UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA
ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO
Nuša Jošar
Instagram Poets Are the New Generation of Confessional Poets Instagram pesniki kot nova generacija izpovednih pesnikov
Magistrsko delo
Mentor: red. prof. dr. Jason Frederick Blake Enopredmetni univerzitetni študijski program druge stopnje: Anglistika
Contents
Introduction ... 1
Poetry beginnings and major poetic movements throughout history ... 4
Instagram poetry ... 7
Beginnings, form, subject matter ... 7
The main Instagram poets and their work ... 11
The impact of Instagram poetry ... 20
Strengths and shortcomings ... 20
Confessional Poetry ... 24
What is Confessional poetry, the main representatives, characteristics, and examples ... 24
Instagram Poetry and Confessional Poetry: Shared Characteristics and Similarities ... 30
1. Mental Health Struggles ... 30
2. Autobiographical Details ... 32
3. Shared Topics ... 33
4. Self-help ... 36
5. Social Background ... 38
Analysis of poems ... 44
1. Rupi Kaur ... 44
Poem analysis ... 51
2. Christopher Poindexter... 51
Poem Analysis ... 58
3. Lang Leav ... 58
Conclusion ... 67
Bibliography ... 69
Introduction
Throughout history, we have observed poetry going through different eras – Its early beginnings with the Epic of Gilgamesh to beautiful lyrical poems of ancient Rome and Greece. The well- known Elizabethan and Shakespearean eras enriched literature with humanistic and religious subjects. This was portrayed in self-aware characters with an impeccable set of values and poets referencing religious literature, commonly the Bible. Later came Romanticism, the American transcendentalist, and the Beat movement. Postmodern poetry, including Confessional poetry, and finally Instagram poetry. These are just a few noticeable milestones in the history of poetry that have shaped our views of poetry and poetry itself to become what it is today.
Confessional poets, active from the 1950s to 1960s in postwar America, such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, and the father of Confessional poetry, William De Witt Snodgrass, were one such milestone. While researching the path poetry has traveled through history, I came across Confessional poets, and their work seemed strangely familiar. Many of them included open testimonies of family dynamics, as in Plath’s 1962 poem “Daddy” where she admits, “I have always been scared of you” (PoetryFoundation n.d.). Plath paints a troubling picture of her father and openly talks about their strained relationship. After further comparison, I was able to find similarities with a relatively new form of poetry that has surfaced, with the help of social media, not long ago called Instagram poetry.
My research topic will cover the two groups of poets – Confessional and Instagram poets. With the help of similarities between the two groups, I will present Instagram poets as the new generation of Confessional poets. I have chosen three Instagram poets: Lang Leav, the pioneer of Instagram poetry; Rupi Kaur, the most successful and recognizable poet in this category; and the new romantic Christopher Poindexter, the Instagram poet I admire the most.
My purpose is to present Instagram poets as the new generation of Confessional poets. I will achieve that by analyzing both groups and drawing parallels. I will then offer close readings1 of five poems from each Instagram poet listed above and further present shared characteristics between the two groups. I will consider five main characteristics: intimate subject matter such as
1 Close readings will follow Harvard College Writing Center’s three-step approach. First, I will be highlighting specific phrases, words, repetitions, etc. Then I will be asking questions about them, and the last step will consist of offering explanations. Explanations will take into account the author’s biography and the social and political background of the time. I will also include various larger contexts important for the understanding of a particular poem.
mental health issues they all dealt with: 1) mental health struggles, 2) autobiographical details, 3) shared topics, 4) the self-help aspect of their work and 5) their social background.
My master’s thesis will consist of four main chapters. The first chapter will present a short overview of poetry beginnings and major poetic movements throughout history to create a solid basis for further analyses and provide readers with valuable background information, key for their understanding of the thesis.
I will then present Instagram poetry and offer answers to questions such as: What is Instagram poetry? How did it start? Who are the most visible Instagram poets, and what topics do they address in their works. The second chapter will briefly address Confessional poetry. What is Confessional poetry? What are the general and defining characteristics? I will also present three Confessional poets and their work. The third chapter will show Instagram poetry as a new genre with characteristics of Confessional poetry. I will discuss these characteristics in detail and support them with various Instagram poetry pieces, excerpts from interviews, articles, and other relevant sources.
The fourth and final chapter will analyze Instagram poems. I will choose five poems per author and analyze them based on those five defining characteristics listed above.
The methodology I used throughout the thesis is descriptive. As Borg and Gall write, “Descriptive studies are aimed at finding out ‘what is,’ so observational and survey methods are frequently used to collect descriptive data” (AECT, 2001). This methodology helped me introduce the background information relevant to understanding the phenomenon of Instagram poetry, getting to know the poets and understanding their work. To provide an accurate representation of Instagram poetry, I have read through all the poetry collections from Poindexter, Kaur and Leav, and dedicated the whole chapter to listing and explaining the characteristics of Instagram poetry in-depth. I have gathered data on the lives of Instagram and Confessional poets by reading, selecting, and including relevant interviews and articles in order to learn about them, their work and to present a comprehensive picture of the genre in the thesis. After highlighting shared characteristics, I included a chapter of close readings of selected poems to illustrate similarities and my understanding of works. Analyses reflect those characteristics presented in the first chapters and show how poets incorporated them into poetry pieces. From this, we can conclude that Instagram poets are indeed the next generation of Confessional poets.
My sources mainly include interviews and online articles because Instagram poetry is still very new. The app officially launched in late 2010, but Instagram poetry as a genre did not attract
widespread attention until eight years later. There is still a noticeable lack of printed sources available at this time, so I paid close attention and was very particular while selecting them.
The thesis in itself offers a closer look of the development of poetry through years, presents two poetry groups and ultimately focuses on the new Instagram poetry genre. While presenting the genre, poets and their work it touches upon several relevant topics such as mental health issues, self-help and feminist topics pertaining to bridging the pay gap and smashing the glass ceiling. The thesis not only shows the reader that Instagram poets share several characteristics with Confessional poets but presents the genre of Instagram poetry as a helpful instrument for raising difficult questions, and guiding readers into actively thinking about solutions.
Poetry beginnings and major poetic movements throughout history
To explore and understand the term Instagram poetry, we first must try to understand and define the term poetry. This might seem like an easy task but solely copying the definition “a form of literature” from the Oxford dictionary would be far too limiting. Poetry embodies and shelters different eras, authors, and their significant art pieces. We must understand how poetry changed and evolved throughout history to understand how and why it is entering the social media world and transforming into the modern genre called Instapoetry.
As Golden reminds us, “Unlike other literary forms that we can date to precise texts and time periods, it’s a challenge to pinpoint the earliest work of poetry” (Golden, 2015). Some may argue that the beginning of poetry starts with The Epic of Gilgamesh from the 18th century B.C., but since poetry may have existed pre-literacy we will begin with the poetry that “dates back to cavemen and the earliest shamans” (Webexhibits.org 2008)2. They used to paint pictures and symbols on the walls of caves to document their lives and honor significant events.
