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Chapter 21 - Baldwin and the Rhetoric of Confession

from Part 3 - Literary Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2019

D. Quentin Miller
Affiliation:
Suffolk University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Baldwin’s most fertile period – the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s – corresponded with the advent of the confessional school of poetry, a deeply personal and emotionally intense mode inaugurated with the publication of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1960). Yet Baldwin is more frequently associated with social commentary than with personal confession. Malcolm X once said to Baldwin, “I’m the warrior of this revolution and you’re the poet.” The distinction might be false: poetry, even of the confessional type, can be considered as politically efficacious as any speech. Put succinctly, poets can be warriors, too.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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