Elizabeth What

How lucky I was born
               to tell you the way it all turned out.  


By Meghan O'Rourke from the poem "Elegy" in Halflife


I am a poet; this does not make me any stronger than the anyone else at reading poetry. In fact, I write these posts to practice my skills at analyzing poetry more so than anything else. 


There is nevertheless a freedom in realizing that these words tell a story of myself, of my vision of the world. 

Half of Life meets Meta (2)

After having written my last blog post I found this far more clear explanation of META MODERNISM in a discussion lead by four poets, one of whom is Meghan O'Rourke.

The basic thought that is dictating "emerging" artists is that sincerity and irony (irony being that which strongly represents postmodern expression) are no longer in clash with one another.

Of course there is a lot of convulsion and disagreement in this discussion. The general divide being those promoting irony and those promoting sincerity; but digging deeper one can clearly notice (especially in the above video) that the trend today is to exploit both for the aim of maximizing what Jericho Brown describes as PURPOSE. Even if the purpose is to state that there is no truth, poetry no longer is about the expression of nothing, but about being sincere and ironic about your sincerity at once.

Take this section of Plath's Poem "Daddy" as an example:

So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

Layer 1. "So I never could tell where you/Put your foot" insinuates the idea/image of putting one's foot in his mouth. This is clearly ironical when in fact the person who cannot speak is the persona of the poem, as is clear in "I never could talk to you".

Layer 2. "where you/Put your foot, your root" totally representing a layer of sincerity. The author is talking about her fathers position, place in the world as a German and as a Nazi.

Layer 3. "The tongue stuck in my jaw", representing the need to vocalize the atrocities of fascism. Sincerity again.

Layer 4. "Put your foot, your root" is finally warped at the end of the poem into an image of people dancing on her father's grave. This transforms the irony of what was said to a sincere act of freedom. The foots motion representing walking and freedom, a freedom her dead father does not have, for he is rooted.

The layering goes on and on, but this is an example of how irony and sincerity play.

You can watch the whole discussion panel on Youtube here. There is a really clear definition of irony in the beginning of the discussion panel but just a brief definition is provided below.

Irony: situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.  

Ironic statements (verbal irony) are statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning. A situation is often said to be ironic (situational irony) if the actions taken have an effect exactly opposite from what was intended. The discordance of verbal irony may be deliberately created as a means of communication (as in art or rhetoric). Descriptions or depictions of situational irony, whether in fiction or in non-fiction, serves the communicative function of sharpening or highlighting certain discordant features of reality. 

More on this in coming posts!