Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Speaking In and Speaking Out: Posttraumatic Poetry and Autography

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

  • 556 Accesses

Abstract

Jensen analyses the complex strategies used to communicate posttraumatic autobiographical experience through the limiting frames of autography and poetry. Outlining the latest neuroscientific understandings of the relations between mental illness and the creative drive, Jensen demonstrates how both poetry and autography have arisen alongside traumatic historical contexts: while poetry traditionally communicated the horrors of war and imprisonment, autography has been used to tell stories of genocide, rape, incest, anorexia, and pedophilia. Jensen argues that often in posttraumatic autobiographical works in these strict forms a remembered, intrusive scene of violent incursion upon the mind and body is “spoken out” verbally or visually in a manner similar to ekphrástic poetic renderings of a painting or sculpture. Drawing attention to this form of ekphrásis as the business of posttraumatic poetry and autography, Jensen concludes that in both forms, metaphor is used to reread powerful images and provide a rhetorical bridge between affective realms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adorno, Theodor. 1967. Prisms. 6th ed. Translated by Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Elizabeth. 2010. “Remembering Lucille Clifton.” New Yorker, February 17. Web.

    Google Scholar 

  • David, B. 2005. Epileptic. Translated by Cecil Day Lewis. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bechdel, Alison. 2006. Fun Home. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. Are You My Mother? London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boone, Beth, and Linda G. Castillo. 2008. “The Use of Poetry Therapy with Domestic Violence Counselors Experiencing Secondary Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms.” Journal of Poetry Therapy 21 (1): 3–14. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08893670801886865?journalCode=tjpt20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brillantes-Evangelista, Grace. 2013. “An Evaluation of Visual Arts Interventions with Abused Adolescents.” The Arts in Psychotherapy 40 (1): 71–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Joshua. 1988. “Review Essay: Of Mice and Memory.” Oral History Review 16 (1): 91–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 2010. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, Siobhan, ed. 2012. Courage and Strength: Stories and Poems by Combat Stress Veterans. Kingston upon Thames: Kingston University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleridge, Samuel. 2009. Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Select Poems. 2009 edition. Edited by Frederick. Sykes. Auckland: The Floating Press. First published 1798.

