On Creating a Counter-confessional Poetry (2018)

Waardepeilings van die digkuns van C.M. van den Heever

Literator ◽

10.4102/lit.v24i1.278 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 19-36

Author(s):

B. Odendaal

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Outstanding Contribution ◽

Confessional Poetry ◽

Poetic Work ◽

Poetic Style

Evaluations of the poetry of C.M. van den Heever This article traces the assessments of the value of the poetic work by the Afrikaans author C.M. van den Heever since the second quarter of the twentieth century. Appreciation of him as poet mainly revolves around his role as transitional figure in the important renewal of Afrikaans poetry in the 1930s, as can be seen from two rather divergent critiques by D.J. Opperman (completed in 1946 and 1952, respectively). An outstanding contribution by Van den Heever in this regard is the introduction of elements of Dutch poetry from around the turn of the nineteenth century to the Afrikaans literary world. A critic such as T.T. Cloete, in an article dating from 1957, convincingly argues that aspects of Van den Heever’s poetic style and technique, which other critics had sometimes judged harshly, are largely functional in co-communicating the specific (passively transcendental) attitude towards life and reality conveyed in Van den Heever’s work. Local and international shifts in the dominant literary approaches, however, have caused singularly confessional poetry – such as the bulk of Van den Heever’s poetic output – to be increasingly marginalised since the mid- 1930s. In this respect he shares the fate of Dutch poet A. Roland Holst, whose poetry was influential in shaping the characteristics of Van den Heever’s.

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Calling Self-Indulgence

TSQ Transgender Studies Quarterly ◽

10.1215/23289252-7771779 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (4) ◽

pp. 620-634

Author(s):

J de Leon

Keyword(s):

Relational Self ◽

Confessional Poetry ◽

New Name ◽

Call And Response ◽

The World ◽

In Trans ◽

Naming Practices

Abstract Recent works by trans and nonbinary poets, including Oliver Baez Bendorf, Jos Charles, jayy dodd, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Paige Lewis, and Danez Smith, gesture to a new mode of trans-confessional poetry. Trans poets practice naming as a form of self-indulgence, and trans names and pronouns are a form of poetry—following Audre Lorde's articulation—read into the world to give it new shape. In trans naming practices and poetry, self-indulgences are also demands made of another, a new name or unexpected pronoun asking for an affirmative repetition, a performative reflection: mirror restaging. Gender, like self-indulgence, is never accomplished alone. It relies on an audience that either affirms and repeats—or refuses—one's request to be seen and understood in a way that breaks from expectation. I closely read two poems, by Oliver Baez Bendorf and Richard Siken, whose shared centering of names articulate a relational self-indulgence in their proposed call-and-response.

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