The Poetic "I"

Alternate Voices

Ken Bazyn

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666725667
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

One should never assume that the narrator in a poem is expressing views identical to the author's. "For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within, " wrote Tennyson. Autobiographical elements tend to be so mixed in with the fictional that lines blur.Bazyn's revolving carousel of poetic "I's" includes an egotist who makes fun of his arrogance; a baby confused by his wobbly surroundings; the simple joys of a childhood Christmas; youth's dilemma at forging a vocation; the peculiar circumstances surrounding one's first love; reminiscences of a recent class reunion; a period of self-examination following the death of a neighbor; anxiously awaiting a monogrammed invitation; lessons gleaned from closely inspecting nature; exhibiting faith in a secular metropolis; dreaming of a technician's utopia; and the frailty and ragged edges of old age.The narrator is, by turns, nostalgic, uneasy, speculative, forlorn, elated, discombobulated--representing, as he does, different stages of life, personality types, and psychological moods. Bazyn's language can be mysterious, his sentences follow a winding course, his stanzas end abruptly. Bewitching black-and-white photos accent and enhance each poem's metaphors. As you gaze into this verbal/visual mirror, likenesses of the hidden self emerge and take on unexpected shapes.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Incurvatus in se
• i
• A Slumbering Cradle
• The Carousel
• The Christmas Tree
• Glitter, Glitter
• Adolescence
• My Brother
• i remember . . . Vietnam
• Old Glory
• The Annual New Year’s Party
• Remembering Names
• A Class Reunion
• From My Office in the Flatiron
• False Starts
• The Laughing Gull
• To Any Future Biographer
• My Kitchen Reading Table
• There Was a Boom
• The Realist, or the Cynic
• A Neighbor Died Last Evening
• After Reading Kenneth Rexroth
• If I Could Play a Scalar Instrument
• The Broken Circle
• When First We Met
• Awake, Sweet William!
• Envy
• The Ladder
• The Introspective Candle
• The Faithful But Haughty Mirror
• A Hard Night’s Labor
• The Broken Vase
• The Shy and the Vulnerable
• Self-Siege
• I’ve a Tenuous Hold
• The Duke of Anarchy
• Down
• Guilt
• Secular City
• I Confess to . . .
• Psalm 42
• I Present My Heart:
• Not I, But Christ
• I Stand by the Door
• I Said . . .
• A Rainbow—Slain
• Flipping Ripe Avocados
• Two-Stepping with Snowflakes
• Chief Keeper of the Parrots
• Another World
• Technical Profundities
• Out of Favor
• In the Winter of My Prime
• In Old Age
• Listing of Photographs
• Works Cited