My Papa's Waltz

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Deeper Study

Literary Context

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Deeper Study Literary Context

Confessional poetry was an influential movement in midcentury American verse, and though not often officially recognized as a confessional poet, Theodore Roethke was an important precursor. The literary critic M. L. Rosenthal first coined the term “confessional poetry” in his review of Robert Lowell’s 1959 book, Life Studies. Lowell’s book consisted of poems written in a direct and colloquial style, and which discussed his personal experiences with marriage and mental illness. Though Rosenthal well understood that every poet draws on their own life, he found something new in the poems’ naked honesty. Lowell had effectively stripped away the polite veneer of social life to reveal the ugly reality that hides underneath, in our most personal and intimate experiences. Life Studies won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960, and confessional poetry went on to dominate the decade that followed. Yet more than a decade before Lowell came the publication of the exceptional collection The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948), in which Roethke processed many of his childhood memories through poetry. The “confessional” nature of Roethke’s verse speaks to an ongoing debate among today’s critics about just how new confessional poetry actually was. In important ways, poetry has long been “confessional.”