Colegio de la Purisima Concepcion

The School of Archdiocese of Capiz

Roxas City

Course Subject: Literary Criticisms

Literary Movements - are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical,
or aesthetic features, as opposed to divisions by  genre or period. Like other categorizations, literary
movements provide language for comparing and discussing literary works. These terms are helpful
for curricula or anthologies.
Some of these movements (such as Dada and Beat) were defined by the members themselves, while
other terms (for example, the metaphysical poets) emerged decades or centuries after the periods in
question. Further, some movements are well defined and distinct, while others, like expressionism, are
nebulous and overlap with other definitions. Because of these differences, literary movements are often
a point of contention between scholars.

A. Metaphysical
Metaphysical is a philosophical concept used in literature to describe the things that are beyond the
description of physical existence. It is intended to elucidate the fundamental nature of being and the
world and is often used in the form of argument to describe the intellectual or emotional state an
individual goes through. It is deliberately inserted to make the audience think about the things they had
never imagined. Although it is often considered a complex phenomenon, it, however, plays a pivotal role
in advancing the idea of the text.

In literature, metaphysical is often used with poetry. It is a type of poetry written during the
seventeenth (17th) century.  Etymologically, “metaphysical” is a combination of two words ‘meta’ and
‘physical.’ The meanings are clear that it deals with the things that are beyond this the existence of the
physical world.

Metaphysical Function

Metaphysical poetry serves as a pause for the audience. It provides them with an opportunity to ponder
over the ideas that are not commonly seen and are unique. The challenging approach of metaphysical
poetry allows the readers to concentrate on the things that exist beyond this world. It also allows the
writers to express their inner thoughts in the verses though higher cognitive skills are required to
understand the concepts and abstract ideas presented in metaphysical texts.

Features of Metaphysical Poetry

1. Metaphysical texts are based on  wit and often deal with serious questions about the existence
of God and the tendency of human beings to perceive this world.
2. In metaphysical poetry, serious issues are discussed with a touch of  humor. In this sense, it
makes the seriousness a bit light in intensity.
3. Metaphysical poetry elevates the readers of their normal existence to make them question the
unquestionable.
4. Metaphysical texts offer comparisons of unlikely things and are loaded with conceits,
paradoxes, irony, and
 5. They are argumentative, intellectual, realistic and rational in their approach.

Examples of Metaphysical elements in Literature

Example #1

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

“If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The poem appreciates the beauty of spiritual love. The poet has painted a vivid picture of his eternal
bond that keeps him attached to his beloved even when they are apart. This is a very good example of
metaphysical text in literature as Donne has used metaphysical conceits to show
the comparison between the spiritual aspect of a person and a physical thing in the world. He has
compared his spiritual and holy love with the feet of a geometrical compass.

Example #2

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The poet, being an obsessive lover, has used strenuous argument throughout the poem to convince his
shy mistress to be intimate with him. He provides different arguments to persuade her. He compares
speedy time with “wingèd chariot hurrying near” and compares his slowly growing love with “vegetable
love.” These are all abstract ideas presented through a cascade of images. The examples of the
metaphysical argument are shown through the use of puns, paradoxes, classical  myth, historical and
Biblical references.

Example #3

The Retreat by Henry Vaughan

O, how I long to travel back,

And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train,
From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palm trees.
But, ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love;
But I by backward steps would move,
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.

The poem comprises the sentiments of the speaker who wants to retreat to his innocent childhood.
The central metaphysical characteristic of the poem is the conceit he has used to compare life to a
long journey. Through this conceit, the poet unfolds a philosophical thought that the soul relates to
heaven before this earthly existence. The poem expresses his profound hope that he might venture
back to the state he initially came from.

Example #4

The Pulley by George Herbert

“When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.”
This poem is one of the famous metaphysical religious poems. The poet has used a mechanical device,
pulley, as a metaphysical conceit to reveal the truth of why human beings are so restless in the world.
He says that wisdom, strength, pleasure, honor and several other blessings are the greatest rewards God
has bestowed upon man. But when humans are at rest, they gradually lose all these characteristics. To
pull them back on track, God should deprive them of rest. However, this bizarre and mysterious
philosophy is possible only in metaphysical poetry.

B. Symbolism
Symbolism is a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French
poets in the late 19th century, spread to  painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and
American literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. Symbolist artists sought to express
individual emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolized language.

Symbolism can take different forms. Generally, it is an object representing another, to give an entirely
different meaning that is much deeper and more significant. Sometimes, however, an action, an event
or a word spoken by someone may have a symbolic value. For instance, “smile” is a symbol of
friendship. Similarly, the action of someone smiling at you may stand as a symbol of the feeling of
affection which that person has for you.

Symbols do shift their meanings depending on the context they are used in. “A chain,” for example, may
stand for “union” as well as “imprisonment”. Thus, symbolic meaning of an object or an action is
understood by when, where, and how it is used. It also depends on who reads the work.

Function of Symbolism

Symbolism gives a writer freedom to add double levels of meanings to his work: a literal one that is
self-evident, and the symbolic one whose meaning is far more profound than the literal. Symbolism,
therefore, gives universality to the characters and the themes of a piece of literature. Symbolism in
literature evokes interest in readers as they find an opportunity to get an insight into the writer’s mind
on how he views the world, and how he thinks of common objects and actions, having broader
implications.

