Confessional poetry has had a haunted reputation from its post-war onset. The literary legacies of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and W. D. Snodgrass—widely considered ground zero for the entire confessional school—are crucified at least as frequently as they’re praised, and a healthy allergy to what contemporary teachers of writing pertly refer to as ‘trauma porn’ has seeded in the DNA of most graduate-level writing programs.
When in 1959 Robert Lowell published Life Studies (the book of Genesis as far as confessional poetry is concerned) the idea of a poem’s author unambiguously self-identifying as the first-person ‘speaker’ was unthinkable. In intentionally shattering—and the method of shattering was simply ignoring—the public/private barrier, Lowell had done something truly new, setting off an irreversible trend in American poetry. If one wrote, before this, from autobiographical experience, it was duly air-brushed and sanitized for public consumption. Taboo subjects like mental illness and sexuality were no-fly zones. One did not say, for example,
I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell
The dominant and ongoing beef with confessional poetry is not entirely unreasonable. At its worst, (or I should say, perhaps, when it fails) readers are startled and not led into a world they didn’t ever wish to explore, trapped in the speaker’s garishly personal agonies and ecstasies with no window looking out, and no resonant ‘me too’ chime.
When confessional poetry germinates exclusively at the level of the individual—meaning there is no bridge, on-ramp or springboard to universal human experience, some place of wider echoing beyond the speaker and confines of the poem—it devolves into drudgery, if dull, and trauma porn, if shocking. In this sense, confessional poetry is always a tightrope walk, a precarious style with precarious risks. But I digress.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century. Confessional verse needed a new hero, a lone voice powerful enough to lift it from the ashes of ceaseless academic squabbling and into the hearts and ears of eager culture-consumers. When Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April of 2024—she confirmed (with a moody noir photoshoot and a perfect cat-eye) what I’d long suspected, namely that she’s the all-American GOAT of contemporary confessional writing. Taylor’s entire deck of cards is comprised of aces. She mines herself and her experiences, writing from her own lifeblood in a way that *never* fails to merge with the shared experiences of women—indeed, of people—everywhere, and her level of celebrity has successfully inoculated her against the most common affliction ailing the Confessionals: the event of people really not wanting to know.
Now, I personally contend that with a sufficient level of ingenuity and craft people will stomach just about anything, whether they should have to is another question entirely. Sexton in particular is often out-and-out lurid, but her syntax is so surprising, so fresh and deftly handled, that her brilliance is rarely the disputed thing. The disputed thing is that whatever Sexton’s level of creative prowess, readers don’t necessarily resign themselves to (let alone rush to devour) accounts of dysfunctional sexcapades or manic episodes, preferring on the whole to be spared. She never overcame, in life or death, the miasma of ‘ick’ generated by gutter content, specifically, however immaculate the form. Of course, defiant exposure of the quote unquote gutter may well have been the point, and every exhibitionist needs more than a little pluck, but you see the problem.
If only there was someone so fascinating, so simultaneously winsome and relatable and fun and clever and coy that society’s desire to really know absolutely everything was utterly frenzied. This is precisely the empire TS half-inherited (by being a young and beautiful woman reared in the public eye) and half-created (by being a confessional song-writer so savvy it amounts to legitimate genius)
It must be said that Taylor has not historically descended to the Sextonian depths of genitals, slime and latrines (see “Angels of the Love Affair”) as such. Or if she DOES go there she makes it, well, hot (see in the middle of the night//in my dreams//you should see the things we do) Even her punchiest lines, say “fuck me up, Florida” are always a little sugared by a sprawling pop foundation. I do firmly believe that even if she did descend to darker depths, everyone would want to come along for the ride. Taylor’s gargantuan appeal means, literally, that everyone WANTS to know, all the time. Fan appetite is insatiable. And TS knows how badly we want to know, which brings me to her other confessional stroke of genius—
Taylor deliberately toys with us. Despite the morally dubious efforts of the tabloids, we plebeians have no real access to T’s lived life, let alone her inner life. She offers us the private portraiture we long for on her own terms. A long-confirmed tradition of writing songs about herself, her thoughts and relationships notwithstanding, we are frequently given over entirely to speculation regarding which songs are indeed autobiographical and how precisely autobiographical they are. In this regard, Taylor is wonderfully ballsy, unafraid to have an unambiguous go at men who did her dirty— (see “Dear John”) many Swifties make riddling out her more nebulous lyrics and mapping them onto her actual history a full time job.
Taylor always leaves sufficient room for us to step into her music, inhabiting our own adjacent experiences more deeply for knowing—dare I say vibing—with hers: this is her triumph, and also the confessional jackpot. She manages to showcase every emotion unapologetically—heartache, bitterness, yearning, envy, the lot. She can be minxy (handsome, you’re a mansion with a view//do the girls back home touch you like I do?) She can be nostalgic (I knew you//leaving like a father//running like water) She can be melodramatic and vengeful, (You caged me and then you called me crazy//I am what I am cause you trained me) and she is rarely—however widely lauded she is—given enough credit for being a military-grade confessional tactician. Taylor’s extended metaphors are breezy, memorable, and open to myriad interpretations. Let’s take a look at the recent smash hit “Down Bad,” a single representative example. In it, Swift is (nominally, and never to the point that it actually gets too weird) a humanoid cast off the mothership by her lover. At the song’s climax, she croons:
I loved your hostile takeovers
Encounters closer and closer
All your indecent exposures
How dare you say that it’s –
Four lines of dazzling ingenuity. “I loved your hostile takeovers” – you once took powerful initiative with me/this relationship. “Encounters closer and closer” – things got intimate and vulnerable. “All your indecent exposures” – I personally understand this line ‘thanks for the sexts,’ but of course I don’t know. “How dare you say that it’s—” and the song’s speaker (Is it Taylor!?!? Did someone leave THE QUEEN HERSELF down bad?!?!) cannot bring herself to say the word ‘over.’ We have four lines of a single extended confessional metaphor explode in a Molotov cocktail of relatability and alien-core cheek. Been there? I’ve been there. Almost everyone has been there, and that’s why the song soared immediately to the top of the charts and was ensconced there for weeks.
Let’s recap. When Confessional Poetry emerged in the 1950s, its most zealous defenders insisted it would humanize us to each other, offering tender glimpses at tender subjects in a way that engendered compassion and deeper understanding. I believe good confessional poetry does this, even if the truth it tells is wildly dark. If we cannot call her a poet in the strictly traditional sense, no one in a hundred years has harnessed the staying power of confessional writing like Taylor Swift, and no one possesses her unique, precise vaccination against the disease of over-sharing. Aspiring confessional writers would do well to take a page (or many pages) from the Swift Gospel, unifying introspection with an outward gaze generous enough to the human condition to compel readers in, make one’s own head an inviting (or interesting or evocative or profound) place to visit. I began with Confessional Poetry’s founding father Robert Lowell, and it seems fitting to close with him, too:
Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing—I suppose that’s what vocation means—at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I’m thankful, and call it good.