What I meant was: to create an autobiographical confessional subject, I must create a character whose voice does not feel like my own, since my own characteristic voice is more distanced and ironical. Thus sincerity feels more distanced than distancing irony might.
For example, here is the title poem of my book ms., Minor Poets of the New York Scoool
He spoke sharply--as though a shark's fin
Could wound the sea, or the fog
Be subject to a tongue-lashing--
Impatient, but not rushing the beat.
The world had coarsened, a meaner
Conception taken hold; or he had
Idealized Surrealism, badly
Misjudged the loyalty of goldfish.
A manuscript, Minor Poets
Of the New York School,
Lay unfinished on the kitchen
Table. The fog closed in.
1 comentario:
I know what you mean. When I tried to write autobiographical poems in college, they were terrible: third-rate examples of the genre at best. However, I find that I can write autobiographical poems if I trick myself by creating a persona, which ends up sounding a lot more like me than I do.
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