What was often mistaken for a small Sunday afternoon book club at the Victorian house on 31 Inman Street in Massachusetts, actually turned into a major cultural movement. Who would’ve thought that from this a boom in African-American poetry known as the Dark Room Collective would come about.

This boom did not focus on the negative aspects of African-American history, but more on the up-lifting side. The group didn’t whine, they didn’t so much want to argue, or to focus on the hard times in their heritage, but they wanted to show the world the imagination that can be gained from their history.

Picture this: every Sunday the house of Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange was transformed into a studio, or a type of  performance. Many say that no one even knew who lived there and who didn’t at times as the crowds grew more and more each week. As time went on, the series began to extend to musical performances, art shows and even workshops for writers of color in the community. The reading series was started with a simple purpose, for black writers to embrace their heritage and to be proud of it. The overarching mission of the Collective was to form a community of established and emerging African-American writers

Soon enough word got out, and the series blew up! From thrown together to an organized group, the Dark Room Collective was now composed of a melting pot of races, ethnicities and ages. Eventually, the group had to find a new home that would fit the entire family. The group relocated to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston when it outgrew the living room in Cambridge. In 1994, the group packed up and moved again to relocate to the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston University.

The Dark Room Collective stopped after a decade or so, however, some of its members in their 40s, had gone on to become famous literary figures winning major prizes. One example is Natasha Trethewey, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book in 2006, “Native Guard,” and is the nation’s poet laureate. Other famous poets from dark room collective: Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer for “Life on Mars” in 2012, writers Kevin Young, Carl Phillips and Major Jackson have all been recognized as prolific and influential voices in American poetry.

In a way, the Dark Room Collective was a collaborative way for writers to say, “Let’s celebrate saying, ‘Hell yeah! This is our heritage, and this is how we can tell the world!’” In a New York Times article by Jeff Gordinier he quoted Mr. Adrian Matejka, who is part of a poetic organization that came out of the Dark Room Collective. Matejka described the Dark Room Collective as a “shift out of the ‘I’m a black man in America and it’s hard’ mode” into “the idea of ‘you are who you are, so that’s always going to be part of the poem,’ ” with “a lot more room for the sublime experience of language.”

More poems by Tracy K. Smith: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/55520

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56376

More poems by Kevin Young: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/58069

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49763

Resources:

“A Brief Guide to the Dark Room Collective.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 9 May 2004, www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-dark-room-collective.

Gordinier, Jeff. “The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing.” New York Times, 27 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/the-dark-room-collective-where-black-poetry-took-wing.html?_r=0.

“The Dark Room Collective, Then and Now.” Poets and Writers, www.pw.org/content/the_dark_room_collective_then_and_now.

What do you get when you mix post-war American values, a dissatisfied generation of writers, and hard drugs? The most obvious answer in the Beat Generation of Poets. This group of poets paved the way for the rise of counter-culture and gave voice to many social causes, and they made their fame by throwing good taste to the wind.

First of all, the Beat Generation, a term coined by Jack Kerouac, took one look at mainstream writing conventions and gave it a big old middle finger. Measured rhyme and meter? No thanks. Appropriate and inoffensive language? Fuck that! Topics one would talk about in mixed company? Get out of here. These poets, living in post-WWII America, were disillusioned, tired of the way society expected them to think. They threw away that which the West valued and actively sought to write about what would get them in trouble. Their writing covered topics ranging from casual sex to criticism of the U.S government and public.

“America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?”

-Ginsberg, Allen, “America”

In all honestly, Ginsberg and his buddies did not give a single DAMN about looking unpatriotic or “uncivilized”. These were people who wanted to write about the underdogs of society, antiheroes who Americans vilified regularly. This included the homosexual community, the mentally ill, the poor, the addicted, and many others.