Later, poetry was being orally transmitted in forms of stories and legends but it was when people learned how to write that they became even more creative and managed to elevate poetry to new heights, as seen through “the gorgeous lyrical love poems of Ancient Greece and Rome[.] More than three dozen known forms took root in the Greek culture, including the ode, fable, lyric, and Anacreontic verse” (Webexhibits.org 2008).
Then came the Sicilian poets that “wrote poetry to be read, rather than accompanied by music, and created the 14-line sonnet structure” (Webexhibits.org 2008). The structure as they presented it in the late 13th beginning of the 14th century is still in the use today. The most well-known Elizabethan and Shakespearean eras, enriched the poetry world with “humanistic as well as religious subjects” (Webexhibits.org 2008) found in the works of authors such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bacon, and Spenser. That was the time where the education of the general public was on the rise, poetry was making its way into school curriculums and beginning to gain popularity.
2 The Webexhibits.org page is an interactive museum of science, humanities, and culture, and therefore my primary source for the history overview chapter. It provides a most concise framework of poetry throughout history and highlights movements, poetry pieces, and authors relevant to my thesis.
Following the Elizabethan and Shakespearean poets were the metaphysical poets. “The metaphysical movement with John Dryden defined and compared their subjects through nature, philosophy, love” (Webexhibits.org 2008), and the previously popular religious poetry was slowly taking its leave.
The era of Romanticism, with William Blake and Lord Byron, lasted twenty-five years and was considered one of the greatest periods. Romantic poets “put nature even more central to their work than the metaphysical poets [and] challenged their readers to open their minds and imaginations”
(Webexhibits.org 2008).
After Romanticism, a new, completely different period was coming to light. Modernism was “the largest, most significant movement of the early 20th century” (PoetryFoundation n.d.) and it closely reflected events and innovations of the time. Everything “from the automobile to the airplane, the vacuum cleaner to the incandescent lightbulb, the motion picture to the radio” (PoetryFoundation n.d.) was entering people’s everyday lives. Some of the greatest representatives of the movement, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings and Robert Frost were known for their poetry often being
“in its ‘variety and complexity,’ difficult to read and to define” (PoetryFoundation n.d.).
Jumping back to 1863; the time of American Transcendentalists movement, which was rooted in its leader Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admiration of Hinduism and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, followed by “the most influential movement of the past 100 years – the Beat movement”
(Webexhibits.org 2008). The Beat movement was “the mixture of academia, be-bop jazz, the liberating free verse of William Carlos Williams, and the influence of budding author Jack Kerouac, who coined the term ‘Beat Generation’ in 1948[.]” (Webexhibits.org 2008)
Since modernists for so long emphasized an impersonal approach to poetry and even objectivity, we started to see verse slowly becoming freer, poets more daring and forthcoming while expressing themselves. As a result of this emotional liberation, we observed what people called Confessional poetry, which included poets such as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell. The subject of their work were poets themselves and “their images that reflected intense psychological experiences, often culled from childhood or battles with mental illness or breakdown” (Poetry Foundation 2020).
Later we experienced a long period of immense lack of interest in poetry. “In 2012, fewer than 7%
of Americans had read poetry, which was down from 17% in 1992. That was the steepest decline found in any genre of literature” (Ramirez, 2020). All this changed and was recently replaced by
sudden popularity and overflow of poetry on various social media outlets, most notably Instagram.
Instagram poets and their poetry have managed to revive interest in poetry, especially in younger generations, which in itself is a great success. “According to a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 million Americans are reading poetry – the highest percentage of poetry readership in almost two decades” (Hill and Yuan 2018). The new era of poetry is, therefore upon us, a revival of sorts. Instagram may have started it, but as publisher Kirsty Melville points out, “[it] naturally helps sales of all poets. The classics and other contemporary poets are selling” (Hill and Yuan 2018). Judging by this information, the newest era is starting right and is thus far looking rather promising.
Instagram poetry
Beginnings, form, subject matter
The early beginnings of Instagram poetry trace back to Tumblr, where most of today’s well-known poets first published their work and only later switched to Instagram. For this MA thesis, I will consider the beginning of this new genre, which has become so popular during the last few years, with Lang Leav and her 2013 publication of “the first volume of printed social media poetry Love and Misadventures, which originally appeared in Tumblr” (Inman Berens 2019). I have chosen this publication to mark the beginning of Instagram poetry because the “[a]nnual poetry sales indicate a walloping 21% annual compound growth rate” (Inman Berens 2019) corresponded with Lang Leav’s publication. The Guardian also recognized Leav “as a pioneer and role-model of the Insta- poetry movement that has overwhelmed the whole world” (Adek & Satria 2019, 2). According to Andrews McMeel Publishing, Leav has managed to sell over 150,000 copies of her debut collection. Many poets have since followed in her footsteps and even tripled Leav’s sales.
Nonetheless, she was the first to draw attention to this new poetry genre and sparked the interest of not only larger publishing houses and fellow poets, but readers worldwide.
After Leav’s book appeared on the top of bestselling lists, people grew interested in Instagram poetry and poets themselves. What is Instagram poetry, and why did it attract such a large following in a relatively short period. Instagram poetry originated from Tumblr, a website that allows users to share photos accompanied by lengthy blog posts. Later Instagram came to be, and Instagram poetry became an umbrella term for short poems shared on that social networking app. Poems are characterized by raw emotion and straightforwardness while addressing complex issues such as gender inequality, racism, and mental health problems.
The subject matter can be, and is, often autobiographical, guiding readers on to the path of self- discovery. It also deals with on-going issues in the world. Rupi Kaur reflects on one controversial decision of former United States President Donald Trump in one of her poems:
you split the world into pieces and called them countries
declared ownership on what never belonged to you
and left the rest with nothing. (@RupiKaur February 25, 2019)3
The song criticizes his ruling to split immigrant families on the US–Mexico border. Kaur sees it as
“a systematic crusade designed to dehumanize and divide. And children are their leverage” (Kaur 2017). She often supports and further discusses topics of her poems with commentaries she provides below various poems. Her followers can also share their views and participate in the debates that often develop in the comment section.
Simple sketches accompany poems, summing up and further explaining the core content. As a part of a collaboration with photographers or other artists, poets frequently add pictures. “Often, the poems are also presented in posed photographs, where the poem will be typewritten and sometimes still sitting in the typewriter – a common style used by Christopher Poindexter, JM Storm, Alfa Poet, J.Iron Word, MvDarkLight, The Poetry Bandit, and others” (Pâquet 2019, 299). That gives the impression that even though their main platform is Instagram, they are “real” poets, and poetry is still a traditional art accompanied by vintage aesthetics.Poems are just as valuable, and poets are every bit of artists that they were before. They have adapted to modern times and are now using available technology to their advantage.
