Students and scholars of literature understand Sylvia Plath as a contributor to Confessional poetry, a poetic style that emerged out of Post-Modernism and the Beat poets of the 1950s. This poetry is different than other kinds of poetry because it relies on certain knowledge about the Poet and their personal life in order to fully decode and unpack the meaning of the poems. Confessional poems often resemble diary-style confessions and deep introspective truths about the poet’s inner psyche. Loose rules of poetic forms and structures allow Confessional poets to communicate their emotions and ideas as freely as they wish.

Contemporary critics believe this kind of revealing and intimate poetic style marks a revolution in poetry that places greater importance on the poet themselves. Confessional poets often used direct, unsophisticated or colloquial language and speech-like rhythms in their works to reveal shocking or difficult psychological experiences like childhood trauma and mental illness. Because their work is grounded in their own personal experiences and refers to real people and actual events, it resists the notion of poems as universal messages subject to interpretation.

Confessional poetry emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s in America. In addition to Sylvia Plath, Confessional poets like John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Sexton have shaped American poetry.