Style and Voice in Selected Poems by Louise Erdrich: A Postmodern Perspective Style and Voice in Selected Poems by Louise Erdrich: A Postmodern Perspective

Document Type : Original Article

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English department - Faculty of Arts, New Valley - Assiut University

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to reveal the style and voice in selected poems by the Native-American poet and novelist Louise Erdrich. A versatile writer, Erdrich has a literary production that remarkably covers a wide range of fields. In addition to her numerous novels, short stories, essays, memoirs, and children's books, she is the author of three collections of poetry. The present paper focuses on three poems, a poem from each collection: 'The Flood' from Baptism of Desire, 'Jacklight' (the title poem of the Jacklight volume), and 'Birth' from Original Fire: New and Selected Poems. These poems can be interpreted as postmodern in their style and voice. A brief introduction to style and voice is given together with an overview about postmodernism and postmodern literature. Erdrich employs her stylistic devices and poetic techniques to reflect her voice in the selected poems--a postmodern voice that speaks for the oppressed woman and reveals her yearnings for liberation from the restraints of a patriarchal society (as in 'The Flood'), reflects her female supremacy and the distinctive triumph she achieves over men (as in 'Jacklight'), and asserts her parental role as a mother and her conviction that caring for children is a shared responsibility based on love and cooperation between husband and wife (as in 'Birth').

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