Episode 111: The Confessional Episode

Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)

The second of five episodes featuring the lectures that became Rachel Zucker’s newest book, The Poetics of Wrongness. This episode contains audio of “What We Talk About When We Talk About the Confessional and What We Should Be Talking About,” presented at the University of Arizona Poetry Center (Tucson) on January 28, 2016. It also includes a new introduction by Rachel and a conversation recorded in April, 2023 with the founder and host of the Keep the Channel Open podcast, Mike Sakasegawa.

In this lecture, Rachel Zucker discusses the origin of the term Confessional as it came to be used for a specific group of poets, the legacy of confessional poetry, risk, shame, and questions of gender and privilege in relationship to confessional poetry.

Many thanks to The University of Arizona Poetry Center, The Bagley Wright Poetry Lecture Series and the BWLS Podcast, Ellen Welcker, Heidi Broadhead, Charlie Wright and everyone at Wave Books. Here is a longer list of acknowledgments and a partial list of referenced sources for Rachel’s lectures.