|
 While
researching Anne Sexton's poetry, I noticed a curious trend in the critical essays, reviews and papers I read;
it seemed that most, if not all, of the responses to her poetry fell into the old trap of equating the personas
of the poem with the poet. While this is not a new critical foible, the scope and depth of the errors in the context
of Poetic Confessionalism intrigued me. So, via the assistance of some musings on the Confessional process by Michel
Foucault in his work, The History of Sexuality, I hope to illustrate how readers, reviewers, critics and interpretive
essayists utilized the underlying framework or structure of the poems (in the context of "a confession")
to incorporate Sexton's poetry into their own ideologies- however, in an odd sense these critics were as much taken
advantage of by
the poems as they attempted to take advantage of the poems- for many of Sexton's poems are constructed to suggest
the ritual of confession as a way to actively shape critical response to her work.
Confessionalism and Sexton's Place in its Critical
Reception
 To
begin we should place the Confessional style within the critical framework of its day. One useful aid is Caroline
Hall's research in her book Anne Sexton; Hall traces the contemporary usage of the term "Confessional"
in literary criticism. She views the movement as a "reaction against the Eliotic school of extinction of personal-ity"
and agrees with M.L. Rosenthal's assessment that:
These poems seemed to me one culmination of the Romantic
and modem tendency to place the literal Self more and more at the center of the poem in such a way as to make his
psychological vulnerability and shame an embodiment of his civilization.1
She concludes by declaring:
Confessional poetry is, then, a specific and legitimate
movement in twentieth century poetry, it is at once a modern manifestation of an ongoing tradition, a reaction
against a previously dominant mode, and a unique development. We should not be surprised that its advent provoked
such violent and emotional reaction among critics and readers alike. Such responses were no doubt motivated and
inspired in part by the very personal, violent, and emotional nature of the poetry itself. 2
Reaction to Sexton
 Anne
Sexton was an avowed Confessional poet, belonging to the Confessional school of Lowell, Plath, Snodgrass etc. and
helping to develop its precepts; critical review of To
Bedlam and Part Way Back, her first book, established
her as a poet "who wrote from experience" and many poems in that book, particularly "The Double Image,"
use a narrator which could be identified as a contemporary New England woman. (Many critics agree that "The Double Image" is a 'conversation' between Sexton and her mother.) Yet
when reading criticism of Sexton, a disturbing trend becomes evident. Sexton, while certainly not unique in her
writing of Confessional poetry, is critically approached in a manner different from other Confessional poets. Brian
Gallagher advances a suspicion I've long held, that Anne Sexton, unique among the Confessionals:
Threatens to become a kind of legendary cultural tragedy
which supports any of a variety of interpretations--the romantic one of her as a doomed artist, the psychiatric
one of her as a schizophrenic exhibitionist, the mythopoetic one of her as a "dying [goddess]," the "feminist"
one of her as a victim of the patriarchal culture. Even so acute an analyst of the modern American poetic scene
as Helen Vendler, in reviewing The
Complete Poems, seems to give tacit endorsement
to an exclusively biographical focus when she condudes that "Sexton's poems read better as a diary than as
poems." 3
Gallagher correctly identifies a problem that dominates most, if not all, of the criticism and interpretation of
Sexton's poetry. I will examine similarities among critical responses, but first, I'd ask you to consider Sexton
as a writer whose work invites numer-ous and differing critical responses, all influenced to some extent by bio-graphical
input.
Consider separate analysis of her poetry in light of each of the following:
She wrote from an easily identifiable feminine position concerning subjects then
considered taboo, such as abortion and menstruation (women-centered criticism);
she wrote during the 1960s, a period of great social change (historical/sociological);
she had well-documented psychological problems which eventually lead to her suicide
(psychoanalytic);
she had a fairly well-documented life, and excellent source for biographical parallels;
she made use of mythic imagery in many of her poems Jungian/mytho-poetic);
she ex-plored religious questions of faith and salvation in her later poetry (religious/mystical).
Truth, Poetry, Anne
 I
stress that anyone reading Sexton's biography, by Dianne Wood Middlebrook, will begin to notice similarities between
the subject matter of Sexton's poetry and her life. Speaking as a poet myself, I'd like to point out that it's
impossible to write from outside one's sphere of knowledge and understanding (one's self) and often, discrete events
are taken from the poet's own life and worked into a poem. However, these events are often fictionalized to a greater
or lesser degree; names are changed, sequences of events compacted, dialogue restated (not reported), etc. While
it is not completely inappropriate (and theoretically unsound) to consider the poet's life when reading or interpreting
individual poems, we must resist the temptation to apply what seems to be pertinent historical facts to the ambiguities
of a given poem in an effort to achieve a greater understanding of that poem.
For example, Sexton's well-documented psychological problems lend a particular interest to a psychiatric reading
of her poetry, especially when one considers that she began writing poems as a form of therapy suggested by her
psychiartist, Dr. Martin. A psychiatric reading would first interpret ambiguities within the poems as
reflective of the mental state of the poet (not the persona) and then use biographical data as further evidence
for "unlocking" or interpreting that poem. But what is the goal of such a criticism- to reduce the poems
to signposts that point towards a "real" experience? And for what purpose? Certainly actual case studies
would be more valuable to the psychological community. . . Let's look at one critic's response - perhaps more surprising
if we consider that Dickey is a poet himself.
