The Fragmented Brain: On Trauma, Memory, and Erasure
by Poetry Editor Skylar Miklus
"French Grand Antique Marble" by James St. John
Poetry exists in a curious in-between. It’s not quite nonfiction, but inspired by our lived experiences. Not quite fiction, but generatively imaginative. This straddling of genres is likely due to the fact that poetry predates genre, and possibly even the written word. Originally a sung or spoken form, poetry was how ancient civilizations communicated a mishmash of fact and fiction— history, legend, genealogy, myth. Yet millennia later, as the divisions between genres crystallize, poets are uniquely positioned to complicate these borders.
Of course, upending these literary conventions is easier said than done. But those of us who write about experiences on the margins have the most to gain from a generative reimagining of the relationship between poetry and truth. The publishing industry tends to want only a certain kind of story from us, a logically linear narrative of enduring through trauma.
However, traumatic events upend the functioning of the brain, making it more difficult to recall a linear narrative later. When a person is experiencing fear or trauma, the “fear circuitry” of the brain – including areas like the amygdala and hippocampus – bypasses the prefrontal cortex – the rational decision-making area of the brain. The fear circuitry is less effective at encoding memories, leaving out information such as chronology and context in favor of peripheral details. As a result, a survivor is less likely to have an easily understandable, time-sequenced, narrative recall of a traumatic event.
How, then, can survivors write about their trauma? How can they expect the general public to understand the story when they may not even fully recall the story? Poetry offers one answer: fragmentation. If I have gaps in my memory of the event, I can leave the gaps in the poem with white space, enjambment, or incomplete sentences. The discontinuities in the narrative will force readers to fill in the blanks themselves. This technique allows fellow survivors who have also experienced that “emptiness” of memory to instantly relate. It also provides a window into the qualia of traumatized memory for others.
Consider, for instance, Donika Kelly’s poetry collection The Renunciations, in which she creates a unique form by redacting old letters, removing the recipient’s name and most of the information. These blackout poems are thus reduced to a single sentiment; for instance, the poem “Dear [I wanted…]” reads in its entirety “I wanted to forget so many things.” When read in concert with the rest of the collection, these poems add texture to Kelly’s narrative of surviving childhood sexual abuse. The reader briefly inhabits a traumatized mindset: so much information is missing, crowded out by black bars, leaving behind only a feeling. The erasure technique, here, is a powerful representation of an event that can feel unspeakable.
Kelly is just one of many poets and hybrid writers that exemplify this new approach to writing about trauma. Fragmentation is a powerful tool that marginalized writers can turn to as an alternative to the publishing industry’s focus on linear narratives. Instead of viewing incomplete memory as a hindrance to trauma writing, we can use the psychology behind trauma and memory to create potent, authentic art.
Skylar Miklus serves as Poetry Editor of Barnstorm Journal and Editorial Intern at Electric Literature. They obtained their B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College and are pursuing their MFA in Poetry at the University of New Hampshire. Their writing has appeared in Rogue Agent Journal, Bullshit Lit, Defunct Magazine, and elsewhere. They live in Dover, NH.