Now, this was the mid-20th century. There was no way that American society turned the other cheek to the work of the Beat Poets. Specifically, Ginsberg’s work got published in the work Howl and Other Poems after performing it live in the Sixth Gallery in San Francisco. The following is a snippet from the poem:

“who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,”

-Ginsberg, Allen, “Howl”

Public reception went about as well as you’d think. The publisher of the book, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was soon after arrested on obscenity charges in August, 1956. Through the assistance of the ACLU, however, he was acquitted of the charges on the grounds that the government was violating his First Amendment right to free speech. William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch went through the same drama with the same results. These cases set a precedent for U.S Courts, making it all the more possible for us flag-burners to do our thing.

These writers went to court for their work. If that’s not putting your money where your mouth is, then I don’t know what is. The Beat Generation wasn’t all bark and no bite.

The reason why I’m harping on Ginsberg so much is because he was active long after the original Beat days. He worked to demystify drugs, decriminalize homosexuality, and also advocated for the victims of many foreign conflicts, such as those of the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. This, coupled with his extensive travel to India make him an intellectual who has some worldly experience. And he was an environmentalist to boot!

I have my problems with the Beat Generation. Mostly, they were very guilty of orientalism; that is, the often represented ideas and concepts from Asia (Buddhism, Hinduism) in a way that stereotypes and often gets them plain wrong. And their (perhaps unintentional) conflation of Eastern philosophy and religion with hard drugs, sex, and profanity not only misses the point entirely, but also puts a bad taste in my mouth. But I’ll be dead before I say that these poets, particularly Allen Ginsberg, were not absolute badasses.

Works Cited

A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets. (2004, May 03). Retrieved January 31, 2017, from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-beat-poets

Bochynski, Pegge. “Beat Generation.” Salen Press Encyclopedia (2016)” Research Starters. Web. 8 Feb. 2017

Sax, Richard. “Allen Ginsberg” Salem Press Encyclopedia (2016) Research Starters. Web. 8 Feb. 2017

When you think of the Romantic era you can probably imagine the time had it’s fair share of romance. Well one of the particularly famous (or perhaps infamous?) late romantics, Lord Byron, would certainly be no exception to this reputation. Yes indeed Mr. Byron, born George Gordon Byron, had a fun collection of sexual encounters to go with his emotionally-stirring literary works. It would be safe to assume he was a bit of a lady’s man, and perhaps a man’s man as well? That’s right, about a few years before good old Byron fell deeply in love with his distant cousin Mary Chaworth, he had his first few sexual encounters at age 12 with both boys and girls at his Howell School in London he attended. The late romantics did in fact share their predecessors of early Romanticism’s passion for liberty and self expression.

Now for those of you implicitly labeling this young child as a little on the wild and crazy side, you may be able to credit that behavior to his father who abandoned him or to his schizophrenic mother who abused him. Whichever it may have been, old Byron was certainly carrying around a medley of emotion with him that we can be somewhat thankful for as it set the stage for a riveting array of literary works, often involving a striking hero as a main character.

The trend of sexual escapades continued throughout his tenure at Trinity College from 1805 to 1808. To accompany these incidents he also managed to fall deep into debt and focus little on school while keeping busy with partying, gambling, boxing, and horse-riding. Amidst his busy schedule at Trinity, Byron was able to gain some traction in the literary field, gaining literary recognition from his satirical poem “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” which was his retaliation to harshly critical reviews of his first volume of poetry. However this lovely foundation he had set for himself did not keep him put in London; he decided to embark on a journey through the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas visiting several different countries. His experiences on this journey were reflected by the poem he wrote during it called “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage.” It was not until the death of his mother in July 1811 that Lord Byron returned to England, and her passing actually sent him into a deep depression despite her lack of a best mum award. But it wasn’t very long until our man of the hour got out of his slump and carried on a series of love affairs with several women, and later in the summer of 1813 found himself in a very intimate relationship with his half sister, Augusta, who was married at the time.

