Confessional Poetry in the Cold War: The Poetics of Doublespeak (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

This book explores how confessional poets in the 1950s and 1960s US responded to a Cold War political climate that used the threat of nuclear disaster and communist infiltration as affective tools for the management of public life. In an era that witnessed the state-sanctioned repression of civil liberties, poets such as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Randall Jarrell adopted what has often been considered a politically benign confessional style. Although confessional writers have been criticized for emphasizing private turmoil in an era of public crisis, examining their work in relation to the political and affective environment of the Cold War US demonstrates their unique ability to express dissent while averting surveillance. For these poets, writing the fear and anxiety of life in the bomb’s shadow was a form of poetic doublespeak that critiqued the impact of an affective Cold War politics without naming names. Acknowledgments Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: The Poetics of Doublespeak Cloistering the Politics of Confessional Poetry The Politicization of Cold War Culture Atomic Poetics: Containment of the Fissured Self The Cold War Academy Disparate Selves and Cold War Poetry Works Cited Chapter 2: “Lack-Land Atoms Split Apart”: Robert Lowell’s Atomic Confessions Works Cited Chapter 3: The Poetics of Double-Talk: John Berryman’s Dream Songs as Cold War Testimonials Works Cited Chapter 4: Fastening a New Skin: Anne Sexton, Self-Help, and the Illness of Responsibility Works Cited Chapter 5: Toward a Poetics of Terror: Sylvia Plath and the Instant of Death Works Cited Chapter 6: New Critical Conspiracy Theory: Randall Jarrell and the Poetics of Dissent Works Cited References Index