recognized poets in the confessional style. Plath and Berryman had a similar type of life because they had to passed through a lot of problem that at end they could not resolve it, and that is why both of them were confessional writers, because they used their poems to expressed their feelings, to let the people now the difficulties that they had to live. So that is why I choose these two writers to talk about it. For many reasons these two poets are considered a confessional poet of the time period that permit me to understand the meaning of their poems and the meaning of the confessional style that a lot poets took this two writers as example to start writing confessional poems.

  When you see Plath and Berryman you have to deep on their poetry to understand their life and how they developed their poetry based in each problem that they had to pass through their life.   Both of these writers based their poetry in a principal issue that inspire them for the fisrt time to write about their problems creating the confessional poetry. For instance John Berryman based his poetry in his principal issue in his life that was the situation that he had to passed when he saw the suicide of his father. When the Berryman father killed himself, this was the moment in which Berryman started to write sad poetry talking about the suicide and the meaningless of the life. One of the principal poems that made Berryman famous in this style is the “The Dream Songs” is a poem that represent him around the history of poetry. He wrote very sad poetry based in his father situation that made him unhappy and bored in life. For example he said in some things such as: “I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature,   Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as Achilles,..”. There he was clearly expressing his nonsense to live and the meaningless that had their life after his father suicide. Furthermore he used this kind of poetry to expressed his depression. At the other hand, Plath develops her poetry based in her personal life as well but talking about her separation from her husband. A situation that made her be a confessional poet based in the love problems, and the issue that she had to live after her husband left her alone with their children. For example one of the most representative poems of Plath is “Ariel” that even was published after her died. In this poem she talked about what she is feeling and how she was depressed and developed her mental illness. For example when she wrote something as, “And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child’s cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red, Eye, the cauldron of morning.” As Berryman she expressed her feeling in a way that the reader can interpreted their pain in a lot of ways.