HISTORY OF CONFESSIONAL POETRY IN INDIAN WOMEN WRITINGS A SHORT OVERVIEW

Abstract

‘Confessional’ is an adjective first applied to the poems of the American poets Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, W.D. Snodgrass, John Berryman and Theodore Roethke to refer to the autobiographical nature of their work. The confessional poet considers the world, an extension of herself. All confessional poetry springs from the need to confess; confessional poets bare their soul and body and hide nothing between their self and their direct expression of that self. They put no restrictions on subject matter, no matter how personal. Usually anti-elegant and anti- establishment, confessional poems are almost like war-cries triumphing over pain and defeat. The best confessional poems are more than confessions: they are revelations, about their creator’s personal vexations, dilemmas and predicaments, and above all about the human condition. This review work tries to prove that confessional poetry was always present in Writings by women in India. This work is a literature review of known writings by women in India.