Mills reads Poets of Color

Chris Abani at St. Mary's

2009-12-04T14:18:00.000-08:00

Some months ago, Kiala and I drove through the dark, deer-flanked, eerily quiet and protected streets of Moraga to attend Chris Abani's reading at St. Mary's College. We arrived late and were surprised to find the auditorium filled with an audience of hundreds. As we stood to hear his--as it turned out, fiction--reading, I wondered: who are all these people who have gathered in this corner of the world to hear a poetry reading on a Wednesday night? Did the closed-minded Moragans I grew up around develop a thirst for literature in the ten years since I left that town? Does St. Mary's have incredible publicity for its events throughout the East Bay or entire Bay Area?

As it turned out, the majority of the students were St. Mary's kids, who had been assigned Abani's novel, Graceland, for a class. The novel has won many accolades and international recognition since its publication in 2004, so it would make sense that it be assigned, and that St. Mary's pull out all the stops to bring Abani out for several days of workshops, readings and meals with the college community. Still, there was something unsettling about the situation. We had each been handed bright red half-sheets of paper, instructing us on how to be polite and active participants in this reading. The language of the papers had an air of control and hierarchical authority. Besides attending, many of the undergraduates were required to ask Abani questions about it his book; and so they sprouted a long line behind the microphone. All though most of the questions were benign, some were problematic. One student asked why one of the characters was homosexual. One student asked why so few characters spoke "real English." Abani fielded the questions with grace, introducing the idea that there is no real form of any one language--that that is just a construct--and complicating their perceptions of relationships (romantic or otherwise) between people not of two different, heteronormative genders. However, he also cracked some jokes that made me feel uncomfortable (presumably to win the favor of this sea of sheltered eighteen-year-olds). For example, encouraging one student not to be shy when asking her question by offering to turn around and then offering, in jest, to take off his clothes (playing on the cliche of imagining your audience naked when speaking in public). I felt her could have exercised a little more sensitivity in the representation of his gender in this arena.

Overall, I was happy to hear him read and get a taste of his prose writing, and I was pleased to see St. Mary's seeking him out as their distinguished author for this series. I'm sure the reading of the book and participation in the reading were critical in these students' development and thinkers and global citizens. However, I couldn't shake from my mind the privilege and control of this situation--how much money St. Mary's has to put on an event like this, and the culture it has established amongst undergrads of dictating the decorum of the event. Granted, it is important to establish a positive, respectful atmosphere--but being present at this event made me feel like I was in high school again... maybe just because I got stuck going to high school in Moraga. I'm curious to see Abani perform in another setting, to get a sense of how performers present and transform themselves depending on the genre they are reading from and whom they are reading to.

MBJ at Berkeley Rep

2009-12-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

I was so glad to get to see Marc Bamuthi Joseph perform in this setting (at Berkeley Rep), especially after seeing him perform excerpts of the same show for Works in Progress. Amazingly, both performances felt like an intimate experience--even though one was in the company of two or three dozen people (most of whom I knew) in a well-lit room in which Marc could easily move through the audience, and the other was in the company of hundreds (most of whom I didn't know) sitting in tiered darkness while Marc performed on a distant, lit stage. Comparing these two experiences made it clear that Marc is the kind of performer who can make his audience feel comfortable, and draw them in, despite the size of the venue.

Of course, the audience also plays a big part in making the performer feel comfortable. As Youth Speaks brings conscious performers to many different parts of the country, the performers don't always know what kind of reception they're going to get from their audience. Marc repeatedly announced, in intervals, how enlivening it was to perform before an engaged, familiar Berkeley audience--something that probably added to his comfort, and, added to my experience of feeling personally engaged in his performance.

It was also very powerful to see his pieces enhanced by lighting and amplified sound, and to experience the accompaniment by the MC. I was amazed by Marc's performance at Mills, fulling using his body and his own vocal capacity, but I hadn't experienced the poems/narratives fully until I was able to see and hear the full affect onstage.

Marc's work demonstrated how poetry and performance can work hand-in-hand with memoir and journalism. We had characters, we had stories from youth (interviewing Jay-Z was a personal favorite), we had travelogue. I loved the pieces because they were so intensely personal, but always with a political message or consideration behind the sizzling lyrical language and movement.

reading response #2

2009-12-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

so, i wrote this a while ago when it actually happened & never posted it. yay, here it is:

This weekend’s events still feel like they’re happening, in all honesty. Staceyann Chin isn’t boarding my flight with me right now, but she was just at my gate out of Dulles after an insane weekend of a hundred thousand queers marching on the capitol for equal rights under the law.