Alongside visual presentations, the subject matter is the first notable reason why Instagram poetry was and continues to be well received. Not only does it deal with, for example mental health, loss, and addiction, but it presents those topics in a manner that people identify with and can understand at a glance. Poems manage to highlight the essence of discussed problems with a few keywords or straightforward lines. They are honesty and vulnerable. People relate to the experiences and recognize their struggles in them. Blake Auden, Zack Grey, and Tyler Knott Gregson all write about unrequited love and the challenging aftermath. Readers perceive those hardships as universal and count themselves as part of a larger group of people experiencing the same emotions. Poets, therefore, manage to provide readers with the notion of being understood and inspire the feeling of not being alone. A strong bond and inspiring feelings of being understood are what sets Instapoetry apart from traditional poetry. The final goal, bringing the reader closer to the poem, is the same with both genres, but traditional poetry manages to mask its essence, so the majority of readers fail
3 Kaur uses only lower cases and periods in her poetry. She explains this choice by stating that “[w]ithin the Gurmukhi script [one of her ancestral languages], there are no uppercase or lowercase letters [and] the only punctuation that exists is a period” (Kaur 2020). This way Kaur honors her mother tongue and offers “A visual representation of what [she]
want[s] to see more of within the world: equallness” (Kaur 2020).
to recognize it. Poems often require additional explanation and sometimes even an extensive background study. With that, the connection to the art piece is difficult or even impossible to reach.
Poetry produces a counter effect – alienating its readers and is seen as unattainable craftsmanship only a selected few can enjoy.
The third reason resides in the fact that Instagram poetry often offers advice and resolutions to everyday problems and misfortunes that people face every day. It arms readers with a new, fresh outlook so Instagram poetry can be, in this perspective, categorized as a new way of self-help “that contrasts with the superficiality of the social networking site” (Pâquet 2019, 297). It motivates people to read poetry, reflect, learn and eventually reach inner peace. It also adds to the importance of Instagram as an app and shows significant development beyond its initial surface-level entertainment goals. Celebrities and their detox-tea-selling selfies have been pushed aside as poetry takes its spot in the spotlight.
There is also a technical side as to why Instagram poetry gained such popularity in a relatively short period. Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps, free to download anywhere in the world. As of June 2018, Statista reports more than one billion active users. “The shift from the power of celebrity to the ‘everyperson’ creates opportunities for individuals to self-express a constructed public image” (Pâquet 2019, 298). It also allows poets to create and shape a brand for themselves and reach astonishing numbers of users with a click of a post-it button. The app lets them upload their work, sell it, promote their current projects, and establish, what appears a close connection with their fan base through, for example, comment replies. “The ever-growing popularity of these poets also makes them valuable to other brands, providing newer and bigger ways to commodify their words. Cleo Wade’s poetry has been featured in Gucci advertisements, emblazoned on Nike sneakers, and scrawled across dishes sold by boutique homeware stores” (Hill and Yuan 2018). Instapoets have managed to use their Instagram platform to make significant financial profit. Many of them are not only selling poetry pieces, but also offering merchandise – t-shirts, sweaters, even jewelry. Atticus, one of the most notable Instagram poets, branched out and is as of 2017 selling his wine. Everything Instagram poets touch seems to sell well. They are attracting the most attention among the younger TikTok generation at the moment, and other artists do not come close with their products in terms of sales. Their fan bases are also some of the most
active participants in sharing poets’ work. With the use of hashtags, Instagram directs each user straight to the homepage of the poet.
Instagram offers, besides what has been mentioned above, many more possibilities for the poets to effectively and quickly spread their work. They can collaborate with other brands and poets, gain a worldwide following and build a recognizable brand in no time. It is the most effective, easy-to- use strategy which has proven very fruitful for many creators, especially with the following three Instagram poets I chose to present in the next chapter.
The main Instagram poets and their work
Since 2013 and Lang Leav’s success with Love and Misadventure, the number of Instagram poets has increased drastically. Many of them have published several books and amassed a large following. Some of the more famous and successful Instagram poets, among others, are: Rupi Kaur, who is with her 4.1 million Instagram followers (Kaur 2020) and three published books the most famous and has become the face of the genre; R. M. Drake follows with his 2.5 million followers (Drake 2020); then Atticus – another well-known name in the field. He built his brand around secrecy and hidden identity, and to this day, not one of his 1.5 million subscribers (Atticus 2020) knows who he is. Cleo Wade, Ventum, Austin Kleon, Beau Taplin, and Blake Auden are also some of the more recognizable names associated with Instagram poetry. All the poets mentioned have made a significant impact in the world of Instagram poetry. The majority of them are published authors with best-selling books, successful entrepreneurs, and serve as an inspiration to younger poets that are starting their artistic journey.
For this thesis, although all previously mentioned poets deserve recognition for their work, I will focus only on three. I will dive into the poetry of Lang Leav since she was the pioneer who set the whole Instapoetry trend in motion. The second poet will be Rupi Kaur, since she is the most known out of all. She is a Canadian woman “with a Sikh Indian background” (Pâquet 2019, 297) who touches upon feminism, discusses her experience as a woman of color and a child of immigrant parents. I have also chosen to present Christopher Poindexter since he is one of my favorites. His work is full of honest and straightforward testimonies related to his unhealthy relationships, his mental health issues, battling with depression and alcoholism. All three poets together cover the broad spectrum of the most frequent topics in Instapoetry but are unique in their own way. Analysis of their work will offer a comprehensive picture and understanding of the new poetry genre – Instapoetry.
Leav, a pioneer of Instapoetry with her collection Love and Misadventure, has thus far published seven books of poetry and two books of fiction. “Among her many achievements, Lang is the winner of a Qantas Spirit of Youth Award, Churchill Fellowship, and Goodreads Reader’s Choice Award” (Leav, n.d.). Themes frequently featured in her writing are “message[s] of love, loss and female empowerment” (Leav, n.d.). Her pioneer collection especially focuses on short messages
of love and loss. The book has three chapters: “Misadventures,” “The Circus of Sorrows,” and
“Love.” She offers short poems that stay true to the chapter titles. Very short, “bite-sized poems […] written modestly and visually pleasing. For the most part, each page has only a single poem;
there are very few poems that cover full-paged” (Adek and Satria 2019, 2). On one of the first pages, there is a pencil sketch of a little girl with a balloon hinting at the author’s Asian roots and giving an insight into the nature of poems; a love snip-bits expressing the poet’s fleeting thoughts such as:
Love is a game of tic-tac-toe, constantly waiting,
for the next X or O.(Leav 2013, 3) 4
The collection does not provide readers with an extensive list of topics but makes up for it in other areas. Leav, a young modern-day poet, makes use of the modern times and includes many references to modern-day song lyrics as Adek and Satria (2019) find. Songs such as Drake and Nicky Minaj’s “Tic-tac-toe,” Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph” and Katy Perry’s “Firework” are all used as inspiration throughout Leav’s work. Her poems also follow the structure of object, explanation and its relation, as seen in the poem titled “A Toast”:
To new beginnings, in fear and faith and all its tinges.
To love is a dare, when hope and despair,
are gates upon it hinges. (Leav 2013, 2)
This particular structure is present throughout the entire collection and helps readers understand the connection between the lines and entire poems more clearly.
Two of the main strengths of Leav’s poetry and this whole collection are honesty and vulnerability.
The book opens with “‘A Dedication’ mentioning the presence of a female poet in she is a poet and the male character she thinks about in thought of him, and he is her poetry” (Adek and Satria 2019,
4 “Hugs and kisses, O=Hug, X=Kiss. If you look at each letter like it was representing two people from a bird's eye view, the ‘O’ represents the arms of those persons hugging each other while the ‘X is evocative of two people kissing each other” (Urban Dictionary 2008).
7). She takes the position of the poet, and even names her lover – Michael, who is also her husband.
She then shares her doubts, insecurities, and triumphs in love. With that, she enables readers to embark on a journey. She shares her love life with them, and they connect with her through shared experiences. This bond she has established through her poetry resulted in her worldwide recognition, large social media following, and publication of books, many of which are bestsellers.
However, Sutherland points out one must be careful when it comes to bestseller since “[t]he bestseller list exists […] to create sales as much as to record them […] and once there, the momentum will carry them onwards to still higher sales” (Sutherland 2007, 34).
The second poet we will look at is the most vocal and known person in the Instagram poetry world:
Rupi Kaur. “Kaur is a Canadian poet with a Sikh Indian background, who shot to fame in 2015 after Instagram removed a photograph that was part of her series on menstruation” (Pâquet 2019, 297). This resulted in a massive outrage among women and attracted a great deal of attention to Kaur’s work. Instagram eventually apologized and reposted the photo, but only after the poet posted a public letter branding it as “leaking patriarchy and misogyny” (Kaur 2015). (At this point she was not yet earning anything from Instagram.) The censorship incident gave her a platform and an opportunity to use the spotlight to her advantage and essentially build a brand.
As of January 2021, she has published three poetry books: Milk and Honey in 2015, Sun and Her Flowers in 2017, and the newest book Home Body was published this past year of 2020. All her books are practically her Instagram account summed up and printed in book form. As Pâquest writes “[s]he curates an Instagram page that presents simple poems spliced with striking selfies, professional photographs, and illustrations” (Pâquet 2019, 298). With all these aspects woven esthetically together, she created a signature Rupi Kaur style of poetry that many have tried to replicate. A short poem in the top left corner, accompanied with a simple line-work illustration on the bottom right corner that almost everyone who is somewhat familiar with Instagram poetry will immediately recognize. Her poems and style is very undemanding, and as shall be seen in the
“Impact of Instagram Poetry” section, she has been accused multiple times of writing poetry that is overly simple. But her work is something completely different. “To her, it’s straightforward. ‘It’s like a peach,’ she says. ‘You have to remove everything and get to the pit of it’” (Carlin 2017).
This is what her first book, initially self-published in 2014 and titled Milk and Honey, discusses.
She had to strip layers of trauma and struggles in her life to achieve peace. The book is heavily
autobiographical and includes poems about failed relationships and sorrows that follow. She writes about unrequited love, childhood trauma, and realizations she reached. One of the poems reads: “to heal / you have to / get to the root / of the wound / and kiss it all the way up” (Kaur 2014). After a challenging path, she discovers the way to healing. In several interviews, she talks about how poetry saved her, gave her a voice, and enabled her to put her pain into words. Although painful, those experiences helped her sell “more than 2.5 million copies [of Milk and Honey], the book spent 77 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has so far been translated into 25 languages” (Biddlecombe 2019).
Following her great success with the debut poetry collection, she had already gained a massive following. Everyone was closely following her journey and her work when her second book, Sun and Her Flowers, was published in 2017. Kaur admits that the second book deals with more complicated subjects and partially leaves love troubles behind in the first collection. Now she focuses more on her upbringing and roots, empowering women, and explaining obstacles faced by children of immigrant parents. Several poems talk about her mother, her mother’s longing for her homeland, and “how, as a kid, [Kaur] would ignore her mom at the supermarket, too embarrassed by her accent to be seen with her” (Carlin 2017). Now older, Kaur praises her mother and has dedicated many poems to her. One such poem reads:
she split through countries to be here so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline her accent is thick like honey
hold it with your life
it’s the only thing she has left of home. (Kaur 2017, 53)
Kaur also admits that she wanted to omit poems about her parents but later realized that they were an essential part of who she became as a person and a poet. Many women of color and similar backgrounds connected to Kaur’s second collection and embraced their heritage. Lilly Singh, a known Canadian actress, talk show host, and a YouTuber of Indian descent expressed that Kaur’s poems describe “exactly how [she feels] but never knew how to say” (Carlin 2017). This falls perfectly in line with the traditional idea of poetry providing words for our feelings. As poet Tracy K. Smith puts it, “poetry gives us a vocabulary for the feelings that don’t easily fit into language”
(Smith 2017). Lilly Singh joined Kaur onstage for one of the performances in Kaur’s world tour.
She took a step forward and organized live readings of her poetry all around the world. The opening
event that celebrated her second poetry collection launch was “a special theatrical performance at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City to a sold-out crowd of over 900 people willing shell out $75 to $100 to see her” (Carlin 2017). After her successful tour and positive reviews of her second book, Kaur felt the pressure to surpass her success. She also felt an immense weight on her shoulders due to mental health problems. While getting help and working through her anxiety and depression, Kaur was also working on her next book.
Her book Home Body was published in November of 2020 and it is her latest addition to the previous two collections. Kaur says “[it] walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. Home Body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself” (Kaur 2020). In the newest book, Kaur tries to understand her battles with depression and anxiety and takes her readers on the journey through her mind. She reflects, seeks potential, and then finally arrives home to herself. She, at last, understand her mind and all that she is. She is at peace with herself and the tribulations she had to overcome to find healing.
Kaur urges the reader to do the same by writing:
i dive into the well of my body and end up in another world everything i need
already exists in me there’s no need
to look anywhere else.
- home (@RupiKaur November 17, 2020)
She realizes she can count on herself to overcome all the challenges she will inevitably face. She is now self-aware, and ready to experience the new chapter of her life.