Short Examples of Symbolism in Sentences

1. Ching Chua gave his wife a red rose. (In Chinese culture, the color red symbolizes property and
happiness.)
2. David stopped his car at the red signal. (In other cultures, the color red is symbol of blood,
passion, and danger.)
3. Rebels raised a white flag to negotiate. (During war, the color white symbolizes making peace
with the enemy. Otherwise, it represents purity and life.)
4. The Red Cross is working around the world. (The symbol of the cross represents Christianity, and
the red cross in particular represents aid in times of need.)
5. The Muslim forces raised their flag with a crescent on it. (The crescent moon represents Islam.)
6. He turned green when found a wallet. (Green color is often associated with greed, jealousy, and
monetary affairs.)
 7. They dressed in black to the funeral of their friend. (The color black is associated with death.)
8. The yellow boat turned into the channel, to make the tourists happy. The color yellow color is
the symbol of deterioration and infidelity, as well as the symbol of freshness and happiness.)
9. He was disappointed when the mirror broke. (Broken mirror is an symbol of separation.)
10. He gave a red rose to his wife on Valentine Day. (Red rose is a symbol for love.)
11. He, after a long time, saw a silver lining in the shape of the arrival of his brother. (Silver
edge/lining of clouds symbolize hope and optimism.)
12. You have a sixth sense like an owl. (Owl symbolizes wisdom.)
13. You work like an ox. (The ox symbolizes hard work and stamina.)
14. When he saw a bat in dream, he grew white with fear. (Bats are the symbol of death.)

Examples of Symbolism in Literature

To develop symbolism in his work, a writer utilizes other figures of speech, like metaphors, similes,
and allegory, as tools. Some symbolism examples in literature are listed below with brief analysis:

Example #1: As you Like It (By William Shakespeare)

We find symbolic value in Shakespeare’s famous monologue in his play As you Like It:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
they have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,”

These lines are symbolic of the fact that men and women, in the course of their lives, perform different
roles. “A stage” here symbolizes the world, and “players” is a symbol for human beings.

Example #2: Ah Sunflower (By William Blake)

William Blake goes symbolic in his poem Ah Sunflower. He says:

“Ah Sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveler’s journey is done;”

Blake uses a sunflower as a symbol for human beings, and “the sun” symbolizes life. Therefore, these
lines symbolically refer to their life cycle and their yearning for a never-ending life.

Example #3: Wuthering Heights (By Emily Bronte)

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights presents almost every character, house, surroundings, and events in a

symbolic perspective. The word “Wuthering,” which means “stormy,” represents the wild nature of
inhabitants. The following lines allow us to look into the symbolic nature of two characters:
“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it; I’m well aware, as winter
changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible
delight, but necessary.”

The phrase “foliage of leaves” for is a symbol for Linton’s fertile and civilized nature. On the contrary,
Heathcliff is likened to an “eternal rock,” which symbolizes his crude and unbendable nature.

Example #4: Wild Asters (By Sara Teasdale)

Sara Teasdale in her poem Wild Asters develops a number of striking symbols:

“In the spring, I asked the daisies

If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,

Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.”

In the above lines, “spring” and “daisies” are symbols of youth. “Brown and barren” are symbols
of transition from youth to old age. Moreover, “Bitter autumn” symbolizes death.

Example #5: The Rain (By William H. Davies)

“I hear leaves drinking rain;

I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop;
Tis a sweet noise to hear
These green leaves drinking near.”

In this beautiful poem, William Davies who has used the symbol of rain to show the different classes of
society. He does this by describing the way the upper leaves benefit from the rain first, and then hand
down the rest to the lower leaves. The same way, rich people pass on the leftover benefits to the poor
people.

Example #6: My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold (By William Wordsworth)

“My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, …”

In this poem, the poet uses rainbow as a symbol of hope and general wellbeing throughout his life.
Example #7: XXIII, Crossing Alone the Nighted Ferry (By A. E. Housman)

“Crossing alone the nighted ferry

With the one coin for fee,
Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,
Count you to find? Not me.”

The poet has used the symbol of a river to represent life and the past memories associated with it.

C. Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance - a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative

arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary  history. Embracing literary, musical,
theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the
white stereotypes that had influenced Black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other.
They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their
lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of
thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all
later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent Black literature
and consciousness worldwide. While the renaissance was not confined to the Harlem district of New
York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the
symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.

Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as
a Black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and arti sti c
explosion that resulted . Lasti ng roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period
is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesti ng in literature, music,
stage performance and art.

The Harlem Renaissance brought along a new creati ve energy for African American
literature. This literary cultural movement was to reject the traditi onal American
standards of writi ng and discover and uti lize their own style of writi ng to signify their
cultural identi ty.

Most Influential During this Period

Langston Hughes.

His writing consisted of poems, plays, essays, short stories, and more. He often wrote about racial
injustice and about the celebration of African American culture and spirituality. To demonstrate
this new style of writing, Hughes’ first book of poetry published was entitled The Weary Blues.
These poems were written using a mix of jazz and blues with traditional verse.