I wouldn’t call Staceyann’s speech on Sunday so much of a poem as I would a performance. I’m sure you can find it on youtube by now, but seeing her face surrounded by microphones and news cameras just might ruin it. I heard her speech from 50,000 people deep and could not see her at all. Just her voice. Just her voice over the pa system and even then, sometimes the cheering drowned her out. There had been about fifteen speakers before her, including Judy Shepard, Lt. Dan Choi, Julian Bond and a number of young transfolk who spoke about the importance of education, visibility, endurance and conviction.

By the time she came to the podium, the crowd had become well-versed in the language and cadence of protest. All of us had marched for nearly three miles, screaming, singing & chanting. Staceyann and I, along with the other poets performing at smaller events throughout the day were hoarse before we even passed the White House. The speakers before Staceyann, even the young folks, all had that predictable rhythm and shift of volume in their voices when speaking. They knew when the crowd would erupt, they knew when to speak softly so that the entire mall strained to hear.

When Staceyann came to the mic, everybody woke up. Several people around me stood to up to listen. When she talked about her coming out story in Jamaica and the trauma that followed, there was a sense that everyone was holding their breath. In the face of all the criticism this march has received since its planning stages, I felt like that moment was exactly what made it worthwhile. Yes, absolutely, the whole thing was an important demonstration of community and the power of grassroots collaboration. But in light of Obama’s speech the night before, and all the promises he made, when Staceyann was on stage it seemed as if she enacted a turning point for the crowd. Change was not only possible, but inevitable. She talked frankly about the “places we [queers] are always fleeing” and that in order to create spaces that refused that, it was all about the breath and the repetition. BAM!

post-script 11/09: this event & the things that staceyann said about marriage and the fight for equality have sparked some interesting debates. i went to the march as a supporter of the repeal of prop 8 & came away with really different views and a fuller understanding of the ways that we, as poets (and as queers), buy into and aid what may end up being the wrong side of the fight. i'm not saying that i don't support equality (i do! i do! i do!), but that i have really different ideas now, after hearing staceyann talk, about the ways in which we might all root for equality (and by all, i mean ALL, not just the queer folx).

xomegday

reading response #1

2009-12-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

So, over a month ago I went to this event in San Francisco at CounterPulse that included a performance by "Universes," a cross-genre performance group. It was BAD ASS.

Ritual is on my mind because Kiala & I are writing these poems about tradition and ritual in our own lives (and the ways those rituals intersect). Universes’ performance(s) redefined, for me, the idea of hip-hop/spoken word/music as ceremony. It was obvious to me as soon as I arrived that I had never considered my own readings and performances as ritual, even though I often do the same thing before each performance. I wear the same shoes (a uniform, of sorts), I jump up and down in the same ritualistic way that busts out some extra adrenaline, and I always sign the first few lines of all of my pieces to myself while mingling with folks beforehand as the crowd is settling or other performers are backstage prepping. I had to watch this happen at CounterPulse in order to recognize it in myself. This seems just as important for the performer as it does the audience. There is the ritual of waiting for the doors to open, the awkward but buzzing meet and greet outside, the rush for the right seat, then the patient flipping through of programs.

While Universes was a great indicator of how, exactly, to truly engage an audience and how to seamlessly piece a show together, the performances seemed most illustrative, at all times, of ceremony. The lights, the patterns in which each member spoke or performed, and the obvious ease with which the rehearsal of this ceremony had made possible, all conveyed, very seriously, that they had command of the room. As an audience member, I felt transported. I was not sitting in the corner of a blackbox theatre with an intimate crowd, I was somewhere else entirely. More impressive, however, was how the sole woman on stage seemed to grasp her position as implied Master of Ceremonies throughout the evening. The sound rarely stopped, the bodies rarely stopped and loop after loop, the breaks kept coming.

Politics, code-switching and a variety of literacies were definitely at play and I appreciated not having full, VIP-access to every single section of the "ceremony." Even without knowing her language or understanding all of the inside jokes, I still felt like I was invited to partake by the one woman on stage. She shut down the room with her voice, with their stories, and every time the stories shifted and looped back to the music, the break was definitely the point of heightened possibility, regardless of who you were or where you came from. That kind of accessibility is essential, I think. I also found it really interesting that even when the rhythm was strong, if that lead female voice maxed out and cracked (which it did, because they were tired or sick or on the road for a long time), then that break broke too. She was the conduit to that alternate space and only she, in that moment, could keep it looping.