The prevalent topic of her newest book Home Body is very much appropriate when considering current happenings around the world. The pandemic and literal lock-down of the world has forced everyone to spend more time alone with their thoughts, many fighting silent battles with mental health issues. Throughout the entire Home Body collection, she also celebrates her community of devoted readers, friends, and family who stood by her side, supporting her. Other themes such as nature and accepting constant change throughout the journey of one’s life are also present. The poems are, in the true Kaur fashion, accompanied by telling sketches of the author herself. In one of her poems from Home Body, she, for example, expresses her deep admiration for the women in
her life by sketching two girls intertwined with their hair, forming a bond of friendship and a union of mutual support.
The third poet is also an artist that accompanies his work, albeit not with sketches but with compelling old-style photographs. If Lang Leav is known as the pioneer of Instapoetry, “Kaur […]
as an activist who resists and rejects authority” (Miller 2019, 1), Christopher Poindexter, their male contemporary, with 378 000 followers on Instagram (Poindexter 2020), describes himself as “more of an observer, trying to make sense of the human condition in all of its grit and glory” (Poindexter, n.d.). His work focuses on his search of understanding love and his battles with mental health issues. Not only Poindexter but Kaur as well, along with many other Instagram poets, openly talk about difficult topics such as anxiety and depression in their poems. They are addressing the problems and the surrounding stigma that our societies have created. Poets are breaking down the barriers, speaking up, and spreading necessary awareness. In recent years, our lives have become so filter-made perfect that it has become unnatural to struggle. By openly talking about mental health struggles in their poems, these poets contribute to bettering people’s perspectives on the matter, normalizing therapy, and opening a much-needed dialogue that will hopefully lead towards collective healing in the future. Poindexter channels that notion into the many poems he published in three books titled Lavender (2016), Naked Human (2017), and Old Soul Love (2018).
Poindexter’s favorite theme to write about – namely, love – is the pillar of his debut collection from 2016 titled Lavender. The collection features his most romantic poems and is an homage to love.
Even the book cover reads “a romantic series of poetry by Christopher Poindexter” (Poindexter 2016). Through brokenness, longing, disappointments, self-doubt, and triumphs, Poindexter captures different stages and sides of love. The poems are full of romantic imagery, each separated from another by black-and-white photography representing the essence of an individual poem.
Many poems are dedicated to a mysterious woman. Poindexter professes his love and praises her as he writes:
Not only did I love her
but I could tell the Universe loved her, too More than others.
She was different after all,
I would be a fool
not to notice the way the sunshine played
with her hair. (@ChristopherPoindexter November 24, 2018)
Poindexter is anything but shy when describing his loved one. It makes no sense for him to be hiding his feelings and admiration. Even the Universe has noticed the beauty this woman possesses.
In an interview with Liz Newman, Poindexter speaks about his newest collection, Old Soul Love, the contents of which Goodreads describes as “[exploration of] the many shapes and forms of love.5 Unrequited love. Platonic love. Lost love. Self-love. And, for a lucky few humans: old soul love that seems to transcend even death” (Goodreads, n.d.). Sticking with his favorite topic – love – he adds a different dimension to it and builds upon his work from his previous collections, especially his first one Lavender. The Old Soul Love includes many poems about his grandparents and their love story. Poet looks up to them since they had the privilege to experience old soul love, and Poindexter was there to witness it. There are also several poems about his grandfather – a prominent figure in the poet’s life. “[Poindexter’s] father was very mentally absent in [his life] … [so he]
latched onto the presence of [his] grandfather” (Newman 2019). “Grandfathers” is the poem that consists of grandfather’s advice to Poindexter:
It is suppose to hurt, my child.
That is why there is water in your eyes and
blood in your veins.
If we knew no pain,
we wouldn’t have known truth, and truth, my child,
is the soul
of the Universe. (Poindexter n.d.)
Poindexter very much values his grandfather’s advice, as he echoes it in his work and lives by his words. This collection, even though it deals with the known topic of love, is even more personal.
5 I am referring to Goodreads since all the collections mentioned are very new to the market. This page offers an all- around description of books and concisely presents their content to readers.
Poindexter shares with us people he most values in his life. It shows growth and development in his work as poems uncover his most intimate moments with his grandparents.
His collection Naked Human is the most distinct thus far. In it the poet explores “humanity at its finest and its worst. This is a story written between 2011–2015 about the discovery of what makes us human: doing whatever it takes to keep the loneliness away” (Goodreads, n.d.). The overall impression that the collection leaves is more grounded. Love poems are still present in the collection but do not represent the majority of it. The essence is the exploration of humanity – the poet’s faults and the bright sides of him as a human being. Heavier topics, such as alcoholism and mental health issues, are also discussed. Poindexter admits to his struggles with alcohol and involves them in his poems, humorously writing:
Do you believe in the
death penalty? He asked her.
You mean being sober?
she laughed. (Poindexter n.d.)
His poetry in general, as he mentions in many interviews, has been among other things, greatly influenced by his family life, obstacles he faced in life, his grandparents’ relationship he admired and romanticized but also Jazz. Jazz is “an extension of [him]self” (Newman 2019). He also got the chance “to write an album with an award-winning Jazz pianist Brenton Foster in Australia.
[And] hope[s] to do more of these types of things in the future” (Newman 2019) since he describes himself also as an aspiring musician. Most of his poems, love poems, or poems about his journey towards accepting himself, have a touch of Jazz, romance, and a bohemian feel.While reading them, you can almost hear that swing rhythm, see a poet looking for his beloved, and sense the ever-present longing for adventure. His whole brand focuses on romance, feelings of nostalgia, and one look at this Instagram account proves this. His apartment is filled with vintage pieces, his days spent behind his old typewriter, even his partner is a fellow poet. At first glance, he appears to be from a different time altogether. But the most telling evidence to his romantic, old soul must be the style in which he writes his poems. Most of them are written on an old typewriter. He also offers signed handwritten poems on his website alongside personalized poems he writes per request.
Poindexter with his bohemian romanticism, Kaur with her firm, outspoken nature, and Leav, who was the pioneer of the genre, have left a distinctive impact on Instapoetry with their work and presence. Many more poets shaped the genre and helped it develop and grow to what it is today, one of the leading genres of poetry. Even though it is at the peak of its popularity and many praise young poets for their work, not all agree that Instapoetry is worth its hype. Positive and negative responses and the impact Instapoetry had on the literary world will be presented in the next chapter.
The impact of Instagram poetry
Strengths and shortcomings
For the past few years, many Instagram poets and their poetry have accumulated enormous followings and enjoyed a bright light of popularity globally. Their short poems have been a hit with younger generations and have spread like wildfire, first through Tumbler, spilling over to Instagram and eventually engulfing every social media outlet. There have been positive reviews raving about the positive impact of Instagram poetry, and there have been people doubting and questioning the new genre and its authors.
Many known formally educated poets have expressed concern and straight-up disapproval of the ongoing trend with Instapoetry – one of them being the poet Rebecca Watts, who “criticized the popular poet Hollie McNish’s work as not of a poet, ‘but of a personality’” (Hill and Yuan 2018).
With that, she discredited McNish’s work and hinted at the brands Instapoets created with their online personas and their social media feeds. Poets use those brands to sell clothes, jewelry, and other products alongside their poetry. Watts believes it is more about the image those poets create, attracting a fan base based on esthetically pleasing posts, rather than on their work. She further branded Instagram poetry “as amateurish and craftless commercial fodder that anyone can breezily snack on. […] Long live consumer-driven content and the ‘instant gratification’ this affords” (Hill and Yuan 2018). These are the common accusations and known angles of negative feedback Instagram poets and their work face. Pointing out the simplicity, or as Watts calls it, “artless poetry”
everyone can understand while scrolling through their Instagram feed. Instagram poets are nothing other than sellers focusing on making a profit while neglecting the craftsmanship of poetry.
These accusations are all too familiar to Rupi Kaur, who addresses them in many of her interviews.
Kaur does not deny that she sees herself as a “‘poet-entrepreneur’ and ‘approaches poetry like running a business’” (Hill and Yuan 2018). Instagram offered her a platform, and she wisely used it to promote her poetry and expand her interests. Through her Instagram links, you can buy tickets to her live shows, art prints, and even branded hoodies. When asked about the accusation of Instagram poetry being too simplistic, she replied that “she doesn’t want readers to agonize over every word like she did when learning poetry in school. […] She wanted to do something more accessible” (Carlin 2017). The main thing she has always strived to achieve with her poetry was
people universally connecting with her work. She believes that “[p]eople will understand and they’ll feel it because it all just goes back to the human emotion. Sadness looks the same across all cultures, races, and communities” (Carlin 2017). That is what she accomplished with her short poems, precisely. People understanding, connecting and feeling her poetry as she shares “intimate parts of [her]self” (Kaur 2017). In one of her most known poems, she addresses the matter of people being rude to her and the effects their behavior has had on her. She writes:
how is it so easy for you to be kind to people he asked milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered cause people have not
been kind to me. (Kaur 2017)
Many of her readers, especially younger ones, find pieces of themselves in her work and share her experience. That is how Kaur, along with her Instagram poetry, impacted people and gained popularity.
Some people, however, do not view Instagram poetry as poetry or Instagram poets as “true poets.”
The notion that everyone can write a Rupi Kaur poem has since become a worldwide trending meme. “[P]eople start[ed] taking the text from Vine videos and stylizing them like one of her poems” (Carlin 2017). Adam Gasiewski and Emily Beck later collected these memes, and an unexpected Amazon bestseller titled Milk and Vine came to be. One of such poems from the book reads:
a potato flew around the room before you came
excuse the mess it made. (Martineau 2017)
This, and other completely nonsensical poems in the book, were created with the intention to poke fun at and discredit the work of Kaur and other Instagram poets.
Not only their work, but Instagram poets face criticism about them as artists. Rupi Kaur has expressed her views about the term “Instagram poets” in one of her interviews. “I don’t think the term itself is negative, I actually think it’s very progressive. But it gets employed in a negative way[.]” (Biddlecombe 2017) She points to the fact that the expression downgrades their talents and
themselves as artists. Once branded as Instapoets, they are no longer “real poets.” She does not view the separation of Instapoetry and poetry as something that should even exist. She is also adamant that lines will get blurred eventually. Kaur exposes the obvious positive side to Instapoetry, which is that “[p]eople [are not] just going on social media to look at what people [are]
wearing, but also to gain insight, connection, inspiration and positivity through words which didn’t exist there before” (Biddlecombe 2017). Social media, especially Instagram, has over time turned into a playground of impossible-to-achieve body goals, a sea of selfies, influencers selling hair vitamins, and promoting clothing stores, while showing off pictures from their latest holiday in exotic locations. With Instagram poetry making an entrance, users have the chance to use the app to find their daily dose of Instapoetry and awareness as well as positivity it brings. Instapoets have created many “hashtags and support profiles, such as #solidarity, #mentalillnessendthestigma and
#letstalkaboutmentalhealth, to provide a safe space for discussion and healing” (Kovalik and Curwood 2019, 190).6
While reading poetry has positive benefits for the readers, poets themselves see their online Instagram community as valuable. During the research conducted by Kovalik and Curwood, Instapoets pointed out that “[they] value the community for feedback and emotional support”
(Kovalik and Curwood 2019, 190) but also view it as an outlet during mental health struggles since
“13 of the 27 observed profiles published poems about mental health” (Kovalik and Curwood 2019, 190). Instagram poetry, therefore, created a movement with an important goal: to help not only oneself but other people by writing, sharing, and reading poetry.
Instapoetry could, for example, help teachers in a classroom setting since “[p]oetry remains crucial in school curriculum, especially Western systems in which value is placed upon classic text types”
(Kovalik and Curwood 2019, 193). Children do not understand classic texts and become quickly disinterested in poetry. This sentiment many then carry throughout their life. Poetry is about understanding and immersing oneself in the words of poets. It is about experiencing the world in all of its colors. Instapoetry can offer exactly that. An inviting welcome into poetry lessons and
6 “After you tag your post with a hashtag, you’ll be able to tap the hashtag to see a page that shows all photos and videos people have uploaded with that hashtag” (Instagram inc., 2020).
more challenging classical pieces, it can act as a motivational tool while also tackling critical subject-matters such as mental health and self-love.
Instagram has already restored the interest of younger generations in reading poetry – in part, overcoming the fact that “often one hears that poetry is a dying art, that no one reads poetry anymore” (Pâquet 2017, 311). But numbers however, skyrocketed after Instagram poetry books hit the market. This was first evident with Lang Leav’s debut collection, as previously pointed out, but what is more, according to the latest data, “Instagram poets tallied 60% of all poetry books sold in the United States in 2017 [and] […] comprised twelve of 2017’s top twenty bestselling poets”
(Inman Berens 2019). This shows that Instagram poetry and printed collections that followed significantly impacted the poetry market and singlehandedly raised sales numbers. For example, Rupi Kaur’s debut collection “Milk and Honey sold three million copies worldwide and has been translated into twenty-five languages” (Inman Berens 2019). According to Andrews McMeel publishing house, her second collection Sun and Her Flowers has sold over five million copies thus far. Everyone expects her third collection, Home Body, to surpass the previous two sales since her popularity keeps growing.
These are just the numbers of one Instagram poet. There are many more Instapoets following Kaur’s footsteps, publishing their collections and successfully selling their work. Whether critics like the genre or agree with Claire Fallon who “call[ed] [it] a ‘huckster’s paradise’ of self- promotion and media manipulation [,]” (Yu 2019), for now at least, it seems that Instapoetry is not going anywhere. By all appearances, it will become even more popular in the future.
Confessional Poetry
What is Confessional poetry, the main representatives, characteristics, and examples
As presented in the initial pages of this thesis, poetry has developed and shaped itself throughout history. Each era has left a significant mark on poetry and consequently dictated its further development and works that came to be. To show that Instagram poetry has characteristics of confessional poetry and that Instapoets are a new generation of their confessional predecessors, I need to take a closer look at confessional poetry as a whole. This chapter will discuss the beginnings of confessional poetry as a genre, its characteristics, the social atmosphere of those times, its main poets, and their works. This will help make the connections between the two genres come to light.
The importance of history and atmosphere of previous years was evident when it came to the 1950s and the 1960s, which mark the beginning of the genre that we now know as Confessional poetry.
Confessional poetry “refers to a group of poets [Robert Lowell, W.D. Snodgrass, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman] writing during the 1950s and 1960s” (Rosenbaum 2012). As Philips observes, their origins can be traced back to William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “who wrote autobiographical verse about their intimate explorations of the mind”
(Philips 1973). It could also be connected with American Romantic poets, especially with
“Thoreau’s Walden and Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself both autobiographical and confessional documents of men who deliberately alienated themselves from society, to understand their place in it” (Komar 2017, 4). Romantic poets highly influenced confessional poets, but there were some significant differences between the two groups. As Komar observes, a “confessional poet in 20th- century America rejects his social role and searches for the alternatives” (Komar 2017, 5). Neither Plath nor Sexton wanted to fulfill society’s expectations of being stay-at-home mothers, and they openly express that in several of their poems. In one such poem by Sexton, titled “Her Kind,” she vocalizes feeling misunderstood. “A woman like that is misunderstood. / I have been her kind” (13–14). She tried to fulfill a role of a happy wife and a mother but at the same time admitted that she “is not ashamed to die” (20). Sexton later acts upon her words and ends her own life.
Another big difference that separates Romanticism and confessional poetry is the poetic self. “[A Romantic] poet identifies himself with all the varieties of experience, human and non-human”
(White 1984, 37), whereas a confessional poet creates his poetic self, based on his own experiences,
mirroring his lives but also the time period. Confessional poets lived and created during a time of significant changes, especially in America. We witnessed everything from “cultural revelations [such as] color television, and Hitchcock’s Psycho, to the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech, and the first televised Presidential debates” (American Writers Museum 2016). Positive developments and innovations aside, there were also negative sides to living in postwar America, and art reflected them.
Artists had had enough of “the stifling conventionality and conformism of the 1950s” (Philips 1973), which prevented them from fully expressing themselves. They needed to show more of themselves, become more open, and use their art to achieve that. “In other words, Confessionalism was often used as a form of self-therapy, focusing on extremely personal content and dealing with damaged, imbalanced and suffering lyrical subject through which poets attempted to create their new and healthier selves” (Komar 2017, 9). Poets ultimately used their works to heal and created a new era and a name for themselves.
The actual term confessional poetry was, as Rosenbaum writes, coined by M.L. Rosenthal in his review of Robert Lowell’s work titled Life Studies in 1959. Rosenthal explains his use of the term confessional poetry by writing that “Lowell brought his private humiliations, sufferings, and psychological problems into the poems of Life Studies, [so] the word ‘confessional’ seemed appropriate” (Rosenbaum 2012). Lowell gives his readers front-row seats to his entire life with Life Studies. The collection includes significant childhood events (such as a strained relationship with his father), touches upon his divorce, and includes poems about his daughter. Rosenthal accounts for his choice of expression and hints at the characteristics of the genre as a whole. He also points at the nature of the works that marked the period. Confessional poets “often employed the first- person voice to explore transgressive autobiographical subjects including mental illness, familial trauma, gender and sexuality, and moral and political iconoclasm” (Rosenbaum 2012).
Sylvia Plath was one of the poets who masterfully used the first–person voice in countless of her poems. One such example is this extract from her famous poem titled “Daddy”:
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do. (PoetryFoundation n.d.)
The speaker directly addresses the father figure throughout the whole poem. The “use of the first person in which distance between poet and speaker is elided” (Herd 2018) gives a more personal and honest feel to the poem while reinforcing the intensity of expressed hate. It also “widen[s] the scope of the poem” (Byrne n.d.). This widening is achieved through the various subject matters that Plath deals with in this poem. Although different, all topics she touches upon are rooted in resentment towards her father. She uses the imagery of the Holocaust to express the oppression she was a victim of, accuses her husband of maltreatment, and addresses her suicidal thoughts, which were caused by traumatic events from her past. I primarily highlighted the first-voice feature of the poem, but one also must pay attention to the above-mentioned intimate struggles Plath so vividly describes in “Daddy.” This subject matter is one of confessional poetry’s main characteristics.
Confessional poets openly talked about their issues and topics not widely discussed at that time.
Komar (2017, 16) explains that John Berryman with his collection “Dream Songs,” more specifically the collection’s first volume “77 Dream Songs,” captured his lifelong struggles with depression and alcoholism that eventually led to his suicide. Anne Sexton, “at the suggestion of her doctor […] channeled her experience and began writing poetry” (American Writers Museum 2016). Her work centers on her relationship with her parents, topics related to womanhood, such as abortion and menstruation. She also speaks freely about addictions and her mental health.
“Eventually, Sexton’s poems about her psychiatric struggles were gathered in her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back” (PoetryFoundation n.d.). In the poem titled “You, Doctor Martin”
from this collection, she vividly describes her stay at the mental institution:
Of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock
the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk
in school. (Sexton 1960, 3)
The stanza is altogether a detailed description of Sexton’s everyday routine in the institution. The reader can almost join her as she waits “while they unlock the doors” (2–3) and serve them food.
She does not appreciate the environment she is in, and we can sense her suffering throughout the
entire poem. In one of the stanzas, Sexton describes “the patients including herself look[ing] like
‘moving dead’ without a soul” (Fukuda 2006, 85). In her eyes, patients are also children and foxes of Doctor Martin. He is their god. She continues with disturbing recollections from the hospital, writing that “[t]here are no knives for cutting your throat” (15–16), indicating that she and others may still be thinking about taking their lives even though they are receiving treatment. When inspected closely, this might have already indicated that she had grim thoughts.
