"St. George and the Dragon"
The poem “Not my Best Side” is a postmodern examination of the nature media representation. Each of the characters presented on the canvas of Paolo Uccello’s painting “St. George and the Dragon” take their opportunity to offer commentary on how the painting portrays them and, more importantly, how that media portrayal differs from the reality of their situation. In this way, the painting becomes a symbol for how media (from painting to news broadcasts) portray people and events from a perspective incapable of being anything other than subjective.
The Job Interview
“You Will be Hearing from Us Shortly” is crafted in the form of one side of a job interview. We are privy to what the interviewer says, but the words of the interviewee are only blank spaces. Thus, the entire poem is constructed as a reminder that a job interview is all about the power and the exercise of it. The absence of the job applicant’s replies perfectly symbolize the powerlessness of those who need under the oppressive supremacy of those who merely want.
The Lexicon of Official Reports
Too many of Fanthorpe’s poems take the form of or allude to official business reports to mention. It is a pervasive technique and quite representative of the age in which she wrote. This dry, contextually empty and subtextually-challenged language insidiously became so widespread in the lives of even those who never worked in an office situation that it is recognizable. It is also the poet’s primary symbol for describing the state of the 20th century as an ironic communications breakdown resulting from the development of a globally shared language.
Alison
The title character of the poem “CaseHistory: Alison (head injury) is a woman suffering from the effects of a traumatic brain injury. The poem begins with the equivalent of a stage direction: “(She looks at her photograph).” The photograph recalls an Alison before her head injury that she doesn’t remember and can only recall from what she sees in photographs and what she has been told by others who do remember. The poem constructs Alison as a symbol of the very delicate and fragile nature of what seems to a much more solidly constructed concept: self-identity.
The Donkey
The title character of “What the Donkey Saw” is that particular donkey sharing the stable with a desperate couple on the night the young pregnant woman gave birth to a baby named Jesus. The donkey describes the stable as small and crowded and notes that he and the baby would be going places together. This retelling of the story of the birth of Christ situates the donkey as a symbol of the primal element of postmodernism: the necessity to see stories through a different perspective in order to gain a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of them.