Possibly at an attempt to change his ways, Mr. Byron then tied the knot with the lovely and intellectual Annabella Milbanke and in December of 1815 they had a beautiful daughter together, whom of course Lord Byron chose to name Augusta. About a month later Annabella left Byron due to his increased drinking and debt along with all of the rumors of his relations with his half sister and his bisexuality. Understandably so, Byron then left England to never return and continued his treacherous journey elsewhere including Switzerland, Belgium and then Italy, where he went on to write his renowned masterpiece “Don Juan” and later in 1821 became an editor of “The Liberal,” a newspaper of a group of revolutionaries called The Carbonari Society. Finally in 1823, in a last heroic act Byron shows a noble side and accepts an invitation to aid in the Greek fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire, where he personally took command of a Greek unit of elite fighters. He then fell very ill the following year and sadly passed away on April 19, 1824 at the age of 36. He certainly left behind a legacy worth telling, of which the moral would probably be something along the lines of “be yourself.” 

Resources:

http://www.biography.com/people/lord-byron-21124525#early-travel-and-writing

https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-later-Romantics-Shelley-Keats-and-Byron

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/lord-byron

Written by: Nicholas Desai

Metaphysical poetry… well known for complex, extended metaphors, abstract ideas, and poets who believe love poems always get the girl.

Though the most famous metaphysical poems date back to around the 17th century, the idea behind these poems was derived from  the metaphysics branch of philosophy, which deals with the principles of things, especially abstract concepts such as being, substance, knowing, cause, identity, time, and space. This metaphysical theory goes back all the way to ancient Greece, and the phrase “ta meta ta phusika”, or “the things after the Physics”, from some of Aristotle’s works concerning the nature of things without physical scientific explanations… basically, he came up with a new branch of “science” to delve deeper in ideas that were not physical or natural.

Metaphysical poems, in a sense, are full of unnaturalness… even though many of them use analogies and metaphors to explain very natural feelings or concepts. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it nicely… metaphysical poems delve into, “The unnatural, that too is natural.”

So what’s the meaning of all this natural-unnaturalness?

The famous metaphysical poets of the 17th century used the concept of metaphysics to explore philosophical ideas such as human thoughts, love, religion, and morality, created metaphors to explain or simplify these ideas, and used reason and paradox to explain them.

John Donne(right) is one of the most well known. In his poems, he discussed psychology, spirituality, sexuality, and his themes and form marked a departure from traditional poetry. Donne is now known as a great English writer, but for quite some time, his poetry went out of style. It wasn’t until the 20th century that people began to commonly read them again, at the same time as the Modernist movement. Well Donne, good sir.

One of his most famous poems, The Flea, was basically written just to try and convince someone to go out with him, and used the image of flea which had bitten them both to symbolize their potential love… very romantic.

“Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   
How little that which thou deniest me is;   
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be”

Excerpt from The Flea

Though metaphysical poets sometimes didn’t instantly get recognition for their poems, their work continued to be studied and revered for intricacy and originality centuries after.

George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughn, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw were some of the other well known metaphysical poets, known for poems of “emotional and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or “wit”.” They wrote poems of personal or intellectual complexity and concentration, and used similes and metaphors galore. Unlike the traditional poems of the time period, metaphysical poets tended to focus on analyzing feeling instead of just expressing and describing it… meditations on human thought. Many also used bold literary devices, such as irony or paradox, which were quite uncommon at the time. They were basically the hipsters of poetry, using ideas and literary devices before they were cool.

“Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially – about love, romantic and sensual; about man’s relationship with God – the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art.”

-S.K. Paul (Reassessing British Literature: Part 1)

Many metaphysical poets used wit, irony and wordplay to argue a point hidden underneath the surface of the poem… often making it hard for a reader to understand the meaning at first glance. The method was not new (as stated previously, the idea of metaphysics goes back all the way to ancient Greece), so why wasn’t metaphysical poetry popular before the 17th century? The metaphysical poets who gained the most fame modernized the idea and incorporated originality and relatability for readers of the time. The metaphysical conceits used, were usually meant to be striking and far-fetched, to create a distance between or striking incompatibility of objects compared, creating a sort of paradox or irony.

In Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, he combines an “old poetic conceit (the persuasion of the speaker’s lover by means of a carpe diem philosophy)” with vivid imagery and short, rhyming couplets, modernizing it to make it relatable to readers. The poem’s descriptions seem timeless, which is very interesting, since time is a major theme throughout it, and there are even theories that Time is The Coy Mistress…

“Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.”

Excerpt from To His Coy Mistress

All of these poets used the idea of metaphysics and new, bold literary devices to create a new trend in the history of English literature, using a mix of modern (for the time period) speech, intellectual analysis of very human ideas, and striking imagery. If you want to learn more about these poets or read more of these intriguingly awesome poems, check out the links below!

More History!

• Metaphysical Poets
• Metaphysical Poetry

More Poetry!

• Holy Sonnets-Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne
• The Pulley by George Herbert
• The World by Henry Vaughan

“A Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poets.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 19 May 2004. Web. 28 Jan. 2017.

Craik, Henry. “Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Metaphysical Poets. Vol. IV. Eighteenth Century. Henry Craik, Ed. 1916. English Prose.” Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Metaphysical Poets. Vol. IV. Eighteenth Century. Henry Craik, Ed. 1916. English Prose. Bartleby.com, n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

Hall, Michael L. “Metaphysical Poetry and History.” The Sewanee Review 101, no. 4 (1993): 596-603. Web. 28 Jan. 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27546783.

“History of English Literature.” History of English Literature: Metaphysical Poetry. Literaturewise.in, 9 July 2015. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.

“Metaphysical Poets | Glossary Terms | Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2017.

“Metaphysical Poets.” Metaphysical Poets. Ed. Poetrysoup.com. Arczis Web Technologies, Inc., n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

Moore, Andrew. “Studying the Metaphysical Poets.” Studying the Metaphysical Poets. Universalteacher.org, 2000. Web. 30 Jan. 2017.

Paul, S. K. Books.google.com. Vol. 1. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2007. Print.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Metaphysical Poet.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 30 Jan. 2017.

Men who get together to argue.
That seems, for some reason, completely normal.
We’re used to seeing these little competitions of ego both on the larger scale and small: in politics, in football, in classroom debates- heck, in off-the-wall pub conversations I’ve overheard on the hotly debated and very serious issue of coke versus pepsi. (For the record, Pepsi is apparently sweeter, but Coke is from Atlanta, so…coke wins either way).

Now, men who get together to argue about poetry.
That’s…less normal, but still. Not all the way to weird.
And it’s believable, at least, especially if you’ve ever spent way too much time on the internet like I have, where you’ll quickly find that people can find a way to argue about almost anything.

But men who get together to argue about poetry…in the South?
Now that is…not normal.
In fact, I dare say, it starts to sound a little bit …weird.

Or, at least, that’s what people would usually think.

The South isn’t usually attributed to any great, sophisticated art form beyond their ability to brew some kick-ass sweet tea or fry up some delicious chicken, after all.
And in most cases, they serve people only as the unholy antithesis to all things progressive and good in the world- a twangy, hee-hawing, blank-stared example to call upon whenever you need a quick punchline for a joke.

And yet, it was this sentiment (well, a more “1900s” worded version of it, anyway) that spurred a group of male Southern poets to gather together and do exactly that- fight back against the stereotypes-

…via a strongly-worded magazine.

What they were really fighting against, of course, ran a tad bit deeper than a mere pushback against a not-so-subtle dig at the South.

And in the 1930’s, the most well-known member of the group perhaps, a man named John Crowe Ransome, published a manifesto of ideas for people who wanted to follow their line of thought- mainly that industrialization: bad, Southern culture: good.

It was the beginning of a movement- to preserve the South’s traditions in the belief that that was the solution to their economic problems and to the encroaching and dehumanizing threat of the industrial world.

Whether or not that was true, of course, is up for debate. And, in fact, later, Ransome himself actually ended up turning on the movement and publicly criticizing it…

But, the main point of all this is, really, that the group of well-educated Vanderbilt men trying to prove Southerners were capable of great creativity and art, the group that published the literary magazine titled The Fugitive, were called collectively…The Fugitives- literally just the title of their magazine.

