Confessionalism, a poetic movement that focuses on individual, often intensely personal, experiences, typically examines issues of psychology, identity, mental illness, sexuality, and cultural taboos. Berryman, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton are all important Confessionalist poets, but Hilda Doolittle (often referred to as “H.D.”) is an Imagist poet.

Each of the following poets anticipated Modernism with their work: Emily Dickinson, with her experimental punctuation and brevity; Walt Whitman, with his revolutionary portrayals of identity and sexuality and his eschewal of strict meter; Robert Frost, with his clear, precise language and his crisp imagery; and Arthur Rimbaud, for his refusal to romanticize and his use of prose poetry. Poe, however, was a Gothic writer and not a proto-Modernist.

Given that this is Adrienne Rich’s penultimate poetry collection, it makes sense that it would have been published near the end of Rich’s life (1929-2012). Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.

This collection was first published in 1957.

In addition to Helen in Egypt, H.D. wrote the poetry collections Sea Garden (1916), Hymen (1921), Hippolytus Temporizes (1927), and Red Roses for Bronze (1932). Sword Blades and Poppy Seed is a 1914 collection by the Imagist poet Amy Lowell.

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

H.D. was not a confessional poet, as this movement did not emerge until the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her work, however, took inspiration from Classical Greek poetry and was both Imagist and avant-garde. She was also an outspoken feminist, and works such as Helen in Egypt challenged traditional male voices in poetry.

Helen in Egypt (1961) was H.D's last book of poetry.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007) is one of Adrienne Rich’s last poetry collections.

Amy Lowell wrote Legends (1921), Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar (1963), Marianne Moore wrote O to Be a Dragon (1959), and Gwendolyn MacEwen wrote The Rising Fire (1963).

The Colossus and Other Poems is a 1960 collection by Sylvia Plath. All the rest are works by Adrienne Rich.

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems was published in 1991, The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems was published in 1955, Diving into the Wreck was published in 1973, The Dream of a Common Language was published in 1978, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.

In 1997, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in order to protest a proposition to cut government funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other government policies.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth was published in 2007.

Meditations in an Emergency (1957) is Frank O’Hara’s third collection. The title is allegedly an allusion to a work by the English poet John Donne.

Kenneth Koch wrote Thank You and Other Poems (1962), John Ashbery wrote Your Name Here (2000), William S. Burroughs wrote Junky (1953), and Denis Jonson wrote Jesus' Son (1992).