Dickey, Anne, and what Dickey wants Anne to be
 In
1961, James Dickey, reviewing To Bedlam and Back, writes:
Anne Sexton's poems so obviously come out of deep, painful
sections of the author's life that one's literary opinions scarcely seem to matter; one feels tempted to drop them
furtively into the nearest ashcan, rather than be caught with them in the presence of so much naked suffering?
4
In Dickey's writing, we see a validation of the poetry by it's subject matter insofar as it accurately reflects
"deep painful sections" of Sexton's life. Yet such a validation seems to preclude Sexton's work as poetry;
instead, the primary significance of her poetry is seen in light of the 'truthfulness' of the subject matter, more
akin to the approach an historian or cultural critic might take if evaluating a diary. Dickey offers the red herring
that his literary opinions don't "matter" when encountering such "naked suffering". Also- Dickey
uses a metaphor of social interaction- "caught with them in the presence of", as if his literary opinions
were some sort of private tryst or affair that needed to be concealed from disapproving third parties. However,
his literary opinions have already exposed themselves in his review by supposing Sexton's poems as autobiographical
experiences which have ("so obviously") occurred to the poet.
Scarcely half a page later, while upholding the idea
that the poet's personal experience engenders the writing, he accuses the poetry of "straining to make contrivance
and artificiality appear natural" and expresses his "hope that a writer of Mrs. Sexton's seriousness,
and with her terrible story to tell, would avoid this kind of thing at any price." 5
Dickey seems to almost berate Sexton for not surrendering
to the "terrible story" of her life- presumably, the best type of Sexton poem for Dickey would be one
that "naturally" expresses the "terrible story"- something, we might imagine, akin to an autobiographical
effulvision.
The amusing counter to this type of criticism occurred on September 11, 1973, when Sexton was interviewed by William
Heyen and Al Poulin.
After Poulin questioned the truthfulness of the events depicted in the poetry, "were they real poems about
madness? 6 Or were they poems about real madness," Heyen, proffers
the idea that the poems will somehow be less valid, "shaky ground," if they are fictionalized experience:
Heyen: To follow up one of Al's questions, and this
is a much asked question, too, but to what extent are you fiction-alizing Anne Sexton as you write some of these
poems? Can you say anything about that shaky ground? 7
I will render Sexton's response in full, partially to illustrate her response, and partially because I find it
humorous,
Sexton: Well, there's enough fiction so that it's total
confu-sion if one were to...I remember Ralph Mills talking about my dead brother whom I've written about. And I
met Ralph and I said, "Ralph,"--this was a critical essay he'd written--"Ralph, I had no brother,
but then didn't we all have broth-ers who died in that war?" Which was the Second World War, which was long,
a few years ago. But didn't we all, somehow, have brothers? But I write my brother, and of course he believes it.
I mean, why not? Why shouldn't he? But I was just telling him, incidentally, there was no brother. So, that kind
of...I should say "Excuse me, folks, but no brother," but that would kind of ruin the poem, so. . . 8
Sexton identifies several key elements: the tendency of readers to attribute all information in a 'Confessional'
poem as having happened to her, their need for this to maintain the illusion of the poem's narrator as being a
plausible, and the reality that her own writing is not purely autobiographical.
Two years later, Dickey greeted Sexton's second volume, All
My Pretty Ones, by stating, "It would
be hard to find a writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience,
as though this would make the writing more real.'' 9
As it is of course possible to "dwell insistently" on "pathetic and disgusting" aspects of
bodily experience" and construct a critically well-received and popular narrative (as Dickey found out when
he wrote a novel centered on a homosexual rape), we should examine his statements a bit more closely. . . Implicit
in his statement is that Sexton's goal is to make her writing "more real", which should not be confused
with the usual stylistic injunction to become "more realistic". Dickey is either presupposing the poem's
narratives are based on "real" events from Sexton's life, which they poorly portray, or he is arguing
that the poems should seem
even more as such- convincing testimony of actual events. In either case, Dickey again focuses on the subject matter
of the poems, finding them to be sensationalistic and repulsive (unreal?). In doing so he reveals a thread common
to critics who pay homage to what they believe to be the "real" experience of the poet, which trumps
the poems themselves. (This is somewhat akin to the psychoanalytic symbolism of Freud, wherein a thing may symbolize
a thing that symbolizes a thing - i.e.. the black horse in your dream is a symbol of your father's death and your
father's death is a symbol of your own mortality.) The invidiousness of this line of reasoning is that it favors
unconscious thought as being "more truthful, more honest, more real" and that reality trumps the actual
words of the poem, allows for the poem to be dismissed as poetry.
