THREE HOSPITAL POEMS: EMPOWERED CONFESSIONAL SELVES IN ROBERT LOWELL’S „WAKING IN THE BLUE”, ANNE SEXTON’S „YOU, DOCTOR MARTIN” AND SYLVIA PLATH’S „NEVER TRY TO TRICK ME WITH A KISS”

This article examines three hospital poems by the American confessionalists Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Writing in the mid1950s, they opted for „unacceptable” topics which were related to their personal experiences. Typically, the poetry of these poets remains as challenging for the modern reader as it was for their contemporaries. In introducing shocking events and intimate details to their work, they made an important development to portraying lived experience in fiction, which did not come without attacks for their perceived „narcissism”. In this article I argue that their bold writing about difficult subjects has created empowered poetic selves which rather than reflect any narcissism on part of the authors, predate and invite interpretations of the „other”. Their reproduction of illness (depression) is, consequently, devoid of the standard metaphors associated with the respective disease.

A Pragma-Stylistics Analysis of Lowell and Snodgrass’ Confessional Poems

Analyzing any text according to pragmatic principles means approaching the text's meaning and the writer's intention. This study investigates the role of pragmatics theories in interpreting and understanding poetic text and their impact on the poet's style. In other words, how the poets exploit pragmatics theories, such as Searle's speech acts, Grice's maxims, and deixis, in their style of writing to convey their intended meaning to the readers. Therefore, two confessional poems are selected to be analyzed pragma-stylistically: The Dolphin was written by Robert Lowell (1973), and Mementos 1 was written by W. D. Snodgrass (1960s). The current study aims to: 1) analyze the texts of selected poems by applying pragmatics theories to find out the style of each poet through which one can reach the right interpretation of the poem.2) find out the most dominant type of speech acts used by each poet. 3) investigate any flouting of Grice's maxims. 4) identify types of deixis and find out the most dominant types used in confessional poems. The present study concludes that 1) representative speech acts are performed more than other types.2) most of Grice's maxims are flouted, and the quantity maxim is the most dominant flouted by each poet. 3) Both poets use person deixis more than other types.

Lithium therapy in literature and art

Introduction. In 1949, Australian psychiatrist John Cade described a therapeutic action of lithium carbonate in mania. This date is regarded as an introduction of lithium into contemporary psychiatric therapeutics and the beginning of modern psychopharmacology. In the early 1960s, a prophylactic activity of lithium was observed, preventing recurrences of affective episodes in mood disorders. Lithium has become a prototype of the mood-stabilising drugs and remains a drug of the first choice for the prophylaxis of recurrences in bipolar mood disorder. Literature review. Both the introduction of lithium into psychiatric therapy and its therapeutic action has been reflected in literature and art. This article presents the connections of lithium therapy with literature and art. They pertain to such characters as John Cade, Salvador Luria, Patty Duke, Kay Jamison, Jerzy Broszkiewicz, Ota Pavel, Robert Lowell, Jaime Lowe, Nicole Lyons, Kurt Cobain, Sting, and the band Evanescence. Conclusions. Special attention was given to the book Unquiet mind, written in 1996 by Kay Jamison, professor of psychology. In the book, her personal bipolar disorder and lithium treatment were described from the viewpoint of the eminent professional. Polish translation of the book titled Niespokojny umysł already has two editions: in 2000 and 2018.

Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil: An Attraction in Difference

The correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop during her years in Brazil with fellow poet Robert Lowell shed light not only on her personal impressions and experience there but also on the broader atmosphere of Brazil in the 1950s and 60s. The abundant letters show an intimacy that Bishop was willing to explore in personal correspondence that was not readily forthcoming in her published poetry. The present essay analyzes that correspondence alongside the few poems Bishop wrote in or about Brazil to understand her pursuit of belonging and happiness that found an unlikely home—and a tragic end—in and around Rio de Janeiro for almost twenty years. Bishop’s trajectory from love to loss and happiness to tragedy intimately interacts, this essay argues, with changes in midcentury Brazil, from the national development pursued by Vargas and Kubitschek, including the building of Brasília, to the fallout from the 1964 military coup and beyond.

Robert Lowell, the New Critics, and the “Unforgivable Landscape” of Liberalism

This essay argues that Robert Lowell’s poetry demonstrates a critical engagement with the liberal individual that he is not often given credit for. By examining Lowell’s handling of the pathetic fallacy, whereby the external landscape is made to match the mood of the observer, the essay reveals a critique of the historical formation of American individualism, visible in how Lowell connects the literary historical tropes he is employing to the history of American “imperial” violence. This is first shown through a close reading of “Mouth of the Hudson.” The essay connects Lowell’s view to those of his New Critical mentors, such as John Crowe Ransom, for whom the individual of the liberal political order is entwined with the history of Puritan iconoclasm and Romantic views of the poetic subject. It argues that Ransom’s critique parallels those of later critics, such as Marjorie Perloff, David Antin, and Maria Damon, who see Lowell’s poetic self as both solipsistic and symptomatic of an American liberal ideology. Demonstrating that Lowell’s views were formed by a critique of liberal individualism, it then attempts to show how Lowell moved beyond this in his later work, harnessing a depiction of the poetic subject’s individual experience to a critique of individualism itself as manifested in the American political worldview of the Cold War era. It reads “Beyond the Alps” as a demonstration of the way Lowell is able to wed both critique and depiction of individuality together through a self-aware handling of the poetic landscape.

Lyric as Comedy

A poet walks into a bar... this book explores the unexpected comic opportunities within recent American poems about deeply personal, often embarrassing, experiences. Lyric poems, the book finds, can be surprising sites of a shifting, unruly comedy, as seen in the work of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, A. R. Ammons, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, Natalie Shapero, and Monica Youn. The book draws out the ways in which key American poets have struggled with persistent expectations about what expressive poetry can and should do. It reveals how the modern lyric, rather than bestowing order on the poet's thoughts and emotions, can center on impropriety and confusion, formal breakage and linguistic unruliness, and self-observation and self-staging. The close readings in the book also provide new insight into the theory and aesthetics of comedy, taking in the indirect, glancing comic affordances of poetry. In doing so, the book captures varieties of humor that do not align with traditional terms, centering abjection and pleasure as facets of contemporary lyric practice.