    Google Scholar 

  • Couser, G. Thomas. 2003. Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Croom, Adam M. 2014. “The Practice of Poetry and The Psychology of Well-Being.” Journal of Poetry Therapy: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education 28 (1): 21–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darling, Julia. 2005. “Introduction.” In The Poetry Cure, edited by Julia Darling and Cynthia Fuller, 11–13. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darling, Julia, and Cynthia Fuller, eds. 2005. The Poetry Cure.. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desrochers, Alexandra, Dominic Beaulieu-Prévost, Justine Desautels, Vera Békés, Geneviève Belleville, et al. 2016. “Gender and Changes in Trauma Narrative Following CBT for PTSD.” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 25 (9): 974–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Warren, Nicholas. 2014. “The Poetry in the Pity.” Open Democracy, 15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falkoff, Mark, ed. 2007. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flaherty, Alice. 2005a. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain. New York: First Mariner Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005b. “Frontotemporal and Dopaminergic Control of Idea Generation and Creative Drive.” Journal of Comparative Neurology 493 (1): 147–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2011. “Brain Illness and Creativity: Mechanisms and Treatment Risks.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 56 (3): 132–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forbes, Peter, ed. 2003. We Have Come Through: 100 Poems Celebrating Overcoming Depression and Trauma. Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund. 1924. Neurosis and Psychosis. General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1963.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Justin. 2009. Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. San Francisco: McSweeney’s. First published in 1972.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Katie. 2013. Lighter Than My Shadow. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grysman, Azriel, Natalie Merrill, and Robyn Fivush. 2017. “Emotion, Gender, and Gender Typical Identity in Autobiographical Memory.” Memory 25 (3): 289–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herman, Judith. 2007. Trauma and Recovery. Rev. ed. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Marianne. 2008. “The Generation of Post-Memory.” Poetics Today 29 (1): 103–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huyssen, Andreas. 2004. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and The Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jung, Rex, and Richard Haier. 2013. “Creativity and Intelligence: Brain Networks That Link and Differentiate the Expression of Genius.” In Neuroscience of Creativity, edited by Oshin Vatanian et al., 233–54. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kahn, Sharon R. 2015. “The Power of Creation Over Trauma: Personality Factors and the Impotency of PTSD.” Hawaii University International Conferences January 3–6: 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, David. 2012. “How Art Works on the Pain Spectrum: Ekphrasis and Trauma in Recent Poetry by Pascale Petit and Carol Rumens.” Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 1 (2): 95–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krause, Elizabeth, Ruth DeRosa, and Susan Ross. 2002. “Gender, Trauma Themes, and PTSD: Narratives of Male and Female Survivors.” In Gender and PTSD, edited by Rachel Kimerling, Paige Ouimette, and Jessica Wolfe, 349–81. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee Jason C., Lei Philip Wang, and Joe Z. Tsien. 2017. “Dopamine Rebound-Excitation Theory: Putting Brakes on PTSD.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 7: 163, May 20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Linthout, Willy. 2009. Years of the Elephant. Doddington: Fanfare and Ponent Mon.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medley, Stuart. 2010. “Discerning Pictures: How We Look at and Understand Images in Comics.” Studies in Comics 1 (1): 53–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, Michael. 2013. “Writing Trauma: Affected in the Act.” New Writing:The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing 10 (2): 154–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. Oneself as Another. Edited by Kathleen Blarney. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Romero-Jódar, Andrés. 2012. “‘When the Life Giver Dies, All Around Is Laid Waste.’ Structural Trauma in Signal to Noise a Graphic Novel.” The Journal of Popular Culture 45 (5): 1000–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seligman, Rebecca, and Laurence Kirmayer. 2008. “Dissociative Experience and Cultural Neuroscience: Narrative, Metaphor and Mechanism.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 32 (1): 31–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sloan, Denise, Brian Marx, Eva Epstein, and Jennifer Lexington. 2007. “Does Altering the Writing Instructions Influence the Outcome Associated with Written Disclosure?” Behavior Therapy 38 (1): 155–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Springer, Wanda. 2006. “Poetry in Therapy: A Way to for Trauma Survivors and Clients in Recovery from Addiction.” Journal of Poetry Therapy the Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education 19 (2): 69–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stricker, Kirsten. 2014. “The Art of Trauma: Abstraction and Locke and Key.” Dissertation, Wittenburg University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sussman, Adrienne. 2007. “Mental Illness and Creativity: A Neurological View of the Tortured Artist.” Stanford Journal of Neuroscience 1 (1): 21–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sussman, Dafna, Elizabeth Pang, Rakesh Jetly, Benjamin Dunkley, and Margot Taylor. 2016. “Neuroanatomical Features in Soldiers with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.” BMC Neuroscience, BMC series. 17 (13): 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2007. Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tegnér, Ingrid, John Fox, Robin Philipp, and Pamela Thorne. 2009. “Evaluating the Use of Poetry to Improve Well-Being and Emotional Resilience in Cancer Patients.” Journal of Poetry Therapy 22 (3): 121–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warhol, Robyn. 2011. “The Space Between: A Narrative Approach to Alison Bechdel’s Fun-Home.” College Literature 38 (3): 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, Julia. 2008. “Autographic Disclosures and Genealogies of Desire in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Biography 31 (1): 27–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. “The Pleasures of Reading in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Life Writing 9 (3): 303–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weiner, Stephen. 2003. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: Nantier, Beal, Minoustchine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead, Anne. 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitlock, Gillian. 2006. “Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics.” Modern Fiction Studies 52 (4): 965–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Ian. 2011. “Autography as Auto-Therapy: Psychic Pain and the Graphic Memoir.” Journal of Medical Humanities 32 (1): 353–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woolf, Virginia. 1927. To the Lighthouse (American edition). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoich.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1980. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 3. Edited by Anne Bell. London: Hogarth Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1985. “A Sketch of the Past.” In Moments of Being, edited by Jeanne Schulkind. 2nd ed. London: Hogarth Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK

    Meg Jensen

Authors
  1. Meg Jensen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Meg Jensen .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Jensen, M. (2019). Speaking In and Speaking Out: Posttraumatic Poetry and Autography. In: The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06106-7_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation