Noir Poetry

Abstract

This article explores the term “noir” that has been introduced relatively recently to contemporary poetry, having been borrowed from the film world. The sources of noir poetry do not exclusively lead back to film and neo-noir, for they also – and perhaps most substantially – draw from features that migrated over to film from dark crime fiction, also known as hard-boiled stories. The first usage of the term “noir poetry” I was able to find appears in an article that American scholar and poet Suzanne Lummis published at the break of 2013. In English-speaking countries, the term is substantially more popular than it is elsewhere. Although an anthology appeared in Poland in 2010 titled Farewell, My Lovely. Noir Poetry (Żegnaj, laleczko. Wiersze noir), the term did not interest the authors on a theoretical level, for they seemed more interested in Chandlerian tropes. The fundamental features of noir poetry include: anxiety, pessimism, obsession, and a rejection of sentimentality. One device employed among Polish poets with particular zeal is black humor. In Poland, authors drawing from the noir tradition include Marcin Baran and Marcin Świetlicki, but we can also trace the genre’s imprints back to earlier work, some examples of which might seem counter-intuitive, such as Wisława Szymborska’s Black Song (Czarna piosenka), which is cited in this article.