Tell the Truth, but Not the Whole Truth…

Farnoosh Fathi, in an article titled ““Tell all the truth but tell it slant -”: Dickinson’s Poetics of Indirection in Contemporary Poetry,” uses Emily Dickinson’s poem “Tell all the truth” (#1129) to analyze two contemporary poets in their use of “indirection” and poetic complexity to reflect the inner difficulty of the human mind, as well as the limits of human knowledge and truth. These contemporary poets, named Christine Hume and Larissa Szporluk, have been influenced by Dickinson’s poetic style and her use of “indeterminacy, negation, ellipsis, syntactic difficulty, and back-grounded narrative” (Fathi, 77). These poets, according to Fathi, implement these devices in order to reveal complex “interior” truths as “pluralistic and paradoxical, rather than unitary” (Fathi, 78).

The concept of complexity seems to be a common thematic structure for modern poetry, especially in regard to Dickinson’s poems. In “Tell all the truth,” the speaker expresses truth as something that is “Too bright for our infirm Delight” (line 3), and thereby considers it too much for the average human to understand or comprehend. Truth must be found in small doses, “must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind -” (lines 7-8). This idea reflects Fathi’s argument that Dickinson wished to reveal the complexity of truth, as well as caution mankind about the limitations of comprehension concerning such a grand thing as Truth. However, according to Fathi, poetry is still able to reflect and express the complexities of truth, but must do it “slant” (line 1), employing Dickinsonian devices of indirection to hint at, rather than completely define, what can be considered true or false.

This method of indirection employs “reliance on connotative or implicit meanings, wordplay, manipulation of understatement, qualifiers, or slight shifts in tone…hyperbaton, formal hybridity, non-normative use of punctuation, and extra-rhythmic use of meter” (Fathi, 77), and these strategies serve to reveal small truths to the reader as well as hide the full brunt of the knowledge from them, since “Success in Circuit lies” (line 2). Such circuitous poetry reflects the ambiguity of true knowledge, as well as the fragmentation of the mind. Both concepts permeated modern poetry, and the authors of the period were obsessed with both reflecting this fragmentation and difficulty as well as emphasizing its effect on the human brain.Emily Dickinson

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One Response to Tell the Truth, but Not the Whole Truth…

  1. Prof VZ says:

    I really like this focus on Dickinson and her influence–an influence that is itself indirect, reflected in the textures and gaps in language. Though Dickinson might not have viewed herself self-consciously as an experimental poet, her mode of indirection was massively influential to more experimental poetry of the 20th century. Great critical summary!

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