Some critics will even try to subvert multiple poems; Kay Ellen Capo in "Redeeming Words" begins by stating
that, "From one perspective, To Bedlam and
Part Way Back is Anne Sexton's attempt to dramatize
her mental illness'' 10 and while she continues her article in a less biographical vein,
she still makes many refer-ences to Sexton's personal, documented experience alongside a more theo-retical discussion
of rhetorical effect. Cecil Hemley, in his review of All
My Pretty Ones, asserts that "there
is no doubt that the poet wants us to associate herself with the "I" of the poem ("The Truth the Dead Know"); it is Anne Sexton who has not driven to the cemetery."
11 Once this line of reasoning begins the poem falls by the wayside,
dropped like a calling card that has let the critic gain access to "Anne Sexton".
M.L. Rosenthal also displays such a technique, addressing, refuting and negating the persona:
The poetry is in the Pity, as Wilfred Owen says--the
ultimate referent is the private suffering, whose public dimensions were more self-evident in his poetry of war
than in Mrs. Sexton's poems of madness. I do not wish to push this point any further--poetry is the issue. 12
By favoring Owen, Rosenthal implies that "private suffering" is the benchmark of poetry and that Owen's
poetry more perfectly elucidates this "private suffering". For Rosenthal, if Anne had made her "private
suffering" more "self-evident", her poems would have benefited, been more poetic (as to him, Owen's
were).
In addition, he further stresses the idea that Sexton's poetry is a poetry of experience when he postulates that
"recognizably Confessional poems" 13 exist within All
My Pretty Ones, an assertion not far removed
from Sexton's readers claiming an intuitive or personal identification with the Sexton persona, i.e. Rosenthal
(like a supreme court justice) can recognize "confessional poems" when he sees them. Considering his
aforequoted characterization of Confessional Poetry,
These poems seemed to me one culmination of the Romantic and modem tendency to place the literal Self more and
more at the center of the poem in such a way as to make his psychological vulnerability and shame an embodiment
of his civilization.
it seems that Rosenthal has no qualms about spotting out some of Anne Sexton's "psychological vulnerability
and shame", but it is enough for him to simply flag her "recognizably Confessional poems" as such
and move on.
Fan Mail
 Sexton's
fan mail indicates which of Sexton's poems are most frequently cited as being Confessional. Janet Luedtke, examining
the entire eight hundred sixty nine item collection of Sexton's fan mail, found that "five hundred eighty
seven letters (more than two-thirds) are from women...all of them speaking in some way of the profound cultural
changes affecting women's lives in the 1960s and early 1970s.'' 14
These letters: most often single out for praise the
poems that feature stories about women's relationships: "The
Double Image" and "The Division of
Parts" (about Sexton's mother); "Pain for a Daughter" and "Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely
Woman" (about her daughters); "For
my Lover Returning to His Wife" (about
the end of an affair); "Menstruation at Forty" (about longing for a son); "Unknown Girl in a Mater-nity
Ward"(about an unwed mother). 15
Such poems tend to possess a contemporary female persona who addresses emotionally charged issues. Often readers
of her poetry, feeling a strong sense of identification with the situations and emotions presented in her poems
read the poetry as a communicative act, originating from a "real Sexton" and not from an artist's constructed
persona.
Sexton became increas-ingly identified with any contemporary female narrative voice in her poems, "One fan
says simply: 'Your poems are letters, of course". . .Another says, 'On first reading, I read your book [To Bedlam and Part Way Back]
as if it were a novel.' 16 Responses to All
My Pretty Ones, Sexton's second book, are
character-ized as containing:
some statements such as "As I'm reading, I keep
wanting to tell you--yes, me too" (K.M. 9-4-70), or "It is so unspeakably good to find a poet who speaks
to you. . .my feelings are really quite simple I understand the poems" (J.R. 11-3-66), or "The last authentic
voice of the American housewife---at last" (G.S. 48-69). And almost unanimously, the letters attest to the
emotional power of a Sexton poem. 17
Convinced by the poems, readers equate the narrative voice with the 'truthful' expression of the historical Anne
Sexton. Such responses may indicate the reader has glimpsed something of her/his own life in the persona, an identification
that indicates a convincing, plausible, and hence, artistically rendered persona exists in Sexton's poetry. Suzanne
Juhasz, seems to both articulate this type of response and embody the fallacy of the poet/persona equation when
she writes:
People responded to her poetry because she had the courage
to speak publicly of the most personal experiences, the ones so many share. She became a spokesperson for the secret
domestic world and its pains. 18
Dramatis Personae
 One
solution to avoiding this mingling (deliberate or accidental) is to identify and separate the discrete elements
of both her work as a poet and her life as a person. I would like to distinguish between the historical Anne Sexton
(biological person), Anne Sexton the poet, Anne Sexton as a "Confessional persona" and Anne Sexton as
the narrative voice, the persona within an individual poem.
The historical Anne Sexton was the physical woman who lived out most of her life in Massachusetts, bore two children,
and most likely provided a great deal of raw material for the poems.
