%0 Journal Article
%T How Much Can One Say? Confessional Poetry and Confessionalism of Poetry
%A Michalski, Przemysław
%J Przekładaniec
%V Issues in English
%R 10.4467/16891864ePC.13.022.1211
%N Issue 25/2011– Between Miłosz and Milosz
%P 159-170
%K Miłosz, poetry, confessional, decorum, referentiality
%@ 1425-6851
%D 2013
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/przekladaniec/article/how-much-can-one-say-confessional-poetry-and-confessionalism-of-poetry
%X 
	This essay sets out to examine Miłosz’s attitude towards confessional poetry,
	or rather, to examine his stance on confessionalism as a seemingly inseparable element
	of any poetic utterance. By means of such terms as decorum, referentiality of poetic
	language and its usefulness, I try to show why Miłosz preferred to stay away from
	overtly confessional modes of poetic utterance, which draw too heavily on the poet’s
	own experiences and may result in blurring the distinction between biography and
	literature. One reason why the poet so intensely disliked excessive confessionalism
	is that its main purpose is to describe the emotions of the speaker, whereas he felt that
	the main task of poetry is to celebrate the dazzling beauty of the outside world, whose
	existence transcends and surpasses the insignifi cantly small inner world of a troubled
	psyche. Last but not least, the notion of the usefulness of poetry, in his understanding of
	the term, is that it makes it possible for poems written in diverse countries and epochs
	to intensify the contemporary reader’s sense of belonging to the great family of the
	human race.