“And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead."

These lines taken from The Weary Blues depict a man playing jazz on the piano and creates a
sense of mourning of the music genre, the blues. It makes the reader really appreciate the
musician described in the poem.

Zora Neale Hurston.

She was the author of the great American novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and received much
controversy from it during her time. Critics said that her writing was “too black” and did not appeal to
white readers because she used a Southern black dialect when writing her book. Some of the major
themes delineated in this book were the misery of black people in America, the black autonomy, and
the separation between light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans. 

Countee Cullen 

Differed from the other Harlem Renaissance writers in that he grew up in a  predominantly white
neighborhood. He was adopted at age 15 by Reverend Cullen, the pastor of the largest African
Methodist Episcopal church in Harlem. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, then a
prestigious high school with the majority of the student population being white, followed by New
York University. During his attendance at both institutions, his poems were published in school
and national publications in addition to winning several literary awards. Continuing his fine
education, in 1926 he went on to Harvard University to earn his master’s degree.

Cullen’s most popular poem written during this period is “Heritage,” from his poetry
collection Copper Sun. His writing style was lyrical because he believed that a poem needs to
have a meter in order for readers to understand the poem. In his poem “Heritage,” he tries to
relate his faith to his racial identity. He uses beautiful descriptions of nature to delineate what he
is feeling. He essentially denies any connection to his African homeland which today is recognized
as “internalized racism”.

Louis Armstrong

The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, oft en
played at speakeasies off ering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem
residents, but outside white audiences also.

Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem—
Louis Armstrong , Duke Ellington , Bessie Smith , Fats Waller  and Cab Calloway , oft en
accompanied by elaborate fl oor shows. Tap dancers like John Bubbles and  Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson  were also popular.
Cott on Club

With the groundbreaking new music came a vibrant nightlife. The Savoy opened in 1927,
an integrated ballroom with two bandstands that featured conti nuous jazz and dancing
well past midnight, someti mes in the form of batt ling bands helmed by Fletcher
Henderson , Jimmie Lunceford and King Oliver.

While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some
white people wanted to experience black culture without having to socialize with African
Americans and created clubs to cater to them.

The most successful of these was the Cott on Club, which featured frequent performances
by Ellington and Calloway. Some in the community derided the existence of such clubs,
while others believed they were a sign that Black culture was moving toward greater
acceptance.

Paul Robeson

The cultural boom in Harlem gave Black actors opportuniti es for stage work that had
previously been withheld. Traditi onally, if Black actors appeared onstage, it was in a
minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles.

At the center of this stage revoluti on was the versati le  Paul Robeson , an actor, singer,
writer, activist and more. Robeson fi rst moved to Harlem in 1919 while studying law at
Columbia University and conti nually maintained a social presence in the area, where he was
considered an inspirati onal but approachable fi gure.

Robeson believed that arts and culture were the best paths forward for Black Americans to
overcome racism and make advances in a white-dominated culture.

Josephine Baker

Black musical revues were staples in Harlem, and by the mid-1920s had moved south to
Broadway, expanding into the white world. One of the earliest of these was Eubie Blake
and Noble Sissle’s Shuffl e Along, which launched the career of Josephine Baker .

White patron Van Vechten helped bring more serious lack stage work to Broadway, though
largely the work of white authors. It wasn’t unti l 1929 that a Black-authored play about
Black lives, Wallace Thurman and William Rapp’s  Harlem, played Broadway.

Playwright Willis Richardson off ered more serious opportuniti es for Black actors with a
several one-act plays writt en in the 1920s, as well as articles in  Opportunity magazine
outlining his goals. Stock companies like the Krigwa Players and the Harlem Experimental
Theater also gave Black actors serious roles.
Aaron Douglas

The visual arts were never welcoming to Black arti sts, with art schools, galleries and
museums shutti ng them out. Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, a protégé of Auguste Rodin ,
explored African American themes in her work and infl uenced Du Bois to champion Black
visual arti sts.

The most celebrated Harlem Renaissance  arti st is Aaron Douglas , oft en called “the Father of
Black American Art,” who adapted African techniques to realize painti ngs and murals, as
well as book illustrati on.

Sculptor Augusta Savage ’s 1923 bust of Du Bois garnered considerable att enti on. She
followed that up with small, clay portraits of everyday African Americans, and would later
be pivotal to enlisti ng black arti sts into the Federal Art Project, a division of the  Work
Progress Administrati on (WPA) .

James VanDerZee ’s photography captured Harlem daily life, as well as by commissioned

portraits in his studio that he worked to fi ll with opti mism and separate philosophically
from the horrors of the past.

Marcus Garvey

Black nati onalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement  Marcus Garvey  was born in
Jamaica but moved to Harlem in 1916 and began publishing the infl uenti al newspaper  Negro
World in 1918. His shipping company, Black Star Line, established trade between Africans in
America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada and Africa.

Garvey is perhaps best known for founding the Universal Negro Improvement Associati on,
or UNIA, which advocated for “separate but equal” status for persons of African ancestry
with the goal of establishing Black states around the world. Garvey was famously at odds
with W.E.B. DuBois, who called him "the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in
America." His outspoken views also made him a target of  J. Edgar Hoover  and the FBI .

