Vol. 7, Issue 8, Part F (2021)

Abstract
Confessional poetry in America was given the centre stage by the publication of’ Life studies’ written by Robert Lowell in 1959. Both Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were the students of Lowell’s poetry class in Boston from 1958–59. The impact of his style and his influence is clearly seen in their works. Both the poets had personal issues – Plath with her father and later with her husband Ted Hughes, whereas Sexton had a strained relationship with her mother and later expressed guilt over her own inadequacy as a mother in many of her poems. Their poems have a raw appeal, a boldness which takes one’s breath away. The universality of suffering, portrayed by these confessional poets, takes their confession beyond the private and personal.