From a paper on my poetry that I was sent recently:

"Lumsden piles on the “unironic misery” in a way that ironically becomes ironic. I call this “meta-ironic,” which I define as irony concerning irony itself. "

To be frank, I've never been quite clear about what irony in poetry consists of. I have a grasp of what it means, am clear about its 'dictionary definition', but am never sure, especially as to how irony differs, in poetry, from its uses in speech or prose, given that the artifice of poetry might, in itself, be enough to shift mere statement or expression of emotion into an ironic register.

Does the effect always have to be deliberate to be irony per se?

Anyone want to comment, or attempt a definition. Examples would be good.

Jaysus!

I reeeeeeeally hope someone's brave enough to answer this. I couldn't, and I'd like to be able.

I would answer it, only I've just done the washing, and know I've got a pile of ironing to do...




...which reminds me of the critic who complained about poets who write about ironing...



...he was flat out wrong of course...




(I'll get me coat...

Two examples of tragic irony:

Auden's 'Musee des Beaux Arts', in which suffering 'takes place'

'While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood'

and this stanza from Mahon's 'Afterlives' (though it seems rather less ironic now, after the (ironic-sounding) 'Agreement'):

'But the faith does not die

That in our time these things
Will amaze the literate children
In their non-sectarian schools
And the dark places be
Ablaze with love and poetry
When the power of good prevails.'

This was originally followed by the self-castigating: 'What middle class c*nts we are...'

Um...[takes a big gulp]...The critic might be suggesting that irony (or meta-irony) is not some thing encoded in the text deliberately by the writer, but a sort of electrical charge that sparks only when a particular reader encounters a particular text: in short: a reader-response theory inflected definition of irony. And this might work to a certain extent because irony does depend on a shared set of assumptions between reader and writer. Read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal...' with a group of cannabilistic eugenicists (in-between ladling out the long-pig casserole) and the irony might be lost. But we know Swift is being ironical because he wasn't mad. Except that he was, latterly. [Oh dear!]

[Tries again] Milton's Satan wants to supplant God, which, to an orthodox Christian, renders his ambition ironic, because God is the source of his very being. Obliterate god and he obliterates himself. But to a Manichee? Fair enough, I should imagine. And to a C21st atheist? God alone knows!

Incidentally, I once read 'A Modest Proposal' with a class of fifteen year-olds, playing the satanic advocate, arguing that they had let their received 'namby-pamby', liberal humanism get in the way of a sensible, pragmatic solution to an otherwise intractable problem. I managed to convince half of them that Swift was on to something. Of course, they might just have been raising their hands ironically.

"...a Lentil soup so true I knelt and wept." I'd love to think there's not a shred of irony in that. ;)

;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)

Whoops! Went a bit mad with the old emoticons. Think I've worked it out now.

Ah, I'm getting there now - it's about the bits where I fib a little or exaggerate or evoke an emotion slightly different to the one I actually feel?

I'm not being disingenuous (or meta-ironic) here, incidentally. I've always found it hard to detect what is irony and what is poetry. In the Auden example from Mark above, I can see that Auden is using a classical, 'dictionary' example of irony, in the course of a proposition or argument within the poem.

Meanwhile, I'll admit that, though my lentil soup is fabulous (especially when I incorporate La Chinata paprika, kabanos, mushroom ketchup and double cream*), I never did get so over-excited by my own soup as to genuflect before it - it's a fib - but I'm not sure why that might be irony as opposed to hyperbole...?

The more I look at that line, the more I realise its construction is heavily weighted to the sound and not the meaning - it's bordering on anagrammatisation or Unwinism in its echolaliac consonance and assonance.

Would exaggeration deliberately used for poetic effect be enough to warrant the term 'irony'?


*not to for one minute claim I am in your league as a cook, David. I'm pretty damn good, but I know my place!

Is hyperbole a form of irony, possibly?

I was about to say no. Then I checked my Princeton, where I found: 'Depending on their use, pun, paradox, conscious naiveté, parody, etc. can all be ironic.'

Still, I find the overuse of that term, ironic, very tiresome. It so often seems like a pathetic attempt to legitimise some z-grade movie (Scream 9) or dull-witted 'installation'. Then, even the most ironic poets can become a little tired of irony. I often think of this stanza from Milosz's 'Ars Poetica':

'It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.'

You (and I) are not the only ones to be confused. Attending a reading by a well-known Irish poet a few years ago, I remember being puzzled when the publisher, in his introductory speech, praised the poet's work for being free of irony. When the poet took the stage, he promptly declared his amazement that anyone could fail to see that nearly ALL his poems were clearly ironic.

I often think something similar about mine. People often don't realize I'm joking when I write something (until they hear me reading it). Of course, this could be because the jokes are not very good, but I prefer to think it's because the very act of putting something in a poem creates an aura of solemnity about it.

I'm the opposite, people often come up to me and say "You're having a laugh aren't you?"

I agree about the 'aura of solemnity' that the poem's being a poem imbues its contents with, Matthew. Unless a poem's obviously a 'funny poem' - though woe betide anyone who introduces one as such - it can be difficult to judge the funny bits in a poem, even when performed.

For example, there's a poem I've read two or three times in public recently which is clearly a bit of a joke, though each time only a couple of people in the audience laugh at it. But there is satisfaction to be gained from that too. As Michael Hofmann has said of his own work: 'I like a kind of humour where no one quite dares to laugh'.

Of course, in my case, it's entirely possible that my delivery of said poem just obliterated any potential humour...

quote: Is hyperbole a form of irony, possibly?

I think Jo Asser's poems sometimes do that brilliantly.

Irony can be a horrible addiction. Like a tunnel you can't back out of or a snake that won't let go of you once it's bitten you. You can't get it's bilious taste out of your mouth.

If I was looking for a poem that really works the irony thing full blast it's that poem by Peter Reading, (written in a sort of antiquated lingo, ffs for ss's etc) in which a bunch of seamen arrive on a desert island and kill all the dfifferent species of birds. It is delivered in an extremely flat tone. It begins and ends with the line: Ye have heard this tale afore (that's not quite verbatim but not far off). It's quite a killer.

When irony is very strong in poetry (and especially in dramatic poetry, eg Troilus and Cressida), it can have a wierdly visceral (a word much abused) effect. It draws the reader's attention to such feelings as disgust and hatred . . .

He's very good at out-and-out sarcasm too. There's this one in the last collected called 'Soap' which ends something like...

'and they all expire in a welter of blood, shit and vomit'

it had me in stitches.

What's happened to Reading????? Usually an annual collection and now nothing (that I can find) since 2005.