Page 5 - The Irony Board

Introduction

cannot be sustained for long (the shortest work of this type, “Clouds
break” (presented below), amounts to five words).
Logic is a recurrent theme in his epigrams; it is the means by
which irony may be understood as twisted metaphor: if the
relationship of A to B is a metaphor for that of C to D, then it is
ironical if in fact A and D or B and C are linked (for instance, we
expect the wealthy to be sunburned in winter, but in fact the
homeless often are—an irony of poverty).
In the discussion of specific poems, other logical aspects will
become evident. As a stylistic element, however, a few more words
may be said about logic. English, as a natural language, easily
generates paradoxes and contradictions involving self-reference and
impossible entities. Gluckman uses these sorts of “strange loop” to
create semantic tension; logical ambiguity can be both form and
content. The architectural element also partakes of the logic of
symmetry, in the “word shuffle” type of poem; here a set of symbols
is rung through changes in an orderly fashion, or repeated in the
same phrase with different meanings.
Finally, it may be of interest to note his principal sources of
imagery. Idioms, proverbs, and figures of speech, as pre-defined
pithy expressions, are frequently the take-off point for puns and
pastiches. Animals and their behavior are favorite subjects and
2
analogues. Other inhabitants of the natural world (animate and
otherwise) find their way into similes and purely imagistic contexts.
Many of the issues dealt with are academic in origin, reflecting his
own grasshopper education; the theorists and theories appear, of
course, in versions sanctioned by the amateur’s poetic license.

How the poems are presented

Organizing multi-dimensional objects according to a linear
principle is necessarily a frustrating exercise in compromise and
arbitrariness. Wittgenstein, in whatever form he persists in memory,

2 See his three volumes of “Fables”, as well as several of the illustrated children’s
stories for his repeated use of animal characters and characteristics.

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