Many poets—male poets especially—are secretly anxious that someone will call their poetry a frivolous, feminine pursuit. And instead of embracing the potential charge of frivolity—allowing themselves to be free of it or even to toy with it—those same poets draw lines in the sand with real-and-serious-capital-P-Poetry on one side, and lesser, feminized poetry on the other. For Desi Writers’ Lounge, Momina Mela looks at the scorned, imprecise category of “confessional poetry,” and hopes that we may finally lay such terms to rest:
Through the lens of female poets, confessional poetry has been subjected to various transformations, and has given way to a repeatedly inept manner of classification that does not do justice to the significantly large amount of work that is produced in its reflection.