Greatly intimate subjects, such as the loss of a parent and a stay in a mental hospital, were events that fundamentally changed poets’ lives and greatly affected who they were as people. Their work is, therefore, filled with autobiographical elements. One of the most known autobiographical poems is, among others, William DeWitt Snodgrass’ “Heart’s Needle” dedicated to his daughter Cynthia and their ever-changing relationship. He uses seasons to express how they are getting along, saying that in the fall they “go to take [their] walk” (85) to talk. But by the winter time “[she is] already growing strange to [him]” (116–117), talking about new friends he does not recognize. Another example of a well-known autobiographical collection must be the previously mentioned Life Studies by Robert Lowell. “Life Studies takes on the narrative power of fiction and the psychological insight of autobiography. Unable to save or even to understand the world, the poet focuses on the self” (Axelrod 2014). All through the four parts that constitute Lowell’s Life Studies he touches upon his faith, Catholicism, his childhood in Boston’s Beacon Hill, and dedicates a complete chapter of poems to writers who helped him as mentors. “Part four is where the book really comes to life – due to Lowell’s meticulous diction, explosive imagery, and unhinged music, as well as his, swerve towards more personally-drenched subject matter”
(McDaniel 2010). In this part author openly discusses his family affairs and his mental health. The whole book is essentially a representation of Lowell’s life. His high points and tribulations, struggles, and awareness of existence are all documented throughout the book. The last poem in the collection, titled “Skunk Hour,” is a good representation of him losing the will to live:
A car radio bleats,
“Love, O careless Love. . . .” I hear my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell, as if my hand were at its throat. . . . I myself am hell;
nobody’s here— (PoetryFoundation n.d.)
Through “stanzas 1 to 6, [Lowell] express[es] frustrations, doubt and failures. But the poem ends with a deep realization about why his life was becoming meaningless and painful” (Shrestha 2013).
In other words, the author’s problems, such as his “psychic problem[s], drug addiction, and moral corruption” (Shrestha 2013) are the root of his misery, preventing him from a fulfilling life. His life will once again become meaningful when he makes use of his potential and creativity. Poetry will essentially save his life.
Autobiographical details, first-person voice, and intimate subject matters are the characteristics covered thus far. Confessional poets, like the Instagram poets discussed in this thesis, were not afraid of speaking out about controversial topics at the time and unmasking them in their work. But their poems and collections go well past that. They are very well thought-out and constructed. They encompass authors as individuals, present their perception of the world, and their journey through life. Poems also mirror the craftsmanship of their authors. This is visible in the famous Sylvia Plath poem “Ariel.” “Ariel” is a fascinating, emotionally charged poem, where Plath takes the reader on a wild ride with her horse. The poem leaves a lasting effect through vivid imagery and comes to life with the horse galloping. Plath uses the action of horseback riding to tell a story of a struggling individual, and by the end of the poem, she turns it into a life-changing transformation. “The poem is filled with the skillful application of consonance (rhyming consonants) and assonance (rhyming vowels), as well as an end, slant (or half-rhymes), and head rhymes (also called alliteration)”
(Baldwin n.d.). This can be observed throughout the whole poem and in some of the following lines (16–18 and 28–30):
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels. (PoetryFoundation n.d.) The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red. (PoetryFoundation n.d.)
These two stanzas show that the poem is a lyrical craftsmanship, created with the carefully selected above-mentioned elements. But when compared to the topic Plath talks about, we can see an ironic gap between the two. The perfected form describes the chaos and undoing of the author herself.
Plath uses in the latter stanza and in other parts of the poem “enjambment instances in which lines break before their natural stopping points. This gives the piece a rushed feeling as if the reader is
also riding on this out-of-control horse” (Baldwin n.d.). The whole poem has a sense of urgency, when read out loud, because of the enjambments Plath strategically places throughout the poem.
The author skillfully emphasizes Ariel’s rapid journey, not only with enjambment but also with vivid descriptions. She sees herself as “an arrow” (27), becoming one with the horse and at the same time coming apart. Plath takes “the horseback [and makes it] something more – a journey to death, a stripping of personality and selfhood” (Rosenblatt 1979). The whole poem and Ariel itself guide the reader towards the ultimate end of this intense journey. The author is falling apart, shedding “flakes from her heels” (18) to depict the shedding of her past and all that she was. In the end, she reaches liberation while arriving “into the red Eye, the cauldron of the morning” (30–31), representing her new reality and a fresh new start. The structure and topic of horseback riding turning out to be so much more makes “Ariel” one of Plath’s most stylistically perfect poems. This depth and complexity makes it essential to look at them closely. Both poems are also a great representatives of the craftsmanship of confessional poetry as a genre.
Confessional poetry and its representatives Plath, Snodgrass, Sexton, Berryman, and Lowell, made a lasting impression with their work, not only in postwar America but also around the world. Their turmoil, autobiographical details, and incredible poetic skills made the genre very popular with readers and changed the poet-reader dynamic, making it more personal. Back then, it also inspired people to talk more openly about subjects that were considered taboo, allowed women to share their struggles, and brought readers closer to authors without meeting them face to face. Their work and lives still greatly influence today’s generation of poets, especially a brand new Instagram poetry genre. Parallels between the two groups and their work are highlighted in the following chapter.
Instagram Poetry and Confessional Poetry: Shared Characteristics and Similarities
After presenting the two groups of poets, this chapter will cover the similarities and characteristics that Instagram poetry bears with Confessional poetry. The arguments throughout the chapter will solidify Instagram poetry and its most-known poets as the new generation of Confessional poets.
The chapter will cover similarities authors from both groups share, topics they chose to write about in their poems, the social background that in large proportions influenced their work, and the self- help aspect of their poetry.
1. Mental Health Struggles
The first similarity that Instagram poets bear when compared to their confessional colleagues is their struggles with mental health. Every poet mentioned in the previous two chapters, whether it be a poet belonging to the Instagram or confessional group, has openly discussed their mental health issues. Anne Sexton was one of those poets who did not hide her struggles with depression and even dedicated several poems to her psychiatrist. One such poem discussed in the previous chapter was titled “You, Doctor Martin.” Psychiatrist Martin Orne was one of the most prominent figures in Sexton’s life and the person who initially encouraged her to write poetry. “In 1991 when it was revealed that [he] had released tapes of his therapy sessions with Anne Sexton to her biographer, mental health professionals expressed concern and outrage” (Skorczewski 2010, 1).
They accused him of various violations and strongly opposed his actions. Orne defended himself by saying that Sexton permitted him to use the tapes to help others. That statement was later confirmed by Sexton’s daughter as well. Whether the public and professionals agreed or disagreed with what Orne had done, the tapes were fascinating and revealed a great deal of Sexton’s mind.
“[My poems] are my accomplishments,” says Sexton, to which Dr. Orne replies “No, you are your accomplishment” – November 7, 1963 (Skorczweski 2010, 1). Dr. Orne praised her as a person first and acknowledged her efforts and the time she dedicated to getting better. She was a famous poet, and he appreciated her work, but throughout their sessions, the doctor taught her to see her worth even without all the fame. Their sessions included various discussions on everything from
“mental illness, creativity, and therapeutic process” (Skorczweski 2010, 1). The tapes show the
