The dynamics of the poetic “I” : a selective reading of 20th-century “self” poetics

Abstract EN

One of the most prevalent features closely associated with the very act of writing poetry has been the existence of an intrinsic addressor, speaking voice, or a self, shouldering the poem's emotions, politics of form, and aesthetic information.

In its overt form, this presence is occasionally termed confessionalism or identity poetics, redefined here much more generally as the "Poetic-Self".

Surprisingly, this paper argues, such a self remains stead-fast present, offering the same aesthetic function it has always done regardless of historical happenstance, cultural context, and political agenda.

This paper will show that the poetic presence of that self and its aesthetic functions have not been out-throned, debunked or in any accurate way uprooted despite resistance from many poetic movements such as Imagism, Objectivism, French Symbolism, and Visual Poetry, among many others.

This paper will concentrate on Imagism as the first and most influential movement of the 20th-century poetic experimentation exemplified by its pioneer poet and thinker, Ezra Pound (1885-1972).

The question then becomes; what is the aesthetic and cultural significance of this self-poetics, assuming its inevitability as integral to the language of poetry? Aesthetically speaking, this paper will argue that the significance of this kind of Poetic-Self speaks directly to the old sentiments of actuation derived from memetic relief, rather than the sublime derived from contemporary diegetic from as argued by many postmodern thinkers (e.g.

Lyotard, 1984).

On cultural grounds, it undermines Marxist critiques of capitalist commodification of literature by use of identification and affirmation.

Its critique rests primarily on its persistent and unshakable presence in the fabric of the language itself, hence being natural and not synthesized.

The evidence for this presence is relatively abundant, as shall be demonstrated, across the history of poetics, although in different forms and degrees of sophistication.