Who is "I" in a poem?

[bronzeage]

Poet Guy found this statement extremely interesting, as it seems to imply that a poem that is abstracted, or written with "I" as a persona rather than as the author him- or herself is somehow not true.

Poet Guy certainly does not mean to imply that himself. He believes that poems, good poems, express truth, even if they are conceptually fictional.

Poems may express other things as well--clever language, humor, intricate stories--but the best poems express truth in a way that it can be experienced by the reader, just as the best fiction expresses truth, even though the story may not be literally "true."

A very interesting comment, bronzeage. Thank you. Poet Guy will be off thinking about this for some time.

Poets are notoriously unreliable narrators.

"She used to love me, but it's all over now."

"Everybody hates me, I'm gonna go eat worms."

In each of these examples, the reader can assume the feelings are true, but can be skeptical about the facts.

In modern times poetry is seen less as a form of entertainment and more of a form of therapy. Anything but "Casey at the Bat" is is heard as a confession.

 

[Epmd607]

Poet Guy will respectfully disagree with your disagreement, Epmd607. At least with part of your disagreement.

Yes, it is not uncommon for a writer of fiction to present a novel as if it were a memoir, but Poet Guy believes it is unusual for a reader of said novel to believe this, i.e. read the novel as if it was memoir, and true (as much as any autobiography is "true," in any case). The rare exception might be something like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which was marketed as a memoir but later shown to be fictionalized to a significant degree. Poet Guy likes to believe that readers do not read novels and memoirs as if they were interchangable--that the function of "I" in Jane Eyre is fundamentally different than the function of "I" in Up from Slavery.

In addition, your example of "fiction readers go[ing] so far as to give the narrator the author's name were no name was given" seems specious, at least in the case of In Search of Lost Time. Proust himself at least suggests this identification, albeit coyly, in La prisonnière: « Maintenant elle a commencé à parler ; ses premiers mots étaient « chéri » ou « mon chéri, » a suivi de mon Nom de baptême, qui, si nous donnons au narrateur le même nom que l'auteur de ce livre, produirait « Marcel chéri » ou « mon Marcel chéri. »

Even if the narrator is explicitly named with the author's name or if the convention of readers and critics is to call an unnamed narrator by the author's name this does not mean that readers identify the character with the author. (One never knows about critics, of course.)

Poet Guy still believes that as regards fiction, assuming it is properly classified, the general reader does not identify the narrator of the fiction with the author of the fiction, even in the case of a roman à clef.

That is, at least in part, what "fiction" means.

I wasn't talking about borderline works either, something that seems like a diary even though it's labeled fiction on the back cover, a memoir disguised... Since childhood we're inclined to believe any 'I' is the author of the work. Judy Blume is Deenie when we're teens, Melville is telling us to call him Ishmael as adults. It's important that we believe we're being told truths when we read fiction. Poetry is only different in its romantic period obsession, uber confessional 'I and Thou'. Nowadays you're seen as a fraud if you write a poem about considering suicide, yet you reveal it's not you who considers it, but the character presented in four stanzas.

 

[SeattleRain]

I wasn't talking about borderline works either, something that seems like a diary even though it's labeled fiction on the back cover, a memoir disguised... Since childhood we're inclined to believe any 'I' is the author of the work. Judy Blume is Deenie when we're teens, Melville is telling us to call him Ishmael as adults. It's important that we believe we're being told truths when we read fiction. Poetry is only different in its romantic period obsession, uber confessional 'I and Thou'. Nowadays you're seen as a fraud if you write a poem about considering suicide, yet you reveal it's not you who considers it, but the character presented in four stanzas.

I think I am just going to keep writing poems based on the posts in this thread. Me, that is. I am. I hope you do not mind, "old" friend, if I spin one off this. You are brilliant, it is hard not to reflect some of the light through a fresnel lens and back again.

 

[SeattleRain]

Thank you for taking a muddy subject and spinning out the silt.

Do you mind if I call you you?

I just wrote a poem about "you" but of course, it never really happened

Just a poem-thing.

Not really about I or you, we just spin the record then stand back.

Poet Guy generally agrees with this, SeattleRain. While his poems may originate with personal experience (in some way must originate with personal experience, even if that experience is simply reading Wikipedia), they are always abstracted to some degree. For example, if Poet Guy writes a love poem directed at a particular woman, the "I" in the poem may to a great extent resemble Poet Guy, the "you" or "her" in the poem may resemble to a great extent the object of his affection, but the actual poem is not really about Poet Guy nor about the object of his attention--it is about an abstracted relationship and reading too much personal detail into it is unsound.

