Chapter Overview

• • communication in poetry

• • formalist stylistics

• • checklist of formalist categories

• • ‘Half an Hour After’ by Mark O’Connor

• • formalist analysis of ‘Half an Hour After’

Introduction

Chapter 1 concluded that foregrounding may be achieved by deviating from norms or by repetition of language or patterns of language use. In this chapter, we present these concepts within the framework of FORMALIST STYLISTICS. The first part of the chapter offers an overview of the nature of communication in poetry, an outline of the formalist framework, a checklist of formalist categories to help you see through the analysis and replicate it on the texts suggested for further practice, and the text to analyse. In the second part of the chapter, we carry out a formalist analysis of the poem by identifying the foregrounded elements in the poem and relating them to other textual choices to create intra-textual patterns of meaning contributing to a coherent interpretation of the poem.

Communication in poetry

Poetry is an unconventional mode of communication. First, unlike conventional modes of communication like books and research papers, it is vertically lined up on the printed page. Second, it is a self-contained and autonomous discourse that is dissociated from the immediate social reality. Third, it is non-referential. That is, it does not always ‘refer’ to reality as we know it; it often constructs it.

Fourth, it is characterised by deliberate ambiguity. Poets do not explain themselves. Instead, they leave ‘gaps’ for readers to fill in with reference to their own schematic knowledge of the world, and thus allow multiple interpretations. This may be a consequence of the limitations of space. A prototypical (modern) poem does not exceed the limit of a single page. There have, of course, been poems in English and other languages running into thousands of lines. Last, poetry aims at the disruption of our automatised perception of reality. In order to achieve this, poets disrupt the conventional categories of language through which we experience the world.

Because of its self-containment and its ‘non-referentiality’, a poem should be best read and understood with reference to authorial textual choices. Analysis of choices in the text, against the background of other possible choices, can help the reader fill in the gaps in the text and construct the reality represented through language.