“Apparently Personal”

I love this phrase “apparently personal” used by Sharon Olds to describe her poems in an interview in the latest Poetry Review [*]:

When the term confessional is used, I think what people mean is apparently personal poetry. When M.L. Rosenthal conjured up the term ‘confessional’ he felt that Lowell’s conversion to Catholicism and subsequent access to Confession was somehow behind Lowell’s own apparently personal poetry. We could also mention W.D. Snodgrass here, Sexton, Plath, Berryman. Of course, I can see why people would assume that my work is directly autobiographical. But I have never discussed it as autobiography.[*]

She also discusses a feeling of limitation about the way she works consistently in the first person:

H[elen] F[arish, interviewer]: … you have remained dedicated to the first person voice … Why?

SO: I think it’s got hold of me … I’ve always wished I could write well without an ‘I’ (and I’ve written a lot without it but the poems just don’t often work). Rather than being dedicated to it, I think I’m limited to it. It’s like the telescope turned round. I’m quite myopic – maybe the ‘I’ is my near-sighted way of saying ‘we’. [*]

Asked about “the autobiography versus language debate which is topical in the American poetry world” [*], she concludes:

I have the feeling that in some way every poem is a narrative … And I feel every poem is experimental in some way too … I remember in the 1960s when it seemed so wonderful to write about whatever moved us … I’m much more aware now of how hard it is to use the ‘I’ and have it not feel overly self-involved. I remember how exhilarating it was at first … I was so happy to find a way of writing that felt ummediate to me, and ordinary enough, and actual – though that sounds like autobiography a bit, doesn’t it. I mean a music that didn’t feel too different from the sensations of experience – not just one person’s experience … and not ‘everybody’s,’ but somewhere in between. [*]

I love this description of first person writing – “not just one person’s experience … and not ‘everybody’s’, but somewhere in between. It sums up exactly what works well in the poetry and memoirs I like best – the personalised and the universal hand in glove.

I only started reading Olds’ work four years ago and it’s had a huge impact on me – in terms of my own writing and in how I think about the first person narrative. It’s brilliant to see this interview in Poetry Review and to hear Olds talking so frankly about her use of the ‘I’.

The interview also covers other ground, including taboo-breaking and the female body. If you’re not a Poetry Society member receiving it as a membership benefit, it’s well worth the £7.95 cover price, or a trip to the Poetry Library to look it up.

Ref

[*] Helen Farish ( 2008 ) ‘Sharon Olds: Apparently Personal: interview’. Poetry Review 98(1): 61-64.