Anne Sexton the poet was the person who sat down in her study to write poetry in a great variety of formal patterns
that covered many subjects. She was an organizing force who, in addition to writing third person omniscient poems,
and poems in clearly adopted personas (like that of an Arabian child) would occasionally use elements of her life
in poems; she did fictionalize, recast, and invent other elements in those same poems. The distinction between
the poet and the historical person enables us to transcend the view that Sexton's poetry was some sort of spontaneous
autobiographical outpouring over which she had no control.
The narrative voice of a single poem is readily apparent.
Often, we attribute an identity to the narrative voice; for example, in Sexton's "The Moss of His Skin",
guided by the epigram, we most commonly identify the speaker as an Arab girl, being buried alive with her father's
corpse, "Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next to their dead fathers.'' 19
In the poetry deemed Confessional we presume the voice to be the historical Sexton (to a greater or lesser degree).
In "The Double Image" enough textual clues exist for us to assign the voice
to Sexton (or a woman nearly identical to Sexton). Thus the small jump to speaking of the mother in "The Double Image" as Anne Sexton's mother.
Anne Sexton the Confessional persona exists only in the body of her work, and we are best off considering this
concept in the light of the narrative voice. The narrative voice is found in single poems while the Confessional
persona is an entity constructed from multiple narrative voices. The Confessional persona might exist in an individual
who has read a number of Sexton's poems and begun to view the Confessional poems (poems with "Sexton"
as the narrative voice) as a body. Often critics will infer that as the narrative voice is the same or similar,
then there is validity to reading such poems as a body and drawing conclusions from them.
When such a constructed Confessional persona bears strong resemblance to the poet, we have an even greater tendency
to view the inclusion of biographical evidence in argumentation as useful. Unfortunately, once these correlations
are established, the author often is viewed as 'merely biographical' as if the forces that helped shape the life
of the individual were so powerful that they superseded any authoring, ordering or discriminatory abilities of
the author in question.
Thoughts on Confession -and how Sexton's poems
fit into this construction.
 By
examining Michel Foucault's insights into the process of confession as outlined in his The
History of Sexuality, vol.1, I will attempt
to map out some of the structures of Confessional dialogue (then apply those structures to Sexton interpretation
and criticism).
While many of Foucault's statements cannot be empirically proven, nonethe-less I find his observations to have
merit. I would ask readers to consider situations in which they have either given or received personal confessions
while reading the Foucault passages. As the English language uses the same term "confessor" for the person
who gives the confession and the person who receives it (interesting, no?) distinguishing between the two types
of confessor, the one who engenders, or 'gives,' the confession and the one who receives and interprets the confession,
would prove helpful. The first I will designate as the 'Penitent,' the second as 'Confessor'. Like a judge judges
the accused, the Confessor confesses the penitent.
Foucault argues for the prevalence of the Confessional mode of discourse (discourse as the total communication,
be it conversation or recorded word) in the modern western world:
The confession became one of the West's most highly
valued techniques for producing truth. We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has
spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love
relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, one's sins, one's thoughts and desires, one's illnesses
and troubles; one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell. One confesses
in public and in private, to one's parents, one's educators, one's doctor, to those that one loves; one admits
to oneself, in pleasure and pain, things it would be impossible to tell anyone else, the things people write books
about. One confesses---or is forced to confess? 20
When considering confession's scope, we consider it on the most abstract level, asking what the confession to priest,
friend, Doctor or psychiatrist have in common. It is important to note while confession is pervasive, it used to
structure the discourse of particular topics concerned with significant behavior of individuals, not gen-eral information
such as one might find in a newspaper. These topics are those which are found on the edge of polite talk, the taboo
which is censored in conduct, yet must be discussed (for a variety of different reasons). Sexton 'speaking' of
menstruation openly in her poems helped to engage a Confessional framework, a defining structure for her work,
as that which is not discussed openly will often be teased out in a Confessional situation. In addition to her
poetry's subjects, Sexton's reputation as a Confessional poet contributed to readers viewing themselves as receiving
or overhearing a confession. As Sexton said about Ralph Mills' essay, "I write my brother, and of course he
believes it. I mean, why not? Why shouldn't he?".
What is confession?
 To
begin, "The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement.''
21 While the confession is a dialogue, the Penitent is the focus
of the Confessional act, he (and his thoughts and actions and desires) is subject which will be discussed. Thus,
for critics like Dickey, while Anne was writing poems about other things, she was "really" writing about
Anne. Keeping in mind its dialogue structure, confession is:
a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for
one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor
but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge,
punish, forgive, console, and reconcile. 22
When confronted by a Confessional poem, we may assign ourselves, as readers, the role of Confessor; yet for the
moment we will limit the consideration of the Confessional partner (i.e. Confessor) to the persona who is being
addressed by the narrative voice in any given poem. By this, I mean instead of assuming (as most critics do) that
the poem's narrator is speaking to them (the critic/reader), let's consider the poem as a second person address,
speaking to an unnamed (or named) "you", a second imagined persona.