Harlem Renaissance Ends

The end of Harlem’s creati ve boom began with the  stock market crash of 1929  and The
Great Depression . It wavered unti l Prohibiti on  ended in 1933, which meant white patrons no
longer sought out the illegal alcohol in uptown clubs.

By 1935, many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on to seek work. They were replaced by
the conti nuous fl ow of refugees from the South, many requiring public assistance.
The Harlem Race Riot of 1935 broke out following the arrest of a young shoplift er, resulti ng
in three dead, hundreds injured and millions of dollars in property damage. The riot was a
death knell for the Harlem Renaissance.

Impact of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American arti sts, writers and
musicians. It gave these arti sts pride in and control over how the Black experience was
represented in American culture and set the stage for the  civil rights movement .

D. The Beats

Beat movement, also called Beat Generation, American social and literary movement originating in the
1950s and centred in the bohemian artist communities of San Francisco’s North Beach, Los
Angeles’ Venice West, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. Its adherents, self-styled as “beat”
(originally meaning “weary,” but later also connoting a musical sense, a “beatific” spirituality, and other
meanings) and derisively called “beatniks,” expressed their alienation from conventional, or “square,”
society by adopting a style of dress, manners, and “hip” vocabulary borrowed from jazz musicians. They
advocated personal release, purification, and illumination through the heightened sensory awareness
that might be induced by drugs, jazz, sex, or the disciplines of Zen Buddhism. The Beats and their
advocates found the joylessness and purposelessness of modern society sufficient justification for both
withdrawal and protest.

Beat poets sought to transform poetry into an expression of genuine lived experience. They read their
work, sometimes to the accompaniment of progressive jazz, in such Beat strongholds as the Coexistence
Bagel Shop and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. The verse was frequently
chaotic and liberally sprinkled with obscenities and frank references to sex, all intended to liberate
poetry from academic preciosity. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl became the most representative poetic
expression of the Beat movement: the poem itself embodied the essence of the Beats’ voice; its first
performance, in 1955, was a disorderly celebration; and the obscenity trial, in 1957, that followed its
publication showed the movement’s social and political relevance. Ginsberg and other major figures of
the movement, such as the novelist Jack Kerouac, advocated a kind of free, unstructured composition in
which the writer put down his thoughts and feelings without plan or revision in order to convey the
immediacy of experience.

Criticism of the Beat Generation’s aesthetics and behavior came from many corners of society. The
academic community derided the Beats as anti-intellectual and unrefined. Mainstream America was
horrified by their supposed sexual deviancy and illicit drug use. Established poets and novelists looked
down upon the freewheeling abandon of Beat literature. Politicians such as Joseph McCarthy identified
elements of Beat ideology as Communist and a threat to the nation’s security. The Beat Generation
effectively absorbed all of these barbs without disintegrating. However, their relatively short time in the
spotlight of literature and culture could be attributed to the amount of scorn heaped upon them. The
original coinage of “Beat” was meant to imply a people beaten down and walked over, and in the early
1950s that interpretation was very apt.
The Beat Generation made a lasting impact on the structure of modern American society. With
Ginsberg’s Howl, the notion of what was acceptable literature was broadened immensely. Censorship as
a force for modulating public discourse, in the realm of literature at least, came to an end. Perhaps more
importantly, the Beats propelled discussions of ecology and environmentalism into the mainstream.
Before the 1950s, environmentalism as it is understood today did not really exist. The Beat Generation’s
infatuation with Native American and Eastern philosophies contributed to the genesis of modern
environmental ethics, at least as a byproduct. Modern poetry underwent a relaxation of structure and
style that basically allowed for anyone to express themselves in whatever fashion they chose.
Experimentation became an expectation, as the stuffy formalism of the Moderns was wholly subverted.
By about 1960, the Beat movement as a fad had begun to fade, though its experiments with form and its
social engagement continued and had lasting effects.
The movement produced a number of significant writers, including Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Philip
Whalen, and Gary Snyder; the poet LeRoi Jones had also been part of the Beat circle and published their
work in his magazine Yugen, though he broke with the movement in the 1960s. The Beats paved the
way for broader acceptance of other unorthodox and previously ignored writers, such as the Black
Mountain poets and the novelist William S. Burroughs.

E. Confessional Poetry
Confessional Poetry is a style of poetry that is personal, often making use of a first-person narrator. It is
a branch of Postmodernism that emerged in the US in the 1950s.

The use of this first-person narrative perspective makes it likely that a great majority of these poems are
reflective of the poet’s own life. But, this is certainly not always the case.

The Origins of Confessional Poetry

The term “confessional” was first used by a reviewer looking over Robert Lowell’s fourth book, Life
Studies  in 1959. The reviewer, a man by the name of M. L. Rosenthal, described Lowell as moving
beyond what other poets had engaged in when it came to sharing one’s emotions and experiences. The
poems, Rosenthal stated, read as personal confidences. Readers connected with Lowell’s desire to
engage personally. He broke through the barriers of the traditional, idealized poetic figure and became
an individual, one of a kind and relatable to those who sought out his work.
Life Studies  served as more than just a conduit for the creation of the term “confessional” though. It
changed the face of poetry and influenced some of the major writers of the budding movement, such as
Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

Prior to its solidification in the late 1950s, poets such as John Berryman and Delmore Schwartz were
writing works that are now considered as confessional poems. The former, Berryman, compiled a
collection of sonnets that described his own infidelity.

