G. Thompson
Topic for informal writing--for the first of these, I would like them to apply some of today's discussion about persona and voice in poetry to one of the poems (not the section from Hamlet) assigned for next Thursday's reading. Select a short passage from one of the poems and copy it out; as you discuss its importance to the poem, say something about the voice which speaks those words in the poem.
Comments from in-class writings
Talk more about irony--using Cleghorn's poem.
There are several kinds of irony, and we need to specify which we are talking about.
Term derives from a stock character in Greek drama, the eiron--someone who knows more than he says, is given to understatement, etc. Think tricky slave. He usually takes down the blowhard, braggart, alazon figure.
Irony depends upon a double meaning, which can appear in one of several ways.
Verbal irony--the implied meaning differs from the stated meaning. The interesting thing about verbal irony is that it is something of an implied contract or understanding with the reader--you and I get this, but other people might not. Cleghorn's poem is a good example here.
Dramatic irony--used to describe a situation in which the speaker in a play doesn't get the ramifications of what he / she is saying (again, the author and the audience know something the speaker doesn't). Example--Oedipus vows to find the murderer of his predecessor King Laius, not knowing (as the audience does) that he himself is the man.
Cosmic irony--a trick of fate, twist, God's bad joke . . . Just when you get the job, the company goes out of business.
Persona--I said on Tues. that persona meant mask, originally from Greek, referring to the oversized masks that actors wore (which had megaphones built in to aid in projecting their voices--theaters were outdoors and seated thousands of people). The word gives us person as well, along with related words (personality).
The thing about masks is that they both are and are not the self, and so irony is built into the idea. When you wear a mask, that disguises you, but it also makes contact with a side of your personality which is thereby liberated to speak out. So when a poet adopts a persona, you have to be alert to irony in the very act. (And you could argue that even the most confessional poet is adopting a persona, a self constructed of a moment and situation in time).
Look at this w/r/t "My Mother."
Freewrite for 5 min. about this poem--specifically about the persona in the poem. You might also take note of any sort of irony you observe.
For another poem about parents (also ironic), look at Philip Larkin's poem, "This be the verse":
The title itself is ironic, as it contains an allusion to "Requiem" by Stevenson:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Wyatt's poem gives us another persona, in this case identified with the poet: (language is partly archaic for our ears, as Wyatt was a predecessor to Shakespeare--he was a member of Henry VIII's court and is speaking in part about the court intrigues, but through the analogy of women who were passionate about him once, but no longer.)