Universes taught me a lot about the importance of seamless performance and the necessity of layering. A single layer is impressive, but it doesn’t move on its own. I felt like Chinaka Hodge’s “Mirrors In Every Corner” excerpt (she performed before Universes as a kind of "opener") illustrated this in indispensable ways. Despite being the only person on stage (during the excerpt), she used the space, the lights, her body and her words (not to mention the way she dressed and talked) to create those layers without needing other folks on the stage. She broke my brain. It was like seeing Karl Iglesias from Madison perform for the first time and not knowing what I was seeing, but feeling it. I cannot wait for the rest of Chinaka’s play in 2010. She gave me so much to think about. Years worth in five minutes.

xomegday

Poet of Color Reading -- Marc Bamuthi Joseph

2009-11-29T00:38:00.000-08:00

Poetry on stage in a form other than spoken word or slam -- that's Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
Poetry written and performed with the body -- that's Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
Hip Hop as a form -- that's Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

Watching, in person, MBJ perform excerpts from his poetry-play, the/breaks, was one of those moments that a poet never forgets. From his first sound -- my ancestors HACKED -- I am engaged. Taken by the neck and forced to listen. Sounds violent right? Well, that's the point. The hacking of sugar cane was a violent act. The beating of slaves who didn't work fast enough or hard enough, that's was a violent act. So MBJ's words must pack enough punch to get you to that end.

As he looped small truths from his life together with the macro truths of capitalism, identity and artistic sustainability, I sat amazed at how conversational his poetry felt and how the confessional moments didn't feel overwhelming confessional, but more universal and momentous.

The brillance, I think, came from his fluid chronology -- the way he moved through time/history was powerful. It allowed me to sit with hard realities -- slavery, but then be moved to more warm moments -- the first time he sees the sonogram picture of his son or the conversations he has with his grandmother. Those were a few of the brilliant moments in this poetry-play.

The body as poetry combined with hip hop as a form to engage the audience -- powerful. The sampling of music from various points in his history -- powerful. The inclusion of all the places he has been as an artist and how his identity was constantly in question -- powerful.

I think the thing I appreciated most about MBJ's performance was that he presented a great deal of truth -- hard truths -- about his life and his mind-set at various times in his life. I appreciated that the most. I appreciated his ability to take a culture -- hip hop -- present it in a play using poetry and dance as the medium and have it crossover and touch so many lives. That is powerful. That is poetry.

Mangos With Chili - Beloved

2009-11-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

Recently I was very excited to have the chance to see Mangos With Chilis' new show "Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead" a show that was positioned to mourn the deaths of queer and trans- folx of color who had been taken from us. One of the poets that read was Rose Sims.

The stage was set up with an altar on one side of the stage and she stood next to it with a projection of a photo behind her. As the poem began she started talking about her family and the experiences of her Auntie being raised in the Phillipines with her mother. Then as the poetry unfolds we learn that the Auntie she speaks of was trans and the way that the family spoke of her was with female pronouns and used a female name for her. The recounting of these stories about this Auntie serve to place the poet in the position of mother telling these tales. She becomes the mother recounting the tales and we become her, sitting in the dark enraptured by these tales of this woman and her life.

As we sit there we begin to see the woman appear before us through the poem, the narrative shifts and we hear about the interest that we, as Rose, as children had in this woman and her life. The way that the language aroound her changed once the interest was shown, the way that the Auntie's name was shifted back to its birth configuration and the way that the pronoun used to refer to her becomes male. This is placed in the context of the poet's own identity as a transwoman, that Auntie becomes a focus for this child/us as a member of the family that shows acceptance of a path that is not the normative one set in front of children.

The image of Auntie behind Rose takes on more complexity when we learn that the arm around her waist, the man who is missing was an American soldier that took her away from the Phillipines. So now we have a relationship in the context of colonialism, in the context of conquering this man/soldier actually serves as salvation and love as oopposed to the violence of colonial occupation.

There's no obvious ending to Auntie's tale within the poem but we realize that whatever may have happened to her it actual matters little because the two narratives of the poet and her Auntie begin to merge into a historical connection, a legacy of love and accepting who you really are and living that life despite any obstacles. The emotion in her voice was obvious and the feeling was obvious to the audience. The love for this Auntie that she never physically met is about a connection through time, a connection of blood and experience that is visually represented by Rose standing in front of the projected image of her Auntie and turning to refer to her so often.

