During my MFA we were asked to respond to the text “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances” by Roman Jakobson, which explores metaphor and metonymy.
Jakobson speaks of poetry and its romanticism being suited to metaphor and realism being suited to metonymy. The First World War confuses these structures. Romanticism and metaphor were used extensively for enlistment purposes, while war poetry embraced the gritty descriptive abilities of metonymy to highlight the horrors of war.
Such relationships were confused even further within personal correspondence. Within his letters to his mother, the war poet Wilfred Owen used metonymy to describe but also cushion and censor the horrific conditions he was living in. These unique linguistic moments become their own narrative space.
This book lifts these moments from the letters to create a new body of poetry work, a new war narrative from Owen’s short and incredible life. The book cover is a visual extension this language. Within the letters/metonymy poems, Owen describes hand to hand combat as “Bayonet work”.