Reconstructing the Self: The Poetics of Traumatic Memory

Abstract

Memory is a fundamental aspect of understanding our relationship with the self and the world. Trauma destabilizes memory, thereby disrupting our connection to the self and others. Poets who address memory and/or trauma in their work, including Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Orr, Eavan Boland, Natasha Trethewey, and Louise Glück, have used poetry to reassert a sense of narrative cogency to the past, a process which can be restorative and clarifying, particularly in the wake of painful events that often exist in memory as dissociated images and sensations. When writing about traumatic memory, the poet must also navigate the way in which memory, though integral to the self, is unstable and subject to distortion. Memory is inherently mediated by the present, a paradox which complicates the poet’s ability to access the past. Nonetheless, poetry, due in part to its fragmented form, is well-suited to accommodate the elliptical and scattered nature of traumatic memory.