Ironic survival in the poetry of Earle Birney
Date
1976
Authors
Gray, William
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Abstract
From Earle Birney's first books of poetry in the nineteen-forties to the most recent in the sixties and seventies, his most basic continuing concern has been the relation between man and nature. This one overriding theme may be seen to underlie the majority of the individual poems, and it is developed in most effective detail in the major poems, which I have chosen for study: "David" (1941), Trial of a City (1952), "November Walk Near False Creek Mouth" (1963), and "what's so big about GREEN?" (1973). The theme has grown in complexity with the deepening of the poet's understanding; and from the beginning he has found in ironic technique the means with which to resolve the interpenetrating duality.
The conflict, as Birney sees it, is older than man; it is the struggle of life for survival. That struggle is ironically conceived, in that it seems immediately necessary while ultimately useless. To make the situation worse, and more ironic, man throughout history has continually oppressed and destroyed his own kind as well as the nature that sustains him, using the same technology and intellect that has brought him to the pinnacle of biological and cultural success. It is the responsibility of the poet who realizes the full dimensions of this complex paradox to sympathize with both nature and her human inhabitants.
What Birney accomplishes, however, is even more difficult, and finally more fulfilling than a mere compromise. His method is to present both sides of the argument of man for survival, and through aesthetic balance, to transcend the limits of a biased judgment. The poet describes each side in such revealing detail, to the point of caricature, that he is able to slip away, unconfined by either position. Birney ultimately deserts both sides (that of man and that of nature, most simply) in order to enjoy and uncompromising freedom in detachment from the unending struggle. His poems reach a kind of secular spiritualism, which places highest faith in the integrity of the creative consciousness. Birney's increasing emphasis on ironic form finally becomes than a successful means of discussing survival; it becomes a means of achieving it, at least in the world of the psyche.
As the roots of Birney's growth may be found in his pre-poetic career, the Introduction is concerned with the biographical background and its relevance to the poetry. The main body of the thesis will not attempt to deal with all of the poems involving irony and survival; these aspects are included in the more general studies of a larger number of poems in Peter C. Noel-Bentley's M.A. Thesis (1966) and in the established work of Richard Robillard (1971) and Frank Davey (1971). Instead, I hope to focus the main current of Birney's development around the major title-poem of each of his four decades of work. Each poem demands a presentation and resolution of a theme that takes on ever-expanding implications. With a detailed analysis of the ironic method in each of these longer poems, the full extent of Birney's resources may be better appreciated. In addition, I think that a brief explanation of Birney's Concrete experiments will help to highlight the extent of his ironic detachment in terms of both theme and form.
Birney's total and even infinite application of irony to nature and man, to poetry and poet, presents a view which is not only penetratingly accurate but helpful in one's adaptation to the world. What Birney traces is a path to survival in its most complete sense.