The Poem by Don Paterson

Author:Don Paterson [Don Paterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780571341146
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Self-reflexivity

Self-reference, the declaration by the text that it is text, is a mise en abyme because the paradox of the feedback loop (i.e. that the p-text allusion is an intra-domain index which seeks out the a-text, which in turn changes the function of the allusion to that of a connecting ground, altering the perception of the p-text by inter-domain means) is usually elided under normal circumstances: it only operates as such from the alternate perspectives of the two texts, and thus the two functions are conceptually separated. When the reference is to the p-text itself, the indexical sign leaves the thematic domain in search of its a-text only to be immediately directed back to its own home; the effect is that of a Möbius strip, and the ‘fourth wall’ is breached as the text itself admits its own artifice. It’s a little like when there’s a power failure, or your water supply is cut, or a window falls out, or the boiler dies – and one is suddenly aware that ‘home’, that warm box for sheltering and feeding and sleeping safely in, is in reality a rather flimsy conceit. The self-reflexive move tends to leave the poem a less trustworthy and casually hospitable place, telling us an uncomfortable and sometimes valuable truth about the hollowness of its own mimetic conceit. The most explicit self-referencing often addresses exactly this:

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.

You will forge the poem, but not before

It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.

It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

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