Their writing itself, thankfully, was much better than their skill for naming things, proven here by the eloquent and wistful work below, written by Fugitive member Walter Clyde Curry.

“I Have Not Lived”
Though half my years besiege the aged sun,
I have not lived. My robust preparation
Lags tardily behind fit consummation,
Droops sweatily in courses just begun.

Oh, I have loved and lusted with the best,
Plucked momentary music from the senses;
I’ve kissed a lip or two with fair pretenses
And wept for softness of a woman’s breast.

My mind rebounds to nether joys and pain,
Toying with filth and pharisaic leaven;
I know the lift up sundry peaks to heaven,
And every rockless path to hell again.

I wait the hour when gods have more to give
Than husks and bare insatiate will to live.

And so, The Fugitives’ ideas are still widely praised, particularly in conservative media outlets today, and their works are rightfully credited with both redefining and elevating the South’s sense of poetry.
Original mission accomplished.

Works Cited

“The Fugitives: Homepage.” The Fugitives: Homepage. Vanderbilt University, n.d. Web. 01

Feb. 2017.

“Fugitives (poets).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

“Southern Agrarians.” Harry Ransom Center RSS. N.p, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

“Southern Agrarians.” Engl352 / Southern Agrarians. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

“Southern Agrarians.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

“The Fugitives and Agrarians.” Vanderbilt University Archives. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017,

http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/speccol/vuhistory/fugitives_agrarians.php

Treat Poems Like Objects Not Your Woman: The Objectivists

By Ashley Gable

So there once was a group of poets you might not know about. These dudes were intellectual, smart guys. Most of them were Americans, except for this one British guy, and nobody’s quite sure how he got in the mix. These guys were the Objectivist poets from the 1930’s. This era followed the Imagists. So essentially, you have the Imagists, then the Modernists, then the second wave Modernists called the Objectivists. They took their inspiration from poets such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.

The Objectivists were Louis Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams (fun fact! This guy was the only poet to be published as an Objectivist and an Imagist! He’s cool), Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen and Carl Rakosi. And we can’t forget British dude Basil Bunting. These guys treated poems like objects and emphasized sincerity, intelligence, the significance of small words, and each poet was to look at the world clearly. If they could do this, they were successful. Objectivists their poems dealt with language, ethics, and religious and secular Jewish life. (Did I mention these guys were Jewish? Yeah! They’re Jewish! Well, all except good ole Basil.) These dudes had to be pretty Zen in order to do that too!

They first appeared in the 1931 special issue of Poetry magazine. Pound had it arranged, and Zukofsky did the editing. (Pound: I arranged the menu, the venue, the seating!) Along with the normal group of guys, it included a few one hit wonders including Robert McAlmon, Kenneth Rexrot, Whittaker Chambers, Henry Zolinsky, John Wheelwright, Harry Roskolenkier, and Martha Champion. They showed up in this and that was about it.

George Oppen would go on to win a Pulitzer. Carl Rakosi abandoned poetry altogether in 1941,
but would return to it and publish Amulet in 1967 and Collected Poems in 1986. Bunting would go on to publish his best known poem, Briggflatts in 1966. Reznikoff published Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down. He would go on to publish in periodicals. He published By the Waters of Manhattan in 1962. After Reznikoff’s death, Black Sparrow Press brought his major pieces back into print. In 1927, Zukofsky began a work called A. It was a long poem in 24 parts (seriously long dude). Objectivist Anthology published the first seven parts of this piece. He finished the work on his deathbed by writing the index.

“Legacy. What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” When is a Hamilton quote not relevant? These guys, the Objectivists were originally not that well liked. Some people found them to come off as hostile, but they immediately impacted the people who had influenced them. Pound was influenced by the form. Zukofsky influenced Jackson Mac Lowe and John Cage. They would go on to influence an avant garde group of poets in the 1970s called the Language School.