The narrative voice of the poems (varying from confessional poem to poem, will variously address different types
of Confessors, alternating between a psy-choanalyst, a priest (who represents both God and the community of believers),
a parent, God, etc. For example, in Sexton's poem, "You, Doctor Martin," the figure addressed is most probably Doctor Martin, the actual
name of Sexton's analyst. If such an assumption is made, readings of Sexton's poetry often try to focus on the
relationship between Sexton and the assumed confessor/receiver. Most criticisms that mention "For John..."
become preoccupied with Sexton's relationship with John Holmes. Of course, these poems may be written to actual
people, but one should be wary in assigning the voice addressing Doctor Martin or John as Anne Sexton's honest,
unfictionalized experience.
In a poem where the Confessor is implied yet not identified, where the narrative persona is confessing to empty
air, to God, to whomever, an ambiguity is created which opens many of Sexton's Confessional poems to multiple readings.
Meaning derived from these readings will alter according to which role the reader/interpreter casts the Confessor
in. By alter-nately considering the Confessor of "The
Abortion" as a psychoanalyst and then a
Roman Catholic priest, the importance of the poem's move-ment towards its conclusion should be revealed, for in
Sexton's Confessional poetry we are invited to watch a process between constructed personas within the poem, a
process into which we as readers have input. Regardless of the personality we may imagine the Confessor to possess,
the same function is served by its overt or implied presence.
What was discussed in the confession?
 Anyone
who has made a painful and private disclosure to another individual will realize that vague generalizations will
soon dwindle away into an inquiry of minute detail:
the confession lends itself, if not to other domains,
at least to new ways of exploring the existing ones. It is no longer a question simply of saying what was done...and
how it was done; but of reconstructing, in and around the act, the thoughts that recapitulated it, the obsessions
that accompa-nied it, the images, desires, modulations, and quality of the pleasure that animated it. . .society
has taken upon itself to solicit and hear the imparting of individual pleasures. 23
One does not confess to someone that one is a 'bad person'
without expecting the question "why?" Moral ramifications are explored within a conversa-tional setting;
the entire history of a single act may be worked out: The most discrete event in one's...behavior--whether an accident
or a deviation, a deficit or an excess---was deemed capable of entailing the most varied consequences through-out
one's existence? 24
Foucault acknowledges this in his discussion of sexuality, but the matrix remains the same should we enter any
'crime' or 'questionable act' into its process:
all this had to enter, in detail, into the process of
confession and guidance. According to the new pastoral, sex must not be named imprudently, but its aspects, its
correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications. 25
Sexton provides concrete details in many of her poems; her intensely charged and image rich poems explore inner
psychological states of her personas. Such detail is free to be worked into the Confessional framework by the various
Confessors. Consider detail from "The
Abortion": "in truth, the ground cracks
evilly, a dark socket from which coal has poured.' 26
The Confessor is free to interpret such subjective description and use it within the Confessional dialogue. Again,
the imagined analyst or priest may come to different conclusions, assign different moral significance to the action,
but the process by which they do so remains the same.
If the Confessional narrative does not seem continuous and possesses troubling gaps, Foucault proposes a concept
of "not one but many silences,'' 27 wherein the distinction is made between a simple lack of direct
discourse and a variety of euphemistic (or significant) silences:
There is no binary division to be made between what
one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things. 28
Such a concept is complicated and I mention it here only tangentially to illustrate that issue may be taken with
what is not said in a poem. One would expect such discussion to center on the subject of the poem and a failure
of the narrator to openly address pertinent issues. "The
Abortion" would enter into this type of
Confessional matrix. Sexton alternates description of landscape with an italicized refrain of "Someone who
should have been born is gone". Readings of this poem often concentrate on examining the detail provided for
indications of tile confessor's mental state. 29 (Incidentally, most readings also assume that Sexton herself
had the abortion, but no evidence for this has been found in her correspondence, therapy tapes or in any verbal
reports to her friends.) Dickey and others take issue with what is not said in many poems, the gaps in "Mrs.
Sexton's terrible story".
What is the nature of the relationship between
the Penitent and the Confessor?
 The
Penitent is one who 'voluntarily' seeks out the Confessor. One of the strong limiting factors in the relationship
is what information is actually volunteered by the Penitent, for such information will help to focus and limit
the scope of the Confessor's investigations:
by virtue of the power structure immanent in it, the
Confessional discourse cannot come from above.., through the sovereign will of a master, but rather from below,
as an obligatory act of speech. 30
Yet the power is not invested in the Penitent, "the agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks
(for it is he who is constrained), but in the one who listens and says nothing;'" 31 the Confessor and his interpretive powers constitute a power
in the relationship, for he is free to manipulate information in such a way as to overcome objections by the Penitent.
In reference to "The Abortion," readings which claim the persona is 'repressing' emotion and, then, attempt
to interpret the landscape on the grounds that the person "must" feel a specific emotion (grief, loss
etc.) are perfect examples of presupposing knowledge for the purpose of coloring the testimony of the Penitent.
To diagram such a relationship is crucial in light of confession as "a ritual in which the truth is corroborated
by the obstacles and resistances it has had to surmount in order to be formulated" 32 which begs the question:
How is truth arrived at in confession?