Confessional Poetry Today

Just as modernism pushed back against traditional forms of poetry from prior decades and centuries,
there was a reaction to confessional poetry from writers in the 70s and 80s. These poets saw the
movement as much too sentimental and self-indulgent and eventually cast aside the free verse style
that had become popular and reinstated meter and rhyme within the New Formalism movement. That
being said, it is impossible to ignore the influence that the movement has had on writing since the term
“confessional poetry” was first coined in 1959. Today, its impact can be felt in contemporary poetry and
memoirs. Most interestingly though it has influenced the vastly popular style of slam or spoken word
poetry. some of the most moving examples of slam poetry come from writers who bear their personal
experiences on stage and are able to engage with the audience in a meaningful way.

Important poets of the movement

When you first think of confessional poetry and the emotionally poignant and tortured themes
underlying these works, writers such as Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath come to mind. But, there are a
great deal more who often go under-appreciated but made important contributions to this particular
movement.
For an example of individual experience chronicled in poetry, let’s take a look at Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One
Art’.  It is a deceivingly simple poem, structured in the form of a villanelle. Here are stanzas five and six:
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Within the poem Bishop utilizes the first-person perspective, appearing to address her own losses, from
the life-altering to the simply irritating. The speaker meditates on what it means to lose something, and
how through practice, she has come to master it.‘I Am In Need of Music’  is another great example of
Bishop’s work. Other writers you should know who wrote in the confessional style are Adrienne
Rich, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, and John Berryman.
 
Other Examples of Confessional Poetry

It is impossible to discuss confessional poetry without considering the work of Sylvia Plath. She penned
some of the best, and most skillfully crafted, examples of this style that still resonate, at a deep level,
with contemporary lovers of poetry. Some examples include ‘Daddy,’  ‘Lady Lazarus,’ ‘Nick and the
Candlestick’,  and ‘Morning Song’.  Plath’s writing is noted for its autobiographical elements and the way
she was willing to show, what seemed like anyway, her true emotions, no matter their complexity.
Her subject matter often reflected her state of mind, and a reader can find examples of her personal
battle with depression and suicidal tendencies. Within ‘Daddy’  Plath meditates on her incredibly
complicated relationship with her father who died when she was only eight years old. She moves
through the poem depicting her father in a variety of ways, the most well-remembered is her
description of him as a Nazi officer.
Let’s take a look at another one of Plath’s best confessional poems, ‘Lady Lazarus’.  Here are stanzas six
and seven:

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
‘Lady Lazarus’  was published in 1965 after Plath’s death. Throughout the text, there are references
to mythology, suicide, and as the title suggests, rebirth. Plath discusses her attempts to take her own life
as moments of resurrection, rather than failures. This piece becomes even more poignant when one
considers that Plath did die by suicide two years before this poem was published.

 ‘A Country Life’  by Randall Jarrell

 ‘Amends‘  by Adrienne Rich
 ‘For My Lover Returning to His Wife’  by Anne Sexton

F. New York School

The New York school of poetry was an innovative group of poets made up principally by Frank O’Hara,
John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. Their poetry was experimental,
philosophical, staunchly antiestablishment, and antiacademic. The group began writing in the 1950s and
is closely associated with a similarly named movement in painting alternatively called abstract
expressionism or action painting. The name New York school is a result of an aesthetic sensibility and
writing style, more than simply a location, although all five poets did live in New York City at some point
during their formative years as writers. Their poetry is steeped in the facts, events, and objects of
everyday life, and it is characterized by an impulse to blur the boundary between art and life; in writing
poetry that includes the discourse and details of normal human interaction, the poets conflated the
differences between what is normally considered material for art and what people experience in day-to-
day existence. They are also noteworthy for appropriating various aspects of French surrealism and
French symbolism; they especially employed typically surrealistic juxtapositions, which tended to be
combined with whimsical observations of daily human behavior and speech. Their use of ironic gestures
coupled with an often casual, informal tone and style created a unique tension that characterizes their
distinct poetic sensibility.

The term New York school was supposedly coined by John Bernard Myers, the director of the Tibor de
Nagy Gallery in New York City, in an effort to connect the increasingly popular abstract expressionist
painters with the then-emerging poets who were also working in New York at the time. Both groups
frequently collaborated on projects or shared and argued about ideas regarding art, politics, and
philosophy. The characteristics associated with the label—the New York school—emerge first and
foremost from the poets’ antitraditionalist aesthetic and highly experimental style. Taking the lead from
such painters as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell and, later, a second
generation of painters—Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, Nell Blaine, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers, Robert
Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns— these poets strove for artistic change by proclaiming poetry to be a
process, not simply a product.

