Page 6 - The Irony Board

Introduction

must always have a good laugh at efforts such as this to categorize
these epigrams. Overlap and shortcoming are inevitable; I do
attempt to compensate for my Procrustean solution by giving
backward and forward references within the expository text
following each poem.
The four-part classification scheme progresses from internal to
external concerns, from microcosm to macrocosm, with a large
midsection devoted to the everyday world of human activities and
natural phenomena. I do not dedicate specific sections to logic,
irony, or philosophizing; rather, as mentioned above, those topics
are to be found, implicitly or explicitly, throughout Gluckman’s
work. Autobiographical references also are ubiquitous; if significant,
they will be explained, but the circumstances of the author’s
personal life remain sufficiently ambiguous to render such efforts
dubiously meritorious.

Section 1: Into the Mind.

The broad subject of the first aggregation is the human brain: locus
of thought, desire, and perception; repository of instinct, knowledge,
and neurosis; arena of self-discovery, self-development, and self-
deception. Those entities and processes appear often in Gluckman’s
epigrams, most notably in those appearing here. The sequence of
presentation is from intangible mental constructs to strongly-felt
physiological efforts and effects.

Section 2: Into the Body

From relatively abstract mental realms the topic changes to the types
and problems of physical existence. A person, simply by living, is
subject to necessities (and ironies) of mortality and entropy, chance
and fate, struggle and acceptance. Those existential inevitabilities are
compounded by sociocultural idiosyncrasies and historical accidents
in Gluckman’s epigrams dealing with human nature.

4