 Neither
the Penitent nor the Confessor has a monopoly on truth:
The truth did not reside solely in the subject who,
by confessing would reveal it wholly formed. It was constituted in two stages: present and incomplete, blind to
itself, in the one who spoke, it could only reach completion in the one who assimilated and recorded it. 33
The stress is on the process of confession as producing truth; the confes-sion is not simply a system of Pavlovian
simplicity in which the Confessor consistently rewards and punishes particular behaviors:
if one had to confess this was not merely because the
person to whom one confessed had the power to forgive, console, and direct, but because the work of producing the
truth was obliged to pass through this relationship. 34
There is a sense of equality among the partners; one can easily imagine/recall incidents where two persons carefully
tease out the abstract meaning from one or the other's actions. Almost everyone knows such a confidante whose interpretation
and perspective are valuable: "veracity is not guaran-teed by the lofty authority of the magistery...but by
the bond, the basic intimacy in discourse.'' 35
Yet in the Confessional structure, "The one who listened.-was the master of truth...his power was...to constitute
a discourse of truth on the basis of its decipherment.'' 36 Such
can never be in doubt as the Penitent places itself under the authority of the Confessor for the purpose of reaching
a truth. And, in a sense, is this not what most contemporary criticism does? Does it not assume that the very existence
of a text demands, like a confession, to have repetitive themes teased out, and finally, to have signifi-cance
assigned to its whole, to be, ultimately, judged? The very act of interpreting an poem supposes that a reader of
the poem (audience for the criticism) cannot see the poem's true significance on their own.
Again, truth is determined not by the simple adherence to an absolute standard, but rather by the exploration of
ambiguous particularities within the self-referential discourse of the Penitent. Of course, such a truth is indeed
relative, but such truth often will have more importance for individuals than empirical truth. Consider the example
of a Catholic Confession in which a degree of guilt and innocence is established based on the dialogue between
the priest acting for both God and the Christian community and the penitent confessor. Ultimately, the process
is geared towards the production of truth and the purification of the individual.
Consider the responses Sexton's 'fan letters' quoted above; the identifica-tion with an often distressed/distressing
narrative voice believed to be Sexton's produced an affirming positive tone in the responses of those who identified
with the persona. This may well indicate confession is:
a ritual in which the expression alone, independently
of its external consequences, produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exonerates,
redeems, and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises him salvation. 37
Catharsis.
Keeping in mind the concepts and characteristics of a Confessional dialogue, we can now consider the power relationships
from differing perspectives. By doing so we can view the conflicting 'expectations' each position adopts and gain
an appreciation of the complexities of constructing and analyzing a Confessional poem.
From the perspective of the narrative voice,
the Penitent within the poem.
 This
is one of the perspectives Foucault is more helpful with. As the Penitent constructs the confession for the sole
purpose of its being heard by a real or virtual receiver, the Penitent's relation to the Confessor is the primary
characteristic of its self-definition. Naturally, identity exists both within and outside of the Confessional framework;
my concern is with the self in light of the Confessional structure. How does it operate within the structure? As
the subject of its own confession the Penitent itself (the real or imagined being), not the confession (the act
of communication), is the source matrix into which the significance will enter, that is to say, the narrative voice
provides subjective detail to be organized by the listening forces. The giving and withholding of such detail is
the primary direct influence the Penitent can bring to bear on the process of the confession. By entering the Confessional
structure, the Penitent trades off the power to exclusively control the direction of discourse for control over
the volume of detail (which may still lead the confession in certain directions). Such detail will tend to be symbolic,
and hence, open to a multiplicity of readings (and meanings). These ambiguities provide openings with which the
Confessor can begin to move towards truth.
From the perspective of the Confessor within
the poem
 As
there is no opportunity for the Confessor to respond in a poem (we see only half the process) the reader of the
poem may either adopt the role of the Confessor or he may consider himself privy to the confession. The matrix
itself will limit the Confessor to staying within its structure, but, as noted previously, this may be discarded
in certain situations, focusing on what is not said by the persona. In such a situation, Confessor functions much
like an analyst who has reason to believe in a masking or alteration of fact by their subject (e.g. Freud's analysis
of 'Dora's' dreams).
The goal of the Confessor is to produce, with the willing help of the Penitent, the truth. Such production of truth
centers on the interpretation of detail provided by the Penitent, and the assign-ment of significance to it.
Therefore, constraints on the Confessor would be plausibility and the limits of the ideological system with which
it is operating. A negative example best illustrates these limitations. I could not reasonably declare that after
determining Sexton's poetry to be an unabashed, uncensored persona outpouring, that she was, in fact, a strong
supporter of the Ecuadorian fruit vendors' struggle for free Chinese markets. A plausible explanation of he poetry
could be obtained if I were to portray myself as a feminist critic, whose analysis of Sexton's confessions pointed
towards a stifling domestic life.
