Plausible Deniability

For the past few days in class, we have analyzed a poem by poet laureate Robert Pinsky entitled "Shirt", which evokes strong historical grounding in explanation of how a piece of clothing, specifically a shirt that Robert Pinsky is supposedly wearing, could have become what it is. 

A specific stanza within the poem makes a reference to a decedent of George Herbert, a famous poet from the Seventeenth century, named "Irma" who is a "black lady in South Carolina" and we did not have time to analyze it.

The reason this stanza was especially interesting to me was a contrast that it had with the previous few lines. They recalled a slave woman "sweating at her machine" sorting the cotton that would eventually be used to make clothing or furniture or something that cotton eventually becomes. You can immediately make the connection between the slave woman and "Irma" because the slave women were black and Irma is described as being a black woman who lives in South Carolina, a state which was riddled with slave labor prior to the Civil war. 

With this connection the author is trying to show us that at every stage of development of the shirt, the connotation of slavery and the practice of racism and prejudice drive its creation. You cannot help imagining that Irma's own ancestors were the ones that picked the cotton for the shirt that she "inspected" and in Pinsky's explanation that the shirt "satisfied" Irma he connotes that she was helpless in the structural bondage of racism that forced her hand in negligence towards the fact that slave labor was used in it's creation. 

Thus with a few words, Pinsky is able to weave together an entire history of racism and prejudice that are hidden behind the veils of plausible deniability.

The last small connotation that this stanza holds is debated over. Whether the mention of George Herbert's name is a connection to a poem he wrote in 1633 entitled "The Collar" (see, because it is the Collar of a shirt) or whether Irma could actually be a descendent of Herbert because of the muddled history of Racism, Slavery and Rape that is evident throughout history opening up the possibility for her name to actually be "Irma Herbert".

For some reason this stanza stood out to me, what part of the poem stood out to you?