 

[PoetGuy]

Since childhood we're inclined to believe any 'I' is the author of the work. Judy Blume is Deenie when we're teens, Melville is telling us to call him Ishmael as adults.

Poet Guy has not read Judy Blume, seeing as he was 16 when her first book was published. However, he has read Melville and certainly did not identify Melville with the character who is narrating Moby-Dick. If you are telling Poet Guy that you read that book thinking that Melville is narrating the story (i.e., telling the reader of events that actually happened to him), Poet Guy can only suppose you are deceiving yourself or that you have considerable difficulty distinguishing fiction from reality. Do you believe that Alice Sebold is dead and in heaven when reading The Lovely Bones? And whom do you identify the author with in Wuthering Heights which is narrated by a man who relates a story narrated by a woman?

Poet Guy confesses himself skeptical that "we're inclined to believe any 'I' is the author of the work", except perhaps in the sense that one reads first person fiction as if the story is being written or related by the "I" voice. Poet Guy thinks that readers believe that Jane Eyre is being narrated by Jane, as if she were a real person, not that it is being narrated by Charlotte Bronte.

Do you really believe otherwise?

It's important that we believe we're being told truths when we read fiction. Poetry is only different in its romantic period obsession, uber confessional 'I and Thou'. Nowadays you're seen as a fraud if you write a poem about considering suicide, yet you reveal it's not you who considers it, but the character presented in four stanzas.

Poet Guy does think there is some truth to this--that poems often or even usually are read as though the "I" voice is the author. But then there are curious cases such as this one:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.​

Surely no one seriously identifies the "I" of this poem with Randall Jarrell, Poet Guy hopes.

 

[PoetGuy]

Do you mind if I call you you?

No...

 

[greenmountaineer]

It's nice to be back online and reading interesting topics like this

If I write "I" in a poem, then it is me (or was me, or might be me, or could be me--except some recent historical poems), but I won't publish such a poem unless I think that "I" might be "you" or "them". If it can't attach to another person, can't communicate beyond the personal then it might as well remain in the drawer. The Plath poem quoted above is a good example of something that seems personal but is in fact universal, where the "I" modulates imperceptibly into "you" or "us".

This resonates with me. I think in the West we have a tendency to see "either/or" and bifurcate reality. It's either this or it's that.

To borrow Buber's phrase, "I-Thou" are virtually intertwined in art in my opinion and I would even go so far to suggest that may be the case when in the conscious mind of the artist, s/he is attempting to create a you, him, her, them, or it.

 

[Epmd607]

I'm very much surprised poetguy finds it so difficult to believe an author of fiction expects to create such believable fiction via narrative first person that the reader finds themselves from time to time believing the speaker is a true to life person and not merely a character of the authors creation. I imagine poetguy knows some of melville's background as most readers would. What are we to make of Sal Paradise? Is he too an Ishmael? Is Ishmael not melville from time to time, specifically in the tedious sections of whale taxonomy? One of my professors wrote a book called the Errant art of Moby dick, he claims the work is devoid of symbolism. It's something to look into if you're into fringe literary theory, specifically dealing with the 'I'.

Who is Goethe's young Werner? Why did so many peoiple associate themselves with his being if they obviously knew he was a fiction and not at least some part of the legend of Goethe?

So, my poetry premise still resounds by the evidence uncovered by poetry guy, on this and other forums. Poetry was given a new voice in the romantic period by Goethe Shelley etc.and it became a heinious offense to not speak truth, confessional truth, in a beauteous manner.

 

[twelveoone]

Poet Guy does think there is some truth to this--that poems often or even usually are read as though the "I" voice is the author. But then there are curious cases such as this one:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.​

Surely no one seriously identifies the "I" of this poem with Randall Jarrell, Poet Guy hopes.

I thought that was the basis for Re-Animator
And Randall Jarrell is still alive and you.

And I remember as a boy seeing this guy stinking up the town.

Actually at the time of writing had never been on a ship, but spent some months doing research before writing.

 

[twelveoone]

It's something to look into if you're into fringe literary theory, specifically dealing with the 'I'.

and what theory isn't fringe?

just in case the other "I" want's to know?

 

[PoetGuy]

I'm very much surprised poetguy finds it so difficult to believe an author of fiction expects to create such believable fiction via narrative first person that the reader finds themselves from time to time believing the speaker is a true to life person and not merely a character of the authors creation.

