Selfie Poems: Confessional vs. Lyrical Poetry of Self
Summer 'Mammoth' sunflower in my garden; self sowed.
How do we as poets write from self yet avoid penning selfie poems that contribute to the world’s noise, offering little volume and insight beyond the chatter?
I have been slapping, beating my pages with this question for some time.
It feels to me that poetry left undeveloped, allowed to self-sow and seed wildly dares the poet to be anything but a noisy, self-reflecting self. Especially in our current social climate of selfies. I don’t dare suggest that I have never selfied myself, chronicled my cooking and gardening adventures, but what of my poems.
This month my poetry class read an article I found provocative that challenges the notion of the confessional poem, in light of the lyrical poem; it informed me and gave me the language I’ve been searching for. (“A Defense of the Lyric,” by Joan Aleshire in the Kenyon Review, Summer, 1988)
Though the article is nearly sixteen years old, it is incredibly relevant, timely even, and speaks to the direction, current pulse, and energy of the written word as it relates to the self and society beyond the self.
In all honesty, it was difficult to read Aleshire's article, and not consider it alongside our self-engrossed, selfie culture. And, I'm not sure I shouldn't. As poets we most certainly write influenced by the current culture, whether that consideration is conscious or unconscious.
Aleshire views confessional poetry as a poet’s complete, engrossment with their own personal experience in a manner that moves the poet/writer away from craft and the demands of the text in light of a text that is self-serving.
What is key to understand, as I see it, is the idea that the confessional writer abandons their connection to humanity within their work, and instead concentrates on their experiences in a way that “plea[s] for special treatment…[considers] the poet’s stance [as] one of particularity apart from common experience,” and most importantly, the poet “shift[s] the burden of knowledge from speaker-trangessor to listener.”
I know that is a mouthful, and I’d like to break it down in a way that inspires your writing practice like it has inspired mines.
When a poet overly identifies their work and writing position with herself, and fails to move beyond her personal experience she is serving herself, but more importantly, she is unloading the burden of her experience onto the reader, listener. When we read literature, we read to find reflections of ourselves, to touch our hearts with other hearts, to walk away learned, validated, and aware of our position within the whole of humanity.
However, serving the self and not the craft voids the reader of this opportunity. Instead of witnessing the poet’s experience as evidence in her shared human journey, the listener is asked to make sense of something, someone’s life that does not touch her own. We are only concerned with another human’s frailty, their battle through addiction or a painful abortion, abuse, or illness in how it inspires and teaches us how to navigate those experiences should we have to, or how we could have navigated them, if we’ve already had our own personal struggle.
This is not selfishness, it is how we connect ourselves to the universal experience of humanity. It helps us to feel safe in a fluid existence where we have little, or no control.
'Mammoth' sunflower in my garden last summer; self-sowed.
Without transforming the personal, the writer losses awareness and grounding in humanity. So important are her own individual burdens that she is less concerned with how it relates, interacts, and converges with humanity’s shared burden. Most importantly, the poet shifts the burden of knowledge, the burden of discovery, the burden of overcoming, the burden of awareness, the burden of wisdom and insight, and also the burden of transformation to the listener.
Confession without transformation and insight is displacement of pain.
By no means I am saying that there is no place for this form of writing, as I believe all writing, when taken on earnestly and wholeheartedly, is an act of creating salves and ointments for our wounds and that act in all its forms deserves life and possibility, but what I am also saying is that confession with no greater depth is a shout into an ocean cave of echoes.
If everyone shouts their pain into a cave, and no one bothers to go in and pull the shouters into light, there only is noise and darkness. There may be some comfort in hearing the echoes of your fellow weary companions, but there is still no light and way out.
If we dare to write lyrical, as Aleshire defines it, the personal I is always present, yet only as a means for shining the light out of the cave. The light never shines on the guide, but instead on the path out of darkness.
Instead of being a selfie poem, the poem becomes a poem of humanity.
As poets we do this by leveraging our experiences. We present life as we see it and have experienced it so that our audience may walk in our shoes and gain a wider breath of insight. As poets we must get out of the listener’s way and allow them to live the poem.
How do we fall behind the words, yet present our story?
By conveying the story without commentary and being persistent in our trust of the process. Our process of understanding, our process of writing, the reader’s process of understanding, and the reader’s process of reading.
An undeveloped poet lacks trust in her ability to speak both of her own experience and the universal experience that she shares with the listener. Unable to digest the world at her eyes, she turns the lens around and asks that we digest it for her.
Instead of shining the light on her path, she turns the light inward, failing to see that she already gleams.
When you poem, consider your relationship with humanity and move beyond your individual life, so that we may use your brilliance to see ourselves out of the cave of echoes.
All love,
kiandra