42
uses the word‘ admit’ carefully, as she is confessing, quite explicitly, to feelings and thoughts that are taboo, in the restricted environment of 1950s America. 18
Like the fluidity that passes through my poems(‘ piss’,‘ haemorrhage’,‘ vodka’,‘ glue’), it also passes through protest poetry. For feminist Helene Cixous, writing is a joy it is an escape, a freedom. Plath and Sexton wrote perhaps as a way to fight for freedom – ultimately this was futile for them. My writing is confessional, but closer to Cixous’ idea of‘ jouissance’ – there is pleasure gained by writing by hand and then typing it up. The creativity of the confessional explores narcissism through bodily pleasure and object-relations. There is a difference between the confessional and narcissism therefore. The narcissism of looking in a mirror, where, for Lacan, the child first establishes its ego metaphorically shows taking a position outside of the Self, something true narcissists, in the psychiatric use of the word, cannot do. In confessional works, there is transience, death and monstrosity which Lacan’ s‘ body-in-pieces’ typifies. 19
18
Having lesbian desires, in her poetry, Sexton emphasises‘ admittance’ at a time when homosexuality was not as widely accepted.
19
Laplanche, The Language of Psycho Analysis. See entry on the Mirror Stage, 243-254.