It was a powerful reading and a powerful poem that does a lot to create a connection between family that we create and family that we are born with and the connections and disconnections that can happen within those spaces.

Poetry Reading - Ianna Hawkins Owen

2009-11-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

I was able to hear poet Ianna Hawkins Owen read from her chapbook earlier this semester (and I probably should have blogged about it then but I spaced) and was really struck by the way she performed her piece. The piece was exploring her own mixed race identity as someone existing between the identities of black and white and within the identity of a mixed-race person. On top of this she is navigating moving to a new town who only the year before had repealed their anti-miscegenation laws. This of course plays into the dialogue around her identity, how does she exist in this place where only a little while back people such as her were legally barred from existing? What is the culture in that location like when this is it's recent history?

There's a lot going on there, a lot of violence both political and personal, a lot of questions of belonging and identity. After hearing so many poems that deal with identity and navigating the space of being marginalized in some way I've always been aware of what seems like a push of aggressive emotion behind the pieces that I've heard, not necessarily an anger but a realization of the way they were viewed and had to deal with themselves around their position. There is general a taking up of space, a exploration of the body in a way that is allowing it to expand into a position normally not allowed to it growing up. This is not to say that Ianna did not have a powerful or effective reading it was simply a different kind of power and emotional exchange.

When Ianna read she folded herself into a chair, leg up, arm wrapped around it. She shrank into a smaller ball, a smaller position, and read in a quiet voice. The fact that we as the audience had to stay silent, had to control our urges to whisper, cry, snap, emote in any way allowed for us to surrender to her reading more fully. There was no ability to disengage, to distract from what she was saying, from the past that she was conjuring for us to exist within. She used the quiet of her voice and the smallness of her position to take not only us but herself back to that time, her folding made us think of youth and her youth specifically in conjunction with the history and ideas she was speaking about/of/with.

It was an amazingly effective reading, as she talked about the small suburban town and referenced such things as "Serial Mom" we were carried along with her on this emotional and physical journey. We start to occupy the same space as her, to walk in her place just a little and to be drawn into her headspace.

I don't know for sure if these actions were purposeful or if that might just be the way the poet reads all her works but the interaction between this particular piece and her reading of it was especially powerful, it forced us to sit in silence, to engage fully or to be excluded from the energy and emotion that Ianna weaved about us.

2009-11-23T00:48:00.000-08:00

Today I read: Poesîa de Maquiladora by Sheryl Luna, and found several interpretations within myself about the poem's meaning. Generally, when I read a poem, the first time I see it only at face value: The story which I see unfolding is just from the words I choose to hear. The second time I read it, I put pieces together, and by the third time, I look at the language of the poem. The language for this poem, the words are so incredibly deliberate. This poem exemplifies that way of writing. There is a reason for each word used in this poem, from the word Border, to intelligent.
The title, as sheepish as I am to admit it, I had to get translated (via internet... I know, I know) and what I found was: Poesîa de Maquiladora, Poetry of Assembly Plant. That says something there, but the fact that they leave that in Spanish is a very interesting choice, because there are no other spanish words in this piece. This, for me makes the Title seem very important. Normally, I think that I would have just passed by the title, but because it stood out, it gave it a new kind of importance.
Now to the meat of this poem. The poet, Sheryl Luna, uses I for this poem, which again, is a deliberate choice in this poem. In the first stanza we read:

I am swept into a sadness, still
and unspeakable in sterile rooms where
men might as well wear white coats
and drink my breath from stethoscopes

two things immediately catch my attention: One is the form, when she uses the word "still," I notice how it is left aloe there hanging off that comma.... still.
still
and unspeakable.

just the way that it is left there, reading it to yourself or aloud, it makes you pause, creating stillness. The second thing I notice is content: men might as well wear white coats. Sterile rooms, stethoscopes, and yet she is not talking about doctors. These "clinical," words (I'm going to call them,) show up throughout the poem: drain blood, wound, swelled, sick, doctors, patients, sickness, body. And yet, as I mentioned, they are not doctors and this is not about a hospital, or sickness.

I look again to the title: Poesîa de Maquiladora.

She makes me think of working in dingy conditions, of overseers, yet she refers to them as doctors and patients with disdain.