Poet Guy wishes to stop right there and say that he quite firmly believes that readers find themselves believing that the narrator of a first-person narrative is "a true to life person and not merely a character of the author[']s creation."

He suspects at this point that he and Epmd607 are arguing the same point with different language. To reiterate one of his arguments, Poet Guy would say that readers reading Jane Eyre would approach the book, perceive the book, as being narrated, written, whatever by the character Jane Eyre. Jane would be, for most readers, more like a real person than a character in a third person novel.

How Poet Guy has interpreted what Epmd607 as saying is that for Epmd607 the reader would read Jane Eyre as if it was Charlotte Bronte speaking to the reader as if the story of Jane was her, Charlotte's, story.

Poet Guy rejects that interpretation. He hopes Epmd607 does as well, so that the two of them can embrace, or at least clink shots of Jägermeister with one another in friendship and mutual admiration.

I imagine poetguy knows some of melville's background as most readers would. What are we to make of Sal Paradise? Is he too an Ishmael? Is Ishmael not melville from time to time, specifically in the tedious sections of whale taxonomy? One of my professors wrote a book called the Errant art of Moby dick, he claims the work is devoid of symbolism. It's something to look into if you're into fringe literary theory, specifically dealing with the 'I'.

Who is Goethe's young Werner? Why did so many peoiple associate themselves with his being if they obviously knew he was a fiction and not at least some part of the legend of Goethe?

So, my poetry premise still resounds by the evidence uncovered by poetry guy, on this and other forums. Poetry was given a new voice in the romantic period by Goethe Shelley etc.and it became a heinious offense to not speak truth, confessional truth, in a beauteous manner.

Yes, well. Talky talkyness.

Poet Guy will be happy to debate Melville, Kerouac, and Goethe with Epmd607 at a later date, if such debate seems necessary. He hopes that they have merely misconstrued each other's position as regards the meaning of "I".

But, if not, Poet Guy will be happy to continue the debate, though given its trend may have to alter his nom de plume to Fiction Guy.

He stands resolute, in any case, and ready to defend his perfect understanding of literature, literary convention, and taste, which he assures himself is perfectly unassailable, being granted to him by Erato herself.

 

[Epmd607]

Just to follow up on the off topic -- the 'I' in my poems is almost never me, and the 'you' is almost never my real life object of love and desire, speaking of my love poems anyway. I imagine I write from a space that resembles the universal 'I' to the universal 'you'. When attempting to express the unexpressible it's probably best to not personalize your expression with anecdotes and happenstance that most readers can't relate too. So, am I the only poet here who isn't necessarily a confessional poet, as my confessions aren't wholly mine to confess?

 

[annaswirls]

So, am I the only poet here who isn't necessarily a confessional poet, as my confessions aren't wholly mine to confess?

No. You aren't.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Just to follow up on the off topic -- the 'I' in my poems is almost never me, and the 'you' is almost never my real life object of love and desire, speaking of my love poems anyway. I imagine I write from a space that resembles the universal 'I' to the universal 'you'. When attempting to express the unexpressible it's probably best to not personalize your expression with anecdotes and happenstance that most readers can't relate too. So, am I the only poet here who isn't necessarily a confessional poet, as my confessions aren't wholly mine to confess?

I sincerely hope not .... there's been more than one murder committed within these pages

 

[bflagsst]

"I" am confessor and priest.

You can't direct criticism at a writer and not have them take it personally. Criticism received should be taken personally, if you're not just a technical writer, writing manuals for TV/VCR repair. Whenever I hear a writer say anything about their characters, specifically believed to be real life people made into characters, they usually say the characters are more them(the author) than anyone else. Poetry is more emotive, because being emotive is the only way to effectively express an idea in fourteen lines. That's why love poems and hate poems are memorable. Shout out to Langston Hughes and ideas exploding in ten lines or less.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

"I" am confessor and priest.

You can't direct criticism at a writer and not have them take it personally. Criticism received should be taken personally, if you're not just a technical writer, writing manuals for TV/VCR repair. Whenever I hear a writer say anything about their characters, specifically believed to be real life people made into characters, they usually say the characters are more them(the author) than anyone else. Poetry is more emotive, because being emotive is the only way to effectively express an idea in fourteen lines. That's why love poems and hate poems are memorable. Shout out to Langston Hughes and ideas exploding in ten lines or less.

If I took everything that's been said to me personally I would be a quivering sobbing mess in the corner