Confessional Poetry

Confessional poetry seems in essence to be a form of life writing. Exploring the inner individual, the works could be seen as a personal form of therapy, or of an exploration of private experience. One can easily question Confessional Poetry's authenticity, afterall, poetry is a form of Art; Art by definition is artificial, and fine Art is a mastery of making the artifical appear natural. Even if the original experience, the emotions professed, were true, the act of writing them in a constrained form will automatically lend the work an artifice. Poetry, as a construction, will automatically assume a separate voice through the process of its construction. By putting emotion into the public sphere, it separates this captured snapshot of personality from the author, as assumptions of meaning will be overlaid by the reader. *
But, one could argue, is this not the very nature of anything Autobiographical? When we separate the word and explore its etymology, we get three elements:

AUTO BIO GRAPHY

Autos: Meaning 'The Self' in Greek

Bios: Meaning 'Social life' in Greek - As life not in the natural world, but in one confined by social constructions

Graphy: Originating from 'Graphein', the Greek word for writing.

When the word is put together and formed into a genre, it is clear that the subject will be of an individual's written experience of being part of an organised social structure. It will explore the nature of interaction with the external, through internal reflection, into an external form; It is taking in the world, processing the feelings this experience gives you, and putting something that explains them back into the world. In the broadest sense, one could argue that this is the singular criteria all Confessional poetry must meet - a bridge in the gap between the external world and the internal individual.

*There's a really interesting section that looks into this, read 'Versions of the Truth', by following this link http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NUCytyOEYbAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA263&dq=confessional+poetry&ots=0LwJQG7B9i&sig=h_LwV7jhMq5dpvdb0g2uZ_hrLIk#v=onepage&q=confessional%20poetry&f=false

Cameron, Spurr. Hsc Advanced English. 'Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters' (Pascal Press:2009) p261