| Toni Morrison has created a sort of fiction that blends poetic techniques with prose narrative for the express purpose of changing the reader's encounter with her texts from observation to active participation, evoking engagement of the heart as well as the head. She does this in part by providing spacious ambiguity through shifting centers of consciousness within the narrative voices. Morrison also provides a wealth of specific detail in the form of figurative language, especially patterns of imagery that twine through each book. Together these poetic techniques insure that Morrison's connotative language is equally as important as her denotative in bringing the reader into immediate experience of Morrison's created worlds.;In the chapter on The Bluest Eye this blended artform is studied by close explication of the book as a whole, treating it as if it were a poem in terms of image patterns and questions of language use. Beloved is studied in the second chapter through a detailed following of one strand in the image patterns that create Sethe, Paul D, Sixo and Beloved. The narration of the climactic sixteenth chapter is explicated by following the shifts in center of consciousness that frequently occur. These images patterns and narrative shifts give rise to the concrete details and resonant ambiguity that are the cornerstones of Morrison's poetic technique. The third chapter considers Jazz, which emphasizes the intrinsic music of language as well as the narrative shifts and image patterns, adding yet another experiential dimension to Morrison's work. In the end it is clear that Morrison fully intends for the reader to enter each of her books as if crossing the border into a new, perhaps dangerous, country. Her fusion of poetic technique to narrative form provides the passport. |
