unified, expressive self. According to psychoanalytic theory, for example,
the human subject who emerges from the Oedipal process is a split subject,
torn precariously between the claims of the conscious and unconscious.
Central to contemporary psychoanalytic theory is the Lacanian mirror
stage, in which the infant feels the joy of recognition at seeing and recog-
nising him or her self in the mirror, but also the despair of misrecognition,
the knowledge that he or she can never be totally at one with the image.
This sense of a radical split is particularly acute in language, where I can
talk of myself but never fully represent, explain or communicate myself.
Poems have always borne witness to the split self. In the poetry of
Thomas Wyatt, John Donne and many others, the self emerges as ambiva-
lent, fractured or multiple. But in a postmodern lyric this sense of a split
self is particularly acute, and is usually seen as a modus vivendi rather than
as something which can be, or needs to be, ‘cured’.
One way to write a ‘split self ’ postmodern lyric (see Exercise 1a) is to
think about personal experience—either your own or that of a fictional
person—in terms of contradiction, antithesis and division. The concept of
the split self is actually quite central to our experience; we often feel, for
example, as if we are both acting and watching ourselves. However, the
split self also arises out of the conflict between personal desire and
the demands of society.
The poem ‘Poem: i.m. John Forbes’, by former creative writing student
James Lucas—now a published poet—exemplifies the split self because it
hinges on the tension between the necessities of domestic existence
(making a home, running a car) and our ambitions and aspirations
(writing poems):
Example 8.1
While peaking lungs slap shut
as thin air wallets
& kitchen floors resound
to confessions & to noisy fucks
you’re out, reconnoitring
the package deal fringes
of paradise where dented
aspirations come to light
at carboot sales
of hawked and haggled
kits for D.I.Y. Parnassian binges
& the self-assembly funhouse
mirrors quid pro quo irony,
the acme of tough love,158 The Writing Experiment