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The IUP Journal of English Studies :
Contours of the Confessional: Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das : A Study of their Poems
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While many senior executives continue to talk about the "voice of the customer," few demonstrate their commitment to this concept by spending time with customers. Many continue to use their intuition or `golden gut' in their attempt to provide superior customer value. Unfortunately, `senior executive intuition' is rarely attuned to the needs of their customers. While the competitive environment continues to intensify, executives have cut back on the time devoted to customers just when it should be increasing. This article discusses the need for senior executives to spend time with customers and provides examples of the benefits that this approach will provide.

 
 
 

The two women poetsSylvia Plath and Kamala Daswho come from vastly different countries and climes, are remarkably close in their confessional mode of poetic expression. Both the poets vocalize their resistance to tradition, based on male domination or construction. But what distinguishes them is the style of their protest. Plath is daring and her courageous protest finds expression through arresting symbolic formulations. While the issues dealt with by Plath are broad, the range of themes and concerns of Kamala Das are comparatively narrower. The focal points of Kamala Das are the body and her sexual discontent. While Plath is more symbolic and gender representative, Kamala is more personal and autobiographical. Both attempt to cleanse their body through its own annihilation, but Kamala is more successful in adapting herself later to her role as "mother." Their poems reveal their tremendously violent struggle to gain control of their psyche as well as momentary ordering of their selves. The paper analyzes the different contexts of their poetic creativity and explores the interface of similarities and dissimilarities of their sensitivities.

The confessional is a significant mode whose candor extends even to the language in which the poems are composed. The language of the confessional poem is that of ordinary speech whether in blank verse or free, rhymed or not. In their pursuit of ordinary language, most of the confessional poets do not go so far as Ginsberg, whose Howl was initially seized by the US Customs and the Sanfrancisco police and became the subject of a lengthy court trial before being judged, `not obscene'. Openness of language leads to openness of emotion. For decades, American poets seemed to be afraid of emotion. Now their work is suffused with it. This surely marks a new direction in modern American poetry, a return to the less traveled way of Whitman. Generations of poets had censored their feeling, filtering them through the screens of "tough" language.

But there is a toning down, a holding back, as if, the mere recitation of the horrors of modern life were strong indictment. It is not sufficient to have the courage to speak out; one must also know when to hold back. As Louise Bogan pointed out in her review of Life Studies, to write almost exclusively of oneself and one's settingnaming names and placespresents awesome problems of tact and tone. The best confessional poet acknowledges this difficulty, and writes accordingly.

 
 
 

Contours of the Confessional: Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das : A Study of their Poems, poetic expression, sexual discontent, recitation, strong indictment, annihilation, confessional, significant mode, symbolic formulations.