They were so happy to show us
the habits of locusts, drain blood
into plastic bags of their manufacturing.
Tell us, Latina, was it what they
assumed it was, broken language,
poetry of a lesser nature, a wound?

The voice change within the stanza, "Tell us, Latina," As if that is how they are being addressed, and then to go on and talk about "broken language." Broken language and poetry of a lesser nature. There is something here that I am not quite getting. And the way she speaks about manufacturing their blood... it almost seems blatant, yet there is something so esoteric about her language that you would think that she is keeping so much of it a secret, and only hinting at her meaning, which in turn makes this poem extremely powerful. She then hits us with this:

The way my brown knees
slammed hard in the fall
from what was left of grace.

Excuse me? Someone please read that to me again. This poem right here blows my mind, I am lost, I think I understand parts, and then she loses me again. When I first read it, this was my initial impression: (purely face-value) This was a story about person, who was working in a factory, or in some place where there is a overseer type boss, clinical and calculating, demeaning, and this person is reflecting on their life there, but also perhaps hinting at their past, their place of origin:

My body is fading
back to an invisible border.

Because this poem is about a Latina person, I can not help but think of borders and the deliberate intention to end the poem on this note. We are left with the sense of two worlds, but also the different lives that they live in each. It makes me think about the endless trials, obstacles and lives... Lives they must lead here. So when she talks about the doctors, and patients, they way that she insinuates that they have a "sickness," she is referring to her race, or origins, and how that is something that is the "lesser nature," "wound," "sickness." This poem, though deliberate, is not direct, or easy to interpret, even now I wonder if what I am thinking is anywhere near the mark of what it truly means.

I am left with only this:

The way my brown knees
slammed hard in the fall
from what was left of grace.

Ahhhh.

-Bluey, aka Michaela C. Ellis

2009-11-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

Brenda Shaughnessy's poem "Rise" is a very interesting (and surprising) connection between baking and revenge. Initially the title did not cause me to imagine a fresh loaf baking in the oven, but instead conjured up ideas of surmounting and overcoming adversity. The first stanza solidifies those imagined scenes:

I can't believe you've come back,
like the train I missed so badly, barely,
which stopped & returned for me. It scared me,
humming backwards along the track

This stanza plays off of an emotion that we can all relate to- the hollow loss associated with the unfortunate mis-timing of an arrival. Whether it's the bus, a deadline, or a train, we are all capable of identifying with that gut-wrenching feeling that is resultant from our engagement leaving us behind. The reader's identification with the speaker's sentiment creates a stronger impact when she writes "like the train I missed so badly, barely, which stopped & returned for me". Ah, the relief that must come with that experience! I certainly have never witnessed the BART stopping and returning for me (much to my dismay), yet the speaker does not emphasize her exultation, instead she writes "It scared me, humming backwards along the track". In these lines she takes an emotion that the reader identifies with, and flips it. Rather than focusing on the fact that her destination will no longer be missed, she is mesmerized by the eery return of the train- moving in a direction it should not, towards a stop that it should not make. Why would it do this? What are its motives? Can the sudden change in direction be trusted? These deeper-seated questions relate back to the first line of the poem, "I can't believe you've come back". The interpersonal connection between the speaker and the audience "you" is explained in terms of an industrialized mechanical form of transportation. The disbelief described as a surreal, almost terrifying experience.

The initial feeling of distrust that is established in the first stanza begins to change in the second. Much like the subtle changes of a relationship, the speaker's emotions change steadily, slowly and are exhibited in her actions and thoughts throughout the remaining stanzas. In the second stanza the tables have shifted, the speaker is now in a position where she seems to be convincing her beloved to return the affection that she is giving. She writes "you remember you were mine./ You may resist, you will relent." I find the last line of this stanza to be particularly interesting. The difference between the words "will" and "may" lend themselves to interesting interpretations of the verbs resist and relent (both of which are rather harsh). To describe the engagement in a relationship with the verbs resist and relent makes it sounds like there's a little too much coercion happening. At the same time though, the speaker's phrasing of the sentence conveys a sense of familiarity with the beloved to the reader- the speaker knows that her beloved will resist succumbing to his/her feelings initially, but in time he/she will allow him/herself to experience them. It's a process that the couple must have gone through before, and our speaker knows this full well. Regardless, there's an unavoidable feeling of sexuality in the last line, coupled with the earlier possessive line "you were mine", and I can't help being skeptical of what's to come.

