The contributors to this anthology have created not just imaginary poets but poems by these fictive beings. And not simply poems but translations of the "original" work accompanied by Translator's Notes. The effect carries a hint of the surreal, a dalliance with alternate possibilities. Those possibilities are expressed in the fictional lives of their heteronyms. At the same time, the heteronyms provide a glimpse into the creative lives of the contributors. The Imaginary Poets works to reveal much about the potential that exists within every creative individual.
An Elixir of Possibility
At every point along the process, the poets who craft the heteronyms are producing an elixir of possibility. In the role of creator, the contributing poets have crafted fictional characters that speak from an illusionary past to entrance the reader. They have bestowed these heteronyms with fictional poetry that enhances that identity, meshing so completely with the personality that the division between "real" and “imaginary” fades away in the light of realistic fiction.
In a dramatic turnabout, the poem becomes by-product rather than the primary effort. For the poets gathered in this book are busy creating personalities with life dramas, tension, conflict and resolution. Eighteen different languages add to the cultural identity of these various personae. And, as in reality, the poem becomes one aspect of the totality of an individual. In this synthesis of the unreal, the heteronyms, with the poet’s creative imagination, an odd mirror effect also occurs. For in developing these personalities, contributing poets are also revealing something of their own identity. It could be an obsession with an historical era, the nuances of a particular language or a motif that drives their own poetry.
Twenty-two outstanding contemporary poets contributed to this venture. Among those creating their heteronymic profiles are Victoria Redel, Mark Strand, Barbara Hamby, D.A. Powell, David St. John, Annie Finch, and Maxine Kumin.
Variety of Personae
The personae created by these poets include an Egyptian feminist, a Hungarian who persecuted Jews, and then escaped into anonymity, a French school teacher murdered by the Germans during WWII, a Maasi tribesman who received a formal education abroad and then returned to Kenya and his Maasi life, and the fascinating, “J II,” the name attached to a female author of the Apocrypha, whose remnants of “pagan” poetry were unearthed at Pompeii.
Each fictional creation is a miniature portrait, similar in nature to Pessoa's heteronyms but lacking the depth of that Portuguese master who exemplified the form. In featuring the creative potential of the heteronym, The Imaginary Poets legitimizes the poet as fiction writer.
The anthology is a welcome call for a concentrated extension of poetic voice, for literary simulacrum, for the personae that hover behind every poet’s pen.
Reference: The Imaginary Poets. Ed. Alan Michael Parker. Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2005.
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