Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics
By Jo Gill
2007
First Published
4.88
Average Rating
232
Number of Pages
Given the amount of scholarship on twentieth-century poetry, there has been remarkably little published about Anne Sexton, even though her work is considered to be as important as that of such contemporaries as Sylvia Plath and W. H. Auden. By offering new and provocative readings of her entire oeuvre, Jo Gill provides a long overdue critical appreciation of Anne Sexton and presents a radical rethinking of the confessional mode of poetry and a recuperation of Sexton's place in it. Gill makes substantial use of Sexton's archive of unpublished diaries, drafts, correspondence, lectures, interviews, stage readings, and book annotations, as well as a little-known television documentary on Sexton. She also uses techniques that have not been previously applied to Sexton's poetry to increase our understanding of the poet's life and work. Employing new—principally poststructuralist—literary theories and critical practices, Gill offers new readings of Sexton's complex and ambitious poems. She discusses the diversity and richness of Sexton's writing across her career, shows the relevance of the often-ignored later poems, and places Sexton's work in its specific historical, political, and ideological contexts.
Avg Rating
4.88
Number of Ratings
8
5 STARS
88%
4 STARS
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Author
Jo Gill
Author · 4 books
Professor Jo Gill completed her first degree at the University of Leicester, her MA at York University and her PhD at the University of Gloucestershire. She worked in publishing for several years before commencing research for a PhD and taking up an academic career. She specialises in modern and contemporary literature with a particular interest in confessional and life writing, mid-century American poetry, the cultures of the American suburbs and literature and architecture. She is Chair of Governors at Richard Huish Sixth Form College, Taunton.