The poets never collaborated together on a manifesto, nor did they construct any kind of formal school
or program, but they did create a very close-knit community of writers and painters who shared a
variety of strong convictions. They also lived an alternative lifestyle, which differed greatly from the
dominant conservative culture of the time. Three of the five poets in the core group were homosexual
(Ashbery, Schuyler, O’Hara), and all of them, in different degrees, explored culturally dominant
conceptions of masculinity. Moreover, like the abstract expressionists, the poets became increasingly
interested in the surface and medium of the work of art. In other words, they began to think that the
language of the poem—its sounds, structures, forms, interactions of words, and textures—should be
just as important as any attempt to create meaning. This was a radical departure from the mainstream
poetry being practiced at the time (by academic poets, such as Robert Lowell, Allen Tate, and John
Crowe Ransom), and it was also a significant departure from their peers, such as the BEATS and
the BLACK MOUNTAIN SCHOOL, who were engaged in other experimental poetic movements. The New
York school was different, because it created an emphatic shift away from the supposed meaning of the
poem and toward an interest in the materiality of language.
The New York school had a tremendous influence on poets of future generations who have come to
share a similar sensibility and style. Some of the poets who are considered to be part of the second
generation of the New York school include Ron Padgett, Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, and Joe Brainard.
Other poets who are sometimes associated with the New York school include Anne Waldman, Harry
Mathews, Edwin Denby, Kenward Elmslie, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, Eileen Myles, and Tony
Towle. Locus Solus, alternately edited by Schuyler, Ashbery, and Koch, was the primary literary magazine
that came to represent the aesthetic flavor of the first generation.
The impact of the New York school has been wide and varied. This group has been considered the
precursor to various postmodern movements in poetry, especially Language poetry. In particular, the
notion that anything in life is material for a poem, ranging from pop culture images and events to daily
thoughts and routines, emerged with the poetry of the New York school. What are often called Frank
O’Hara’s “I do this, I do that poems” (qtd. in Gooch 288), which note the everyday details of the poet’s
life, exemplify this blending of the mundane with the structure and language of a poem. In one of
O’Hara’s poems entitled simply “Poem” (1950), the speaker proposes to an interlocutor that they go for
a stroll in inclement conditions: “if it rains hard on our toes / we’ll stroll like poodles.” The playful
language here is typical. Like O’Hara, many of the poets in the New York school seem comfortable using
a collage of thoughts, actions, and details from their daily experience in ways that may be surreal and
complex or direct and straightforward.

Ultimately the poetry of the New York school is difficult to characterize, because it contains a
tremendous variety of styles, themes, and methods. Ashbery’s poetry, for example, is often
characterized as oblique, indeterminate, and periphrastic; it may have no sense of an ending, and it
perpetually circumnavigates thoughts and images. His poetry is akin to the movement of consciousness
itself, whereby the mental process and language serve to complicate perception and understanding,
rather than creating any kind of determinate conclusions. O’Hara’s poetry can be an intriguing mixture
of surrealist juxtapositions, but, at other times, it contains a very casual discourse with a conversational
style that seems like a letter written to a friend. Like O’Hara, Schuyler is known for his conversational
style and charm, and he is perhaps the most lyrical and musical of the group. Guest’s language is full of
tonal complexity that is often rendered through shifts in sound and syntax rather than content. Koch’s
poetry is replete with wit and humor, and it tends to be more narrative and direct than that of the other
writers of the group.

All the same, there are some common characteristics. The most significant of these is the poetry’s sense
of a process, in which a work tends to emphasize its own methods, procedures, and strategies, rather
than simply the end result. In other words, the poem becomes a revelation of its own process as a
specific kind of discourse, and not simply a finished product. This strategy fits effectively with the
content of the poem, which is often tied to the events of everyday life. The poetry is written while
seemingly moving and observing, whether through reality or through the flux of consciousness. In the
poetry there exists a strong interest in intellectual and philosophical ideas, ranging from philosophical
movements, such as existentialism, phenomenology, transcendentalism, and radical empiricism, to
poetic trends, such as romanticism, imagism, and objectivism. However, ultimately it is the concrete and
material connection to the everyday—direct human experience and language—that is the source of a
poem’s unfolding. O’Hara describes this impulse in “Personism: A Manifesto” (1961): “I’m not saying
that I don’t have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that
make? they’re [sic] just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I’ve stopped
thinking and that’s when refreshment arrives” (498). This “refreshment” can be characterized by a
poetry that resists traditional forms and poetic devices, such as end-rhyme, meter, alliteration, and even
metaphor. Even when most oblique, as in Ashbery and Guest, the poetry of the New York school stays
grounded in the materiality of language.