Depression by Charles Reznikoff (an excerpt)
the fire had burnt through the floor:
machines and merchandise had fallen into
the great hole, this zero that had sucked away so many years
and now, seen at last, the shop itself;
the ceiling sloped until it almost touched the floor a strange curve
in the lines and oblongs of his life;
drops were falling
from the naked beams of the floor above,
from the soaked plaster, still the ceiling;
drops of dirty water were falling
on his clothes and hat and on his hands;
the thoughts of business
gathered in his bosom like black water

This small excerpt really gets at some of the Objectivist poetic ideals. It’s very analytical. It paints this picture that is so vivid because of the description, however the most prominent thing in this is the word choice. The words are all small, simple words! It’s super easy to read because there aren’t really any difficult words in the poem. It really goes to show how small words can do big things.

So to end, the Objectivists were pretty chill, smart dudes. Their poetry left a legacy, and they treated their poems like objects, and by doing so were able to find true meaning in them.

Works Cited
O’Leary, Peter. “The Energies of Words.” Poetry Foundation. N.p., 12 June 2008. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

“Objectivist Poets.” New World Encyclopedia, . 10 Feb 2015, 16:50 UTC. 2 Feb 2017, 02:08 http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Objectivist_Poets&oldid=986523.

“Objectivist Poets.” Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

Confessional Poetry and Why Its, like Basically Twitter

By Lexie Rose

Confessional poetry sounds like something you would read out of your sister’s diary talking about how she and ‘Steve’ kissed for the first time Saturday night. However, that is not the case. In reality, confessional poetry is some dark s**t. Mostly because it explored topics that were ‘taboo’ back in the day, such as suicide and depression and explicit sex. Its like when someone writes something way too personal on twitter, and you hope their friends tell them to delete it. Its like a train wreck, you just can’t seem to look away, no matter how much you want to.

You may still be confused about what it is. So lets get into it. Confessional poetry is, “Private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an autobiographical manner”, (Poets.org ). My mind immediately takes me to Sylvia Plath. Oh Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia. Known for her eventual suicide and mental illness. Lets take a look at one of her most famous confessional poems to get a better grasp on what it is.

In “Daddy” by good ole’ Sylvia, its almost a window into her head. After reading it, you realize why she battled with mental illness. Her upbringing wasn’t a fairytale. Throughout the poem, she refers to her father as the “Nazi” with the “Aryan eye”, and the “Neat mustache”, while she is “the jew”, (Plath). This obviously refers to an oppressive type of relationship between her and her father. She also overtly hints that she doesn’t know how to feel about his death, “I thought of killing you”. This is pretty dark stuff. It gets worse. She then hits the readers with a line that seems way too personal that it makes you uncomfortable, “At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you. /I thought even the bones would do. /But they pulled me out of the sack,/And they stuck me together with glue” (Plath). This is almost the epitome of a good example of confessional poetry. Its something that is so personal to the poet that it makes you feel as though the poem wasn’t meant for you to read.

So, basically you see how this could have been a shock to a lot of people living in this time period (1940-1980). Confessional poetry took off in this era. Poetry during this time period was all about life and it was creative, but it wasn’t about taboo topics such as these. This is the distinct element that sets them apart. Confessional poetry opened the door to poems being a type of release for those feelings. As time goes on, poets realized the power behind creativity and breaking form.

Confessional poetry is supposed to be personal and make you feel something. Even if you don’t personally connect to Plath’s attempts at suicide or her relationship with her father, you recognize how painful it must’ve been due to her beautifully relayed emotion through this type of poetry.

Although poetry is considered to be ‘dying’, confessional poetry seems to be even more relevant today than it was back then. A certain book of poems called “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kaur has become perhaps one of the most famous books of modern poetry. It’s an autobiographical, chronological account of a young woman falling in love and having her heart broken. It showcases her depression and abuse, which is extremely personal. It universally renowned for being relatable to not only young women, but men and women of every age due to the realness of the human emotion portrayed and the connections the readers feel to the speaker.

