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. |