The Poetry of Persona and the Divided Self

Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by in Literature

Not every poet finds a reason or need to develop a voice within a voice, another ‘persona’ if you will, but for some time a number of poets (Americans in particular) have been getting outside/inside themselves in the way writers of fiction create ‘characters’ or characters to voice other levels of meaning.

CAUTION: It may seem an easy thing to do. But it’s not something you can play around with like: “I think today I’ll write a sonnet” then consider yourself Shakespeare. Rather… it’s a voice that may (or may not) call you when you are ready to listen-and record. One way or another, life itself propels you in this direction. Which is always the way of authentic writing. When it’s bullshit, it’s bullshit. When it’s true, it’s true.

The late John Berryman, author of an American classic, THE DREAM SONGS, is one of these poets who introduces the character of Henry in his work. A likable guy. So much so that the reader begins to feel comfortable in the possibility that Berryman and Henry are one or share the same sensibility which the recorded moment requires – sad, sensitive, self-indulgent, self-disparaging, confessional roustabouts with something unsettling to say about life, art, the American dream:

Books drugs razor whisky shirts

Henry lies ready for his Eastern tour,

swollen ankles, one hand,

air reservations. Friends at the end of the hurts,

a winter mind resigned: literature

must spread, you understand,

–from “Dream Song 169″ of THE DREAM SONGS, Farra, Strauss, Giroux

Henry = Berryman? Some resemblance, perhaps. Though Berryman himself states: “The poem, then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white-American in early middle age sometimes in black face, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who addresses him as Mr. Bones and variants thereof. Requiescat in pace.”

Paul Zimmer, (FAMILY REUNION: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, THE ZIMMER POEMS, etc. University of Pittsburg Press) is an immensely entertaining yet serious poet with his own special take on an alter ego who looks at the real world through the small-town eyes of a character named Zimmer. The titles alone pull you immediately into his world: “Zimmer and the Ghost”, “Zimmer Remembering Wanda”, “Zimmer Imagines Heaven”, “Zimmer’s Last Gig”, “Zimmer Is Icumen In”…

ZIMMER’S HEAD THUDDING AGAINST THE  BLACKBOARD

At the blackboard I had missed

Five number problems in a row,

And was about to foul a sixth,

When the old, exasperated nun

Began to pound my head against

My six mistakes. When I cried,

She threw me back into my seat,

Where I hid my head and swore

That very day I’d be a poet,

And curse her yellow teeth with this.

Click to read more of this entry in Norbert Blei’s latest Poetry Dispatch #269 as he covers 6 more poets including Charles Bukowski.

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