So basically, confessional poetry is just like twitter. Before twitter, peoples’ personal lives just weren’t discusses unless it was between close friends. Nowadays, I can log onto Twitter and see who’s broken up, who’s sleeping together, and if someone if feeling down in the dumps. Just as twitter changed the way we see the world, so did confessional poetry. It took taboo topics and make them normalized, which is good because in doing that, it also began the movement to normalizing discussing mental illness. Even today, mental illness is often delegitimized and not taken seriously. However, we are moving in the right steps to get a conversation going about how to prevent and treat it.

Works Cited

” A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry .” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 21 Feb. 2014. Web. 28             Jan. 2017.

Plath, Sylvia, Kristen Osborne, “Sylvia Plath: Poems Confessional Poetry.” GradeSaver. N.p., 4 Jan. 2012.         Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

Plath , Sylvia. “Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d.           Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

Snograss, W. D. “The Original Confessional Poet Tells All.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d.             Web. 01 Feb. 2017.

The term “Cavalier” poetry refers to a school of English poets during the 17th century while under the rule of King Charles I. The four most well known, or famous, Cavalier poets include Sir Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace. Poets in this school were referred to as “Cavaliers”, because of their allegiance to King Charles I during the English Civil Wars. Essentially, they were just fancy-pants sycophants. I mean just look at these pretentious assholes.

“Ooooh look at me! I’m holding a book, and wearing a stupid square hat so everyone can know how eloquent and sophisticated I am.” Get over yourselves. Sir John Suckling apparently thinks it’s cool to get a portrait taken of him pretending to read, while I can only assume Richard Lovelace wore his cap and gown on a regular basis to emphasize that he was smarter than everyone else. Suckling, like most other cavalier poets, was not considered to be the most manly of men. Shocking I’m sure. They were the kind of people who believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, which is why it’s safe to say they were not the most feared “cavaliers”. Ironic, considering that cavaliers are suppose to refer to a knight or horseman soldier.

In fact, apparently is 1634, Suckling got his ass beat by another man of nobility, Sir John Digby (pictured below), over a dispute involving a woman whom they both wanted.

Hmmm fancy-pants writer versus a royal advisor who served the king during Civil War. Tough call! Nonetheless, Cavalier poets were considered true gentlemen, and they were brilliant lyricists.

Cavalier poetry is characterized as being different from traditional poetry, in that it wasn’t suppose to be filled with complicated metaphors and complex language that bores and confuses todays AP english and college students. Cavalier poetry instead caters to those who aren’t nearly as smart as the poets themselves. In fact, most of their writing was written for the purpose of impressing and pleasing the King, admiring the duty of the crown. Again, pretentious *cough* suck-ups *cough*. Topics such as religion and philosophy were rarely addressed, and instead their poetry was more focused on expressing the idea of taking satisfaction and enjoying the simpler things in life. Cavalier poetry was written to be witty, eloquently short, and straightforward, centered around ideas of intense beauty, love, nature, and the idea of carpe diem, meaning ‘seize the day’. Cavalier poetry was meant to entertain, not to instruct. It was also known for using a conversational tone, appearing less formal  and therefore more easily read. 

Below are some examples:

To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attain’d his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray’d together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

-Robert Herrick

Love Turned To Hatred

I will not love one minute more, I swear!
No, not a minute! Not a sigh or tear
Thou gett’st from me, or one kind look again,
Though thou shouldst court me to ‘t, and wouldst begin.
I will not think of thee but as men do
Of debts and sins; and then I’ll curse thee too.
For thy sake woman shall be now to me
Less welcome than at midnight ghosts shall be.
I’ll hate so perfectly that it shall be
Treason to love that man that loves a she.
Nay, I will hate the very good, I swear,
That’s in thy sex, because it doth lie there, –
Their very virtue, grace, discourse, and wit,
And all for thee! What, wilt thou love me yet?

-Sir John Suckling

The Spring

Now that the winter’s gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long’d-for May.
Now all things smile; only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal’d, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

-Thomas Carew

Bibliography

http://www.quotationof.com/bio/richard-lovelace.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Suckling_(poet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalier_poet

Jokinen, Anniina. “Cavalier poets: An introduction.” Luminarium.org. 28 July 2000. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Cavalier poet.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 20 July 1998. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

If you’re Elizabeth Montagu in the 18^th century, and you get some of your friends together, what do you do? Do you talk about fashion? Continue being centerpieces of a patriarchal society? Maybe play cards?