New York school poetry is, most of all, sympathetic to the visual arts from which it draws its inspiration;
indeed, the materiality important in abstract expressionism— its foregrounding of paint itself—is an
obvious shared aesthetic. The five core poets, except for Koch, wrote extensively about art, especially
painting. O’Hara and Schuyler wrote for ARTnews and both became curators at New York’s Museum of
Modern Art. Guest and Schuyler were both associate editors at ARTnews, and Ashbery established a
career as an art critic, writing for ARTnews, Art in America, Newsweek, and the Paris Herald Tribune. The
influence of painting is evident in their poetry through a shift in attention from symbolism, metaphor,
and signification to the actual operations and materials required to write a poem. Like a painter’s
interest in the canvas, paint, and individual brushstrokes, these poets became interested in calling
attention to their own basic materials—words, phrases, images, sentences, and the white space of the
page itself.
Schuyler wrote, in 1959, that “New York poets, except I suppose the color blind, are affected most by
the floods of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble” (qtd. in Lehman Beyond 2). A painterly
poetics in this sense can be, on the one hand, involved in creating a vivid picture with intense sensory
detail, concrete imagery, tonal complexity, and multivalent coloration, and, on the other hand, a poetics
that is interested in detaching language from its meaning. Like the abstract expressionists who stopped
using lines and color to represent things or objects, and who began visualizing the canvas as an arena in
which to act out a process detached from verbal or linguistic logic, these poets began to regard writing
as an activity that always refers to itself in some way and poetry as a type of collaboration with life and
language. The poets, however, faced an additional paradox that the painters did not: They were working
with language, the terms of which are abstract and inherently denotative. The New York school poet
must turn the signifying quality of language against itself and must do so in a concrete and visual way.
The images and details the New York school poets created often subordinated or even abandoned
referent and meaning in favor of texture, sound, or linguistic gesture. Ashbery is perhaps most notable
in this regard, as can be seen in the following excerpt from “Our Youth” (1962): “Of bricks . . . Who built
it? Like some crazy balloon / Of bricks . . . Who built it? Like some crazy balloon . . . / When love leans on
us.” The words create a tension that invigorates the possibilities of language by challenging causality and
referentiality. Guest writes similarly in her poem “An Emphasis Falls on Reality” (1989): “Cloud fields
change into furniture / furniture metamorphizes into fields.”

The poetry of the New York school was pivotal to the American literary landscape of the 20th century,
because of its liberating effects on poets who could now consider a greater range and kind of material
appropriate for poetry, as well as the way in which this material could be expressed. These poets
demonstrated that colloquial discourse was a viable and effective means for expressing daily emotions
and thoughts, as well as for expressing deeper imaginative and metaphysical challenges, such as identity
formation and consciousness. This movement demonstrated that almost anything, including the
mundane and ordinary, could be made exciting and intriguing within the margins of a poem.

G. Black Arts Movements

The Black Arts Movement was the name given to a group of politically motivated black poets, artists,
dramatists, musicians, and writers who emerged in the wake of the  Black Power Movement. The
poet Imamu Amiri Baraka is widely considered to be the father of the Black Arts Movement, which
began in 1965 and ended in 1975.

After Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, those who embraced the Black Power
movement often fell into one of two camps: the Revolutionary Nationalists, who were best
represented by the Black Panther Party , and the Cultural Nationalists.  The latter group called for the
creation of poetry, novels, visual arts, and theater to reflect pride in  black history and culture.  This
new emphasis was an affirmation of the autonomy of black artists to create black art for black people
as a means to awaken black consciousness and achieve liberation.

The Black Arts Movement was formally established in 1965 when Baraka opened the Black Arts
Repertory Theater in Harlem. The movement had its greatest impact in theater and poetry. Although
it began in the New York/Newark area, it soon spread to Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, and San
Francisco, California. In Chicago, Hoyt Fuller and John Johnson edited and published Negro
Digest (later Black World), which promoted the work of new black literary artists. Also in Chicago,
Third World Press published black writers and poets. In Detroit, Lotus Press and Broadside Press
republished older works of black poetry. These Midwestern publishing houses brought recognition to
edgy, experimental poets. New black theater groups were also established. In 1969, Robert Chrisman
and Nathan Hare established The Black Scholar , which was the first scholarly journal to promote black
studies within academia.

There was also collaboration between the cultural nationalists of the Black Arts Movement and
mainstream black musicians, particularly celebrated jazz musicians including John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp, and others. Cultural nationalists saw jazz as a distinctly
black art form that was more politically appealing than soul, gospel, rhythm and blues , and other
genres of black music.

Although the creative works of the movement were often profound and innovative, they also often
alienated both black and white mainstream culture with their raw shock value which often embraced
violence. Some of the most prominent works were also seen as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and
sexist.  Many works put forth a black hyper masculinity in response to historical humiliation and
degradation of African American men but usually at the expense of some black female voices.

The movement began to fade when Baraka and other leading members shifted from Black Nationalism
to Marxism in the mid-1970s, a shift that alienated many who had previously identified with the
movement. Additionally Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Gil Scott-Heron, Maya Angelou, and James
Baldwin achieved cultural recognition and economic success as their works began to be celebrated by
the white mainstream.

The Black Arts Movement left behind many timeless and stirring pieces of literature, poetry, and
theater. Ironically despite the male-dominated nature of the movement, several black female writers
rose to lasting fame including Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, June
Jordan, among others.  Additionally, the Black Arts Movement helped lay the foundation for modern-
day spoken word and hip-hop.

