and despairing raise their heads and
stop believing in the strength of their oppressors.’’
To be slayed by such sighs: a noble figure
in a removed entranceway.
‘‘This is just a little note
to say that it was nice working with
all of you. It has been a rewarding
experience in many ways. Although I
am looking forward to my new position with
great anticipation, I shall never forget
the days I spent here. It was like
a home-away-from-home, everyone was
just so warm and friendly. I shall ever
remember you in my prayers, and I
wish you the best for the future.’’From ‘The Klupzy Girl’ (Bernstein 1983, pp. 47–8)Here the poet is not only a mimic, he also shows how all talking is a form
of mimicry. When people speak, they often repeat what they have heard
others say in similar situations. These are words they think are appropri-
ate for the occasion, and which situate them in a particular place in the
social hierarchy. Implicit in the poem is the idea, also prevalent in post-
structuralist/postmodern theories, that we cannot move out of language
or out of discourse. We are always moving between discourses, and these
inevitably speak for positions of power. The Bernstein poem is, in part, a
collage of these different social discourses and their histories and failures.
The first sentence, ‘If we are not to be phrasemongers’, for example, draws
our attention to the potential vacuousness of language—and the gap
between words and actions—while inevitably succumbing to it. The first
voice in quotation marks which begins ‘But the most beautiful of all
doubts’ attempts to situate itself as ‘high status’, the second ‘This is just a
little note.. .’ as ‘low status’. The first uses elevated, even pretentious
language. The second is heavily reliant on clichés, and while trying to
please gives a rather artificial impression: in fact the words may even seek
to conceal problems in the workplace, which are the reason the speaker is
leaving. Throughout the whole passage, different verbal registers are
adopted sequentially, whether quotation marks are used or not. No par-
ticular register can be assumed to be the poet’s own ‘voice’.
For Exercise 1b create a poem which problematises the notion of voice.
For example, focus on a voice which seems somewhat at odds with its
subject matter, that refuses to take itself seriously, or that is alien or
164 The Writing Experiment