From the perspective of the reader/critic/observer
of the poem
 Without
delving deeply into theories of text as pleasure and reader response, Sexton's poetry would invites certain types
of response. The consumptive need, a need for mastery/domination of the passive female persona, the voyeuristic
thrill at the exposure of private detail, a desire for communication (or cathardic identification) with the persona
(aforementioned 'fan-letters) all share a common process. Whether or not the reader/critic/observe of the poem
chooses to cast himself as the Confessor with it attendant responsibilities, he must interpret the ambiguities
of the confession and apply them to his own ideological framework for him t find significant meaning. Such a process
is inevitable and mirrors that of the Confessor. The difference between the two is that while the reader will form
significant meanings concerning the (poem/confession) they are not obligated, for the good of the Penitent, to
work toward 'truth'.
Significant meaning is to be distinguished from simple meaning by implication. For example, the simple meaning
of "Menstruation at 40" is the words of the poem, the poem itself, with no implication. Obviously, this
is a abstract, as one cannot read or experience a poem without engaging in sore process of interpretation, which
would favor some elements at the expense of others. The forming of opinion imparts significant meaning to a piece.
This may be a largely unconscious process, as in the case of forming an opinion' of disgust when reading, say of
a biological function as in Sexton's "Menstruation at 40", which provoked Louis Simpson to label it as
"the straw that broke this camel's back". Of course, for one poem to break Simpson's back- it would have
to be viewed as a strand in a great heap of straw; Sexton's poems are not allowed to stand on their own, as individual
pieces with separately imagined speakers.
Alternatively, a conscious process would be a more overt act of interpretation by attributing meaning or interpretative
reading to a poem or section of a poem. It becomes the Confessor's business to inquire beyond the limits of the
words on the page in front of him.
Witness the response to the poem, "For
John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further,":
Linda Wagner-Martin views "the poem as an internal
process of know-ing true emotion, experiencing it, coming to it in both feeling and language.''
A.R. Jones: "In her poem, "For John"...she claims on behalf of the poet that courage to face experience
which Schopenhauer in a letter to Goethe claimed for the philosopher.'' 39
For Thomas P. McDonnell, the poem is "a poetic statement on the book's epigraph by Schopenhauer.'' 40
Diane Wood Middlebrook focuses on part of the poem asserting
that, "condensed into the metaphor of the broken kitchen bowl are most of the meanings Sexton associates with
her own liberation into poetry.'' 41 As a note, the bowl was never described as a particular type
of bowl.
Suzanne Juhasz feels that, "in 'For John'... she presents an aesthetics of poetry which is conscious that
the poem, because it is an object that communi-cates and mediates between person and person, can offer 'something
special' for others as well as oneself.'' 42
This list both illustrates absolute statements, 'truth,' derived from the structure of the poem/confession and
the aforementioned confusion of Sexton and the persona.
From the perspective of the author of the poem
 This
perspective is unique, in that it exists 'behind' the structure we have been examining and is obscured by the persona.
Considering the author introduces a second organizing force in addition to that of the Penitent. The author is
constrained primarily by issues of plausibility, yet operates at a tremendous advantage; the author knows no true
dialogue can occur. Once solidified into the matrix of a poem, questions which would normally pursue significance
become meaningless. For example, considering "For
John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further",
the reader/Confessor, may well choose to ask, "Who is this John? Is he John Holmes, your former teacher, who
is named in full in another of your poems?". Yet, there will be no answer forthcoming. Interpretations begin
to operate on probability, (biographical information is included in the criticism to favor one view over another),
because the critics buy into the Confessional structure, the wish to arrive at truth by assigning meaning to textual
ambiguities.
Within this structure the author (whether conscious of this system or not) occupies a position that disrupts the
classical confession. The author organizes a fixed and limited Penitent, fixed and limited, in the sense that the
poem "For John..." will remain in the same form (barring shoddy republication) --its contribution to
the Confessional discourse is closed. The Penitent persona in the poem will never help to formulate a truth based
on its statements because the Penitent does, in reality, not exist, being only words on a page. So the author,
by carefully choosing both the persona and what the persona utters, can manipulate the reader/Confessor into asking
certain types of questions while forever withholding information. Paul Lacey, touching on similar themes in his
"The Sacrament of Confession", states:
The poem creates its own frame of reference, establishing
the norms, --ethical, emotional, social, personal-- by which we understand it. The poem tells us how to regard
its state-ments, how to read a pattern of metaphors, when the stance is ironic. 43
Lacey's point is well taken; the poem has its own demand on the reader. The reader, more often than not, is aware
of Sexton's death and becomes more inclined to find truth in the poetry. Certainly all published critics after
October 4, 1974 knew of it. How could the poems with troubling, taboo subjects not be taken seriously - her suicide
ensured their authenticity as the Confessional recordings of a troubled woman.
Reading Sexton
 In
any critical reading, we are then dealing with the Confessional matrix which includes at least two abstract viewpoints
or ideologies, those of the critic and the persona (defined by the text as matrix of meaning, invested with particular
words arranged in a definite order). It is this particular and fixed framework which critical reaction reflects.
The critical response invests the text with meaning, which it then reacts to, but the interpretative act is neces-sary
for response. An example of this is provided when differing interpreta-tions of a single poem are inspected.
The question of how to read Sexton must be raised if the above is true. I don't wish to imply that criticism which
buys into the Confessional matrix is 'invalid'. What I will state is that to blindly accept generalized conclusions
concerning greater themes which may be evidenced in Sexton's poetry is a part of the common reading process, which
would render it objectively invalid, yet far from worthless.