Hell no, you strap on your fancy stockings, and you talk ARTS and SCIENCES.

Not in this house.

The middle of the 18th century saw the formation of The Blue Stockings Society, an informal, discussion group dedicated to the perverse idea that women should engage intellectually with the world. Riding the trendy, Enlightenment wave of the French salon (Hinder), Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Versey, Frances Boscawen, and others would meet to discuss art, politics, literature, and other stimulating topics, the knowledge of which was widely considered to be unbecoming of women at the time (Vickery).

Elizabeth Montagu, og feminist

The group’s ideology helped shape and generate feminist writing of the time (Pohl 2).

For example, member and poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s poem, “The Rights of Women:”

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right! 

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest; 

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite, 

Resume thy native empire o’er the breast! 

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine; 

That angel pureness which admits no stain; 

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign, 

And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign. 

Subtle.

Their influence on literature extends beyond original content. Elizabeth Carter translated Epictetus (Vickery), giving the English the gift of stoicism, which is very much still part of the England’s psyche (Use “sorry” more, please) (Eger 109). More immediately, Carter’s work with stoicism directly influenced writers of the time like Jane Austen (Pohl 11).

So brooding, and yet, so stoic

The group also had numerous notable male members, including famous writers James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history” and also arguably part of the greatest bromances in English literary history (Boswell wrote Johnson’s biography). In fact, the name “Bluestocking” comes from an anecdote relating to known botanist and translator at the time, Benjamin Stillingfleet — because why would a group of women get their name from something other than a man –, who was too poor to have the formal black silk stockings, so he attended every meeting in blue stockings (Knowles).

Johnson, all up in some books

A more inclusive list of attendees that shows just how variant this bright group was includes(Knowles, Haslett, Pohl):

-poet James Beattie

-author Mrs. Harriet Bowdler, who may not have been a regular attendee but rocked some blue stockings

-statesman, philosopher, and politcal theorist Edmund Burke, who, being Irish, supported the reasoning behind the American Revolution

-satirical novelist, diarist, and playwright Fanny Burney (Schellenbrg)

-Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, who had the largest natural history collection in Britain

-painter Sir Joshua Reynolds

-son of the British Prime Minister, art historian, and general man of letters Horace Walpole

-poet (and companion to Samuel Johnson) Anna Williams

The Blue Stockings Society’s works have seen a resurgence in recent years due in large part to a revival of old school, feminist literature by modern feminist scholars, many of whom’s ideas have been in some way influenced by the work of the Blue Stockings Society.

-Jonathan Griffey

Bibliography

Eger, Elizabeth. “Paper Trails And Eloquent Objects: Bluestocking Friendship And Material Culture.” Parergon: Journal Of The Australian And New Zealand Association For Medieval And Early Modern Studies 26.2 (2009): 109-138. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007. www.britannica.com/topic/Bluestocking-British-literary-society. 1 February 2017. Web.

Haslett, Moyra. “Becoming Bluestockings: Contextualising Hannah More’s ‘The Bas Bleu’.” Journal For Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.1 (2010): 89-114. Historical Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.

Hinder, Heidi. “Bluestockings With An Itch For Scribbling.” Medal 63 (2013): 52-55. Art & Architecture Source. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.

Knowles, Rachel. 2014. www.regencyhistory.net/2014/02/the-bluestocking-circle.html. 1 February 2017. Web.

Pohl, Nicole, and Betty A. Schellenberg. “Introduction: A Bluestocking Historiography.” Huntington Library Quarterly 2002: 1. JSTOR Journals. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.

Schellenberg, Betty A. “The Bluestockings And The Genealogy Of The Modern Novel.” University Of Toronto Quarterly 4 (2010): 1023. Project MUSE. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.

Vickery, Amanda. The Guardian, 2008. www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/08/art. 1 Feburary 2017. Web.