The Robert Lowell Society invites papers on the musical engagements of Confessional and late-Confessional poets with a view to sponsoring a panel at the ALA Symposium "Music and the American Literary Imagination" (January 28-30, 2027, Nashville, TN). Such papers could include inquiries into: 

• The musical forms of Confessional poets' verse—e.g., Sylvia Plath’s stark meters and her refrains, or John Berryman’s jazz-like syncopation, or Adrienne Rich’s and Frank Bidart’s use of musical metaphors and structures;

• The musical interests of Confessional poets and their significance for their art: Berryman’s phonograph installed by Bernard Haggin, or Lowell’s record collections; 

• Songs, melodies, pieces heard or imagined in poems—e.g., Randall Jarrell's "The Player Piano";

• Various projects by composers setting the poetry of Confessionals to music—e.g., Ned Rorem, Juliana Hall, Lori Laitman, and Ricky Ian Gordon setting Plath’s poems to music; Elliot Carter adapting Lowell’s “Dies Irae” to his song cycle In Sleep, In Thunder;

• The relations between confessional poetry and contemporary music—e.g., musicians' allusions to or quotations of Berryman, Lowell, Plath, Sexton, others;

• Confessional poets involved in musical projects—e.g., Sexton fronting a 1967–71 rock-jazz ensemble Anne Sexton and Her Kind; Lowell’s librettos; 

• Intersections with performance studies, sound culture studies, and archival audio recordings.

Please submit a 300-word proposal for a 15- to 20-minute talk to the Society’s Presidents, Calista McRae (mcrae@njit.edu) and Grzegorz Kosc (grzegorz.kosc@uw.edu.pl), no later than September 30, 2026. Submissions should be accompanied by a brief biographical note and an indication of any audiovisual requirements.

Additional details regarding the symposium are available on the ALA website.