Portraits in Pain: The Psychology of Inspiration in Prose Poems by Lynn Emanuel
Reconstructing notions such as potentiality and inspiration, Emanuel’s prose poems,
whose thematic range spans from involvement with the paintings of her renowned father
Akiba Emanuel (a model and ‘pupil’ of Matisse) to the ‘portraits’ of Gertrude Stein,
illuminate the interrelationship between language and world, and the psychology of inhabiting
both through inspiration. This paper will address the question of what fuels creativity when it
is put to work through the involvement of other voices which are represented (in Emanuel’s
case) as suffering from having their genius interrupted either by death, by lack of recognition,
or by amnesia.
In all Emanuel’s three collections of poems, and a couple of other chap books, inspiration
plays an important role, yet Emanuel is not interested in inspiration in the traditional sense to
mean divine connection with a higher power or a muse, and romantic transcendence.
Inspiration for Emanuel is always triggered by an attempt at understanding what pain is. The
pain of creation and composition, and the pain of reading and writing promote two different
types of understanding: first, that there is something to create out of nothing, and second, that
‘nothing’ is always a beginning. Inspiration for Emanuel is therefore the beginning of nothing.
But how does one begin nothing, a created nothing, that is, a nothing which can be rendered
and read and which can explain both the pain of understanding such relations and the
inspiration that befalls them? One of Emanuel’s answers seems to be given through her use of
amnesia. It is through the theme of forgetfulness that a connection between the writer an...
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... . Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999
Lethem, Jonathan, ed. “Introduction”. The Vintage Book of Amnesia: an anthology of Writing
on the Subject of Memory Loss. New York: Vintage Books, 2000
Suárez Araúz, Nicomedes. “The Amnesis Manifesto”, 1984 [http://www.-
smith.edu/calc/amnesia/manifesto.html]
Zawinski, Andrena. “Poetry in Review”. In Posse Review. Osiduy. Issue 9. Vol. 1, year
undisclosed [http://webdelsol.com/InPosse/zawinski9.htm]
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1 Joyce 1992, 854
2 Domangue 1997, no pagination
3 Berman 1993, no pagination
4 Emanuel 1995, 42
5 Suárez-Araúz, 1984, no pagination
6 Joyce 1992, 854
7 Emanuel 1995, 57
8 Emanuel 1999, 7
9 Zawinski, no year; no pagination
10 Emanuel 1999, 27
11 Emanuel 1999, 28
12 Clark 1997, 10
13 Clark 1997, 119
14 Emanuel 1999, 29
15 Emanuel 1999, 30
16 Emanuel 1999, 34
17 Emanuel 1999, 34
18 Lethem 2000, xv
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It has been stated that the application of memory functions in fictional works which act as a reflective device of human experience. (Lavenne, et al. 2005: 1). I intend to discuss the role of memory and recollection in Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science-fiction novel Never Let Me Go (2005).
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Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory is a novel written with symbolism, imagery, and metaphoric language. He writes his novel in a detail orientated structure with each chapter separated into sections. This shows us that Nabokov is a detail orientated person and wants his reader to understand his thought process throughout the novel. An example of Nabokov using such imagery and symbolism is when he writes about his bedtime ritual.
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