In the third stanza the speaker ties in the baking of bread with her relationship. She writes:

At home in fire, desire is bread
whose flour, water, salt, and yeast,
not yet confused, are still, at least
in the soil, the sea, the mine, the dead.

I love this stanza. The description of baking as "confusing" is really neat. The speaker explains how all of the ingredients required to bake bread are in their elemental states, awaiting their procurement. Just as her and her beloved's feelings of desire are. Everything is ready, simply in need of a little confusion. Their desire awaits in the soil, the sea, the mine, the dead. Such vague and descriptive origins, each of them elemental and raw. Unaltered. Much like the desire between our speaker and her beloved, perhaps? I'm not jumping to any conclusions just yet.

The final stanza completes the emotional transformation.

I have all I longed for, you
in pleasure. You missed me, you body swelling.
Once more, you lie with me, smelling
of almonds, as the poisoned do.

The first line is, at a quick glance, very enduring if read alone. "I have all I longed for, you/". But before the reader can revel in the sweetness of the line, your eyes are forced to strike the words "in pleasure". Ouch. I guess the motives weren't so innocent. It doesn't appear that love or commitment were what our speaker was out to find. The stanza continues, "Once more, you lie with me, smelling of almonds, as the poisoned do." So I had to look into this reference...almonds? Apparently several strains of undomesticated almonds are poisonous at very low doses, and these almonds have bitter tastes and scents.

After my first quick read this piece struck me as poem of love that was rediscovered, but the last line haunted me into reading it again. "As the poisoned do". There is so much in that line! Poisoned implicates motive and intent- someone had to actively poison the beloved for him/her to be deemed as such. So I read it again, and in between the lines that could easily come off as love-bound and innocent there lurks a darker, revengeful, and malicious speaker. The bread that is related to the relationship of the poem ends up being the vessel through which the speaker poisons her beloved (maybe we need a new term for him/her...). The original feelings of overcoming adversity come rushing back...it wasn't the rising up of an old love flame, it was the rising up of the speaker against an old lover who must have wronged her in some sense. She overcame tribulation. She rose, as the bread rose, as the ex-lover fell.

2009-11-22T17:37:00.001-08:00

So, despite the fact that I have caught the flu again this year, I have still managed to try to do the most and best I can in my classes. Now that that is out the way I would like to post about my first outside poetry reading. Last Wednesday I went to the Air Lounge on 9th and Washington for open mic night which they have every Wednesday. I thought I was going to hear maybe something out of a comedy film, but the poetry read was very good and moved me. One poem read was by a black female poet called 'Queen D', she read a poem she wrote entitled Dear Little Black Boy. Every who spoke did a small introduction to what the poem was about and why they wrote it. Queen D is a middle school teacher for a special education class and she said that she deals with a lot of young black boys who are emotionally disturbed. For the longest she couldn't figure out why but after she held individual meetings with the parents of each child, her poem came about. That was one of the amazing things that attracted me to her poem, the context. After every line about the verbal and physical abuse most inner-city low-income black boys experience from their parents she repeatedly said, "I love you". She was saying even though you may not hear it if not at all, then you can hear it from me. The poem almost brought me to tears because I have an eight yr old nephew whose father (my brother) is incarcerated and whose mother has a 10th grade education and is currently homeless and has a brainwashed mind of imposed religious views. So I felt the anger and the rage from not being able to help in the way I want to help, or show the parents of every emotionally disturbed black boy what I see versus what they see. . . . Another poem that I was moved by was a poem called 'Poetic Stretch' I cannot remember the name of the poet but I remember the poem. lol. Very interesting. The poem was something I feel could be read as a morning ritual because it seriously was what the title said it was "a poetic stretch". The poem was instruction like in form and make me laugh and forget what might have been bothering me at that moment. It was one of those feel good poems that someone recites because they know you are having a bad day. The poem also had a melodic feel to it, I found myself tapping my feet and bobbing my head to the rhythm of the words. Amongst the many poets that read that night, those are the only two poems that stuck with me, but the Air Lounge itself is a very nice establishment with a mature and family-like crowd. Hopefully when my final project is done, I'll be able to approach the mic and make people feel the same way I felt that night.....free.

