Emily Dickinson and confessional poetry

The purpose of this study is to introduce Emily Dickinson as a precursor of the post World War II generation of confessional poets, and to offer a reading of her poems on the basis of her personal experiences and on the basis of a unique presentation of the self in her art. Emily Dickinson was the promoter of an American tradition of the poetry of the self which was interrupted by the objective trend in literature that culminated in the works of T.S. Eliot and the imagists of the post World War I generation who maintained, in Eliot's words, that "the more perfect the artist, the more separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates, the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmit the passions which are its material." Confessional poets saw no such separation. For them the man who suffers is the one who creates. By breaking away from the earlier tradition of personal poetry with all its Puritan manifestations, and by introducing new innovations in form and content, Emily Dickinson provided a background for the post-imagist poets of the 1960's. Her importance derives from three aspects of her poetry. First, her representation of a tragic, rebellious, independent and profound self which finds therapy in writing poetry. Second, her feminist tendencies which are typical of modern poets who associate feminism with confessionalism. Third, her treatment of twentieth century themes popular among confessional poets, such as alienation, loneliness, suicide, death, personal failure and mental breakdown.