DEBATING THE MERITS OF CONFESSIONAL POETRY

by Mary K O'Melveny


No one has any use these days
for confessional poetry
says the poetry professor
who is guiding us through epochs
towering with symbols, laden
with mythological meanings.

Though he did not mean anything
personal, I can feel the heat
as it rises up from my neck
to my cheeks. As if he knew each
word I had written down just before
we gathered for our weekly session.

Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Anne
Sexton. Your blood-smeared pages make
everyone nervous. We take our
glasses of Scotch or Chardonnay
and stare out over a garden
fence. Suddenly, we know ourselves.

Maybe nobody cares what we write
back in our rooms papered in yellow,
set apart from the routine and rote,
but you granted us permission
to strip away all artifice,
to shout Fire in crowded theatres.

It is not all Bedlam. Surely,
another’s anguish can be quite
instructional. Medicinal.
Let’s take that trip down memory
lane and see who survives unscathed.
Aren’t we each reflected in our flames?


* * * * *

"Debating the Merits of Confessional Poetry" is part of Mary K O'Melveny's new poetry collection Dispatches from the Memory Care Museum (Kelsay Books, 2021)

Mary K O’Melveny (www.marykomelvenypoet.com) lives with her wife in Woodstock NY and Washington DC. A Pushcart Prize nominee and award recipient in national and international poetry contests, including Slippery Elm Literary Journal Poetry Competition, The Pangaea Prize (The Poet’s Billow), Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Competition, Writer’s Digest Annual Poetry Competition, Anthology Magazine Poetry Prize, Mary’s poetry appears in many literary journals, anthologies, national blog sites such as Writing In A Woman’s Voice and in three collections: A Woman of a Certain Age, Merging Star Hypotheses  (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020), Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum (Kelsay Books 2021).