nfessional poems, therefore, arose out his need to write prose combined with his desire to express himself in the more succinct, less baroque language of poetry.
Motivated in part to break free from highly stylized poetic forms which, he feared, were exercises in craft rather than art, he abandoned traditional forms in order to provide a more straightforward, openly emotional avenue for his work. This is not, however, to say that his poems lacked form altogether. Although he felt that adhering too faithfully to the strict structures of traditional forms ruined the "honesty of sentiment" (Maio 40), he also felt the need to maintain his poems' integrity; he used techniques such as rhyming couplets, but he did not feel the need to maintain rigid structural regularity, particularly when it would force him to compromise the sentiments he wanted to express.
Thus it is the content, rather than the form, of poems which is important in the confessional school. Lowell's "Man and Wife" contrasts a couple's current, unhappy state, which only tranquilizers can make bearable, with their first, much happier, meeting. It is the "I" in "Man and Wife," together with the vivid, obsessively accurate details ("Marlborough Street," "twelve years later") which make this poem not merely autobiographical but confessional. By blatantly exposing his deepest, very personal, fears and failings to his readers, Lowell manages somehow to represent and embody humanity as a whole. It is Lowell's very egocentricity which makes his poems so unnervingly accessible and universal.
One important distinction which must be made to fully appreciate Lowell's work and that of other autobiographical poets, however, is that confessional poetry, though autobiographical, is not always strictly factual. Lowell himself remarked that the poems "are not always factually true . . . I've invented facts and changed things . . . So there's a lot of artistry, I hope . . . Ye...