The Black Arts movement established a number of objectives and criteria for its creative artists to
follow. Primary among them was to persuade African Americans to reject the mainstream culture and
the process of Americanization and assimilation, instead encouraging them to embrace a “black
aesthetic,” whereby black people would look to their own culture and aesthetic values to create and
evaluate African-American literature. The three major criteria of the Black Arts movement, established
by Ron Karenga, were that all black art must be “functional, collective, and committed” (33). The
functional nature of black art meant that the literary work must serve a purpose larger than merely the
creation of art. It had to be connected to the social and political struggles in which African-American
people were engaged. The second criterion, that black art must be “collective,” meant that it must serve
the people; it must educate, inspire, and uplift them. Reciprocally, the artist must learn from and be
inspired and uplifted by the people. The artist must be prepared to sacrifice her or his own individuality
and, instead, always write with the good of the people in mind. Third and lastly, black art must be
committed to political and social reform and supportive of the revolution that will bring this about. In
essence the Black Arts movement’s objectives were to reach the masses of black people, to make them
understand their message of self-sufficiency and dignity, and to inspire them to act upon it.

Many of the criteria and objectives of the Black Arts movement are discernible within the poetry itself.
For example, in “From the Egyptian” in his 1966 collection Black Art, Baraka makes clear that violent
confrontation with the oppressors of black people is an imminent reality as he asserts that he is
prepared to murder “the enemies / of my father.” Likewise, in “The True Import of Present Dialogue,
Black vs. Negro” in Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Giovanni tells black people: “We ain’t got to prove
we can die / We got to prove we can kill.” Giovanni also demonstrates the criterion of commitment with
“My Poem” (1968), when she writes in support of the revolution and its enduring nature, stating that “if
i never do anything / it will go on.” The didacticism of much Black Arts poetry is visible in Baraka’s “A
School of Prayer” (1966). In this poem, Baraka tells his black audience: “Do not obey their laws.” “Their,”
of course, refers to white society. Essentially Baraka urges black people to rebel against white authority
and be wary of the words spoken by those who seek to oppress them because their purpose is to
deceive black people and curtail their advancement. The celebration of blackness is also noticeable in
Black Arts poetry. Sanchez, perhaps the female poet most closely identified with the Black Arts
movement, reclaims the dignity of black womanhood in an unnamed poem in her volume We a
BaddDDD People (1970), when she links herself as a black woman to a regal African queen who will,
“Walk / move in / blk queenly ways.” Similarly, in “Ka Ba” (1969), Baraka affirms the uniqueness of black
expressive culture and of black people, whom he describes as “full of masks and dances and swelling
chants / with African eyes and noses and arms,” despite the present condition of oppression and
degradation under which many African Americans live. In both of these poems, Sanchez and Baraka seek
to restore to black people a positive representation of blackness and raise their collective sense of
identity.

Many of the poems in Sanchez’s collection We a BaddDDD People exemplify experimentation with

language. In “indianapolis/summer/1969/poem,” Sanchez provides a new spelling of the
words mothers (“mothas”),  fathers (“fathas”), and  sisters (sistuhs”); the word about becomes “bout,”
the word  black becomes “blk,” and the word I becomes “i.” The changes in spelling, as well as the use of
nonstandard English in Sanchez’s poems, are meant to capture the syntax and vernacular speech of
many within the black community, while the abbreviated spelling of “blk” and the lower case “i” are part
of Sanchez’s refusal to adhere to the rules of standard English. Many Black Arts poets perceived
language to be a tool of the oppressor and therefore sought ways to make it their own. Lastly, the use of
pejorative terminology and irreverent language was also common among Black Arts poets. The police
were often referred to as “pigs,” and white people were termed “honkies” or “crackers.”

everal criticisms have been leveled against the Black Arts movement. One was that it tended only to
address issues of race and to promote racial hatred. Also the functional aspect of the Black Arts
movement came to be denounced by newly emerging black literary critics who claimed that the
literature itself was often subordinate to the political or social message of the movement. These critics
saw this as detrimental to black literature, creating a narrowness of focus that creatively limited the
artist and the kinds of literature he or she could compose. In addition there was a tendency in the Black
Arts movement to devise theories prior to the creation of an actual body of literature that would prove
the theory. Therefore the literature was driven by the theory rather than the other way around. Lastly,
some Black Arts movement writers were known to judge harshly any black writer who did not conform
to the criteria and objectives of the movement. Even black writers of the past were not exempt from
being maligned, and Black Arts movement writers often did criticize them without always taking into
consideration the historical period and context in which these past writers were composing their
literature.

Still the Black Arts movement’s influence and contributions to American poetry were far reaching. It
made literary artists rethink the function and purpose of their work and their responsibility to their
communities and to society. It also influenced and continues to inspire new generations of poets to
experiment with a variety of artistic forms to refuse the pressure to conform to Western standards of art
and to write, embrace, and derive their art from within their own expressive culture.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_movements
https://literarydevices.net/metaphysical/
https://www.britannica.com/art/Symbolism-literary-and-artistic-movement
https://www.britannica.com/event/Harlem-Renaissance-American-literature-and-art
https://www.britannica.com/art/Beat-movement
https://literariness.org/2020/07/10/the-new-york-school-of-poetry/
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-arts-movement-1965-1975/
Submitted by Group 1:
April Grace T. Abool
Lea Laresma
Ian Dante Arcangeles
UN Fonte
Bea Denosta

Submitted to:
Ms. Simplicia G. Pacifico
Professor