-Dorothy

2009-11-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

(sorry for the late posts, but I've been having trouble with the internet and connection)

One thing that I noticed especially during the in class presentation was that performance does make a difference in whether it is performed in person on stage or read right off the page, or even if it is accompanied by music. In the case of Sarah Jones's piece "Your Revolution". I can see the immense difference between what I felt from seeing her perform the poem versus just reading the poem as it was written. I did not get the same feeling or the message did not come across strong enough for me on paper as it did when I seen her perform. On paper you can lose the voice of the poet, the actual voice and the all the characteristics of that voice. You lose a connectedness you can only get from seeing a poet on stage and watching the way they move with every word spoken and the way they may look at you when speaking. You lose all of that on paper. Every word possible evokes a movement in the body, when reading a poem the movement or lack of movement your body makes comes from your perception and perspective of what the poet is trying to portray but when you are seeing the body movements made from the poet him/herself and what positions their body goes into when they speak the words, it's a totally difference perception and thought provoking experience that you cannot get on paper.

Performance in/of poetry also brings out orginal theatrical aspects of poetry and spoken word.
All poetry tells a story and what life is story without characters, laughter, smiles, and many emotions that you feel when hearing or watching a story unveil? So performance of a piece is taken into much consideration when talking about the overall criticism of someone's work.

Your Revolution Was Televised

2009-11-16T00:21:00.000-08:00

Okay Sarah Jones, let's talk. Your poem, Your Revolution, lifted my spirits this weekend. I was able to reminisce through your use of sampling to move the narrative forward in this piece. Loving the musicality of this poem, I read it over and over and over. This is clearly one function of having a poem appear on the page -- the reader gets to experience it more than once. However, I wanted to see you perform this piece -- so I used technology to give me the next best thing.

Your Revolution

So I watched the video and you used the songs you sampled just as I expected you to and I still found myself wonderfully surprised. So having both the page and the stage versions gave me more access points, more clarity of how the songs work as text and more reasons to read and experience the work again.

I could see/hear this piece on a stage before seeing you perform it. I cannot imagine this poem without movement. It feels like a song itself – the rhythm and the cadence of the lines are powerful AND for those of us from this generation of music, we know where to sing, hum, and bob. It’s wonderful in that way. A road map through my musical history.

Going from page to stage enhanced this piece. It is meant to be spoken/performed because there is too much music and energy from one line to the next for it to only live on the page. Ironically, it can live on the page, but without the performance to accompany it in the Universe, it would also die on the page. Both are necessary.

In this poem, you use lines from popular songs to make a point about the music industry:

Think I'm a put it in my mouth just cuz you made a few bucks?

Please brother please

Your revolution will not be me tossing my weave

And making me believe I'm some caviar-eating ghetto mafia clown

Or me giving up my behind, just so I can get signed

And maybe having somebody else write my rhymes

I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

and I get what you are doing here, but wonder why you selected to omit this in the Def Poetry performance -- was it only about the 3 minute time limit or was there more? Was there some commentary you felt comfortable putting on the page, but not saying on the stage? That givees me great questions about audience and intent and how performance poetry interacts with both in a way that page poetry does not and vice versa.

You make some really political statements about male and female relationships too,

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

The real revolution ain't about booty size

The Versaces you buys

Or the Lexus you drives

And though we've lost Biggie Smalls

Baby, your notorious revolution

Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche in my bush

Your revolution will not be you killing me softly with Fugees

Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring

And produce little future emcees

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

and about sex:

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Oh, my Jamaican brother, your revolution will not make you feel

Bombastic and really fantastic

And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic

You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of french

vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate deluxe

Or having Akinyele's dream, (mm hmm)

A 6-foot blowjob machine (mm hmm)

You want to subjugate your queen? (uh-huh)

Think I'm a put it in my mouth just cuz you made a few bucks?

Simply using the word "revolution" over and over again, you build up a call to action that unfortunately never plays out fully in the end of the poem,

Because the real revolution

That's right I said the real revolution

You know I'm talking about the revolution

When it comes, it's gonna be real

The funny thing is that this ending works in performance more than it works on the page. On the page I have more time with the ending and while it sounds great on stage, it has very little revolutionary quality. It does not play with language in a revolutionary way, nor does it revolutionize the poetic elements -- but I only get this because I sit with it on the page much longer than I do when you push it to me from the stage.

It makes me wonder if initially, you wrote this for the page or for the stage.
Let's talk...

peacelovelight
Kiala

Page and stage

2009-11-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

For me whether or not a poem translates from page to stage or vice versa depends completely on the poet who is trying to make the transitions and I think that the work for this week exemplifies that. Each poet has an opportunity to make her work move able and it’s the effort that's important.