An examination of principles of significant difference (meaning) and ideology set forth by Louis Althusser will
help to identify the kind of truth to which I feel a Sexton poem may lead. Althusser provides a useful explanation
of significant meaning, that is, meaning and the referential framework mean-ing is derived from.
Louis Althusser views ideology as creating meaningfulness, whereby singular words, deeds and actions make significant
sense. In other words, significance is subject to the presence of ideology and singular words, acts and deeds take
on different significance depending upon the ideology (perspective) through which they are viewed:
Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individu-als
to their real conditions of existence. We commonly call religious ideology, etc., so many 'world outlooks.' Of
course, assuming that we do not live one of these ideologies as the truth (e.g. "believe" in God, Duty,
Justice, etc...), we admit that the ideology we are discussing from a critical point of view, examining it as the
ethnologist examines the myths of a 'primitive society,' that these 'world outlooks' are largely imaginary, i.e.
do not 'correspond to reality,' i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality,
and that they need only be 'interpreted' to dis-cover the reality of the world behind their imaginary repre-sentation
of that world (ideology illusion/allusion)'' 44
If one considers a particular critical bias (feminism, Marxism, formalism) as an ideology, one can begin to see
implications for criticism's relation to a source text, implications for any variety of readings. The fact that
multiple views on the 'value' of individual authors do exist leads towards the idea that multiple ideologies are
engaging the text. Different ideological (critical) ap-proaches to a text exist within the group that comprehends,
that is to say 'can assign meaning to' the text. Yet, on some level, every type of critical approach can be shown
to "fail"; a counter-argument exists.
If no singular ideology can assign an unchanging universally encompassing perspective to a text, a statement, a
singular word, how can we make plausible' judgments on the relative worth of texts outside a single ideologi-cal
framework? The obvious answer would seem to be, we can't. However, Althusser indicates,
while they (ideologies) do not correspond to reality,
i.e., that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality, and that they need only
be 'interpreted' to discover the reality of the world being their imaginary rep-resentation of that world (ideology=illusion/allusion)
45
Thus while no single ideology or perspective may embrace all objective truth, the truth is pointed towards through
allusion. Multiple ideologies engaging a subject would begin to define it. Henry James drew a similar analogy by
likening conflicting character perspectives defining an issue to illuminating an object first by one, then many,
lights. Whether the subject of such an inquiry possesses an 'objective truth' is another matter. There is a final
distinction to be made, concerning expression of ideology through practice.
When Confessional poetry is assigned a contextual meaning then significant (meaningful) meaning may be derived
from its structure or matrix. Such meaning is relative, but as Althusser would point out, for the participants,
this created meaning has little or nothing to do with theory or vast abstract paradigms; instead it is expressed
by practice.
For example, the practice of a fourth grade schoolroom is not so much teaching the pupils a variety of 'academic'
subjects, as the technical matter of these subjects could be gleaned from books, as it is involved in teaching
the student how to answer questions, when to be silent, how to feel superior when favored by the teacher and the
consequences of such favor. Such lessons are most easily learned in the classroom; they are lessons of social conduct.
'Practical matters' for Confessional poetry would be the actual judging of it, the formulation of a hierarchical
system of value:
In order to grasp what follows, it is essential to realize
that both he who is writing these lines and the reader who reads them are themselves subjects, and therefore ideological
sub-jects (a tautological proposition), i.e. that the author and the reader of these lines both live 'spontaneously'
or 'naturally' in ideology in the sense in which I have said that 'man is an ideological animal by nature.'' 46
Therefore, one judges the ideology of the confession through one's own ideology; one judges the ideology of this
essay via one's own opinion and experience-your individual take on reality. While such simple readings (simple
in the sense that they engage only one Confessor, one critic) are valid, perhaps a future project might be to undertake
a comprehensive survey of various critical reactions which were provoked by its entrance in to the existing literary
discourse in America's 1960s. An analysis of how different critics evaluated and constructed judg-mental parameters
around the ambiguities of Confessional poetry could begin to point us in the direction of 'truth', or at least,
how such truth is viewed. Such a project is beyond reach of this essay, yet consider Dessner's article; the type
of Foucaultian engagement clearly exists despite the efforts made to distinguish Sexton and the narrator.
In light of such a project, criticism of Sexton may well become an important factor in an equation between Sexton,
the critics and the average reader, not an end in itself. By becoming aware of criticisms subjectivity and the
structure of its engagement with the text, criticism could be on equal footing with the primary text, helping to
illuminate the various perspectives through which Sexton's poetry could be viewed.
Copyright © 1999 RJ McCaffery
All Rights Reserved
Poet, R.J.
McCaffery,
lives in Providence, RI. When not restoring vintage bicycles, he is involved in a number of web-related poetry,
printing and language projects; many based out of his homepage "It Came from RJ's Brain". Please
visit his site if you're interested in participating in an on-line poetry course.
*****
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Hear Anne Sexton Read Her Own Work