For instance Rock Me, Goong Hay! by Alvin Eng didn’t really translate into performance for me. I felt that hearing him sing/speak the poem/song that it lost a lot of the power of the words. He was just sort of yelling and we missed the words, which to me seemed so clever. I didn’t get to hear: “ Yellow fever was our lot in this country/ Now we’re the so-called ‘model minority’/ Which really don’t mean shit if you think about it/ ‘Cause plenty still despise our slanty eyes” (59) which I really wanted to come through in the performance. Maybe it was the quality of the video itself but I felt as though the performance was more about the music than the poem/lyrics and they just sort of threw something on top of the music. What stood out from the performance was that title line of “Rock Me, Goong Hay!” but it missed the verses, which were the more important and thought provoking parts.

On the other hand, Nigger-Reecan Blues by Willie Perdomo had all the elements of a good page to stage poem. The content is interesting and funny while still thought provoking. The voices used are each distinct and speak for themselves:
“—Tu no eres Puerto Riqueno, brother.
--Maybe Indian like Gandhi Indian.
--I thought you was a Black man
--Is one of your parents white?
--You sure you ain’t a mix of something like
--Portuguese and Chinese?
--Naaaaahhhh… You ain’t no Porta Reecan
--I keep telling you: The boy is a Black man with an accent.” (Aloud, 112)

With out hearing it performed I could hear the different tones and inflections of the voices. Then when I watched the YouTube video the poem was completely enhanced by Perdomo’s charming personality and theatrical presentation. The voices that he used enhanced his already captivating language.

There was also the work that seemed like it was purely created for the stage such as with the Aya de Leon piece. It was interesting and innovative but I imagine that if I could see it on the page it wouldn’t have the same bite. A lot of the importance of the piece was based in timing and in being able to see the movement that the performer was making around the stage. I think that there isn’t a way to communicate the movement

2009-11-15T23:23:00.000-08:00

The performance of a poem allows it to transcend a reader's completely subjective interpretation of it. Once on stage, a poem is given context, rhythm, and inflection. Much less is left to the reader's analysis of the poem, and more is given to the performer's personification. While reading poetry I have often stumbled upon poems that I just knew would be amazing when performed. There's some element of the piece, whether it be due to the structure of the poem, the rhyme scheme, or simply the poignancy of the content, that makes it seem so performable. As I had expected, many of the poems that we read this week had such an effect.

The poem "Rock Me, Goong Hay!" was definitely one of them. As I read through the poem, I couldn't help myself from falling into its rhythm and by the end of the second or third stanza I even had a little head-bob action happening. The wonderfully placed and witty rhymes build up a momentum in the poem that builds up to the final lines "'CAUSE IT TAKES A NATION OF BILLIONS TO HOLD US PEOPLE BACK!/ Rock me, Goong Hay/ Goong hay fat choy!". Everything about this piece made it seem like a performance even before I had seen the actual page to stage transformation. The free-for-all rhythm and rhyme feeling is undeniable; just reading the piece makes me feel like I am witnessing some organic, unaltered poetic purging. With awesomely creative lines such as

"Yellow fever was our lot in this country/Now we're the so-called "model minority"/Which don't really mean shit if you think about it/'Cause plenty still despise our slanty eyes",

I couldn't wait to see the piece performed. The performance of this poem was fairly different than what I had expected. Rather than a simple, more rhythmic reading of the poem Alvin Eng had an entire song formulated from this piece. The instrumentation was a bit jazzier than I had expected, but Eng's vocal's brought in the "roots-rock-rapper" effect that the poem has.

2009-11-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

From the page to the stage is a must evolution for poets of color. Performing their poem live affirms their power and strengthens communities - just by sharing their truth. I am a strong believer in performing one’s work. The tone, movement, and breath enhances a poem. Sometimes a poem is just meant to be performed because it can get lost on the page. Detecting a poet’s humor, irony or anger on one’s own is a little more tricky but if you hear a poet read their work live then there is a better understanding of what the poet’s intentions were. Willie Perdomo’s poem “Nigger Reecan Blues” is a great example of a poem elevating from academia to urban and street to insider and outsider perspectives.
There is a openness to Perdomo’s piece - his first person narrative invites the reader to share his humor and search for his identity. On the page the words are displaced and as a reader there is a connection to discover what his identity really is. Interestingly, the word coconut and Míralo are the only words that stands out and alone among the words. I feel he did this to emphasize look at his color. Coconut is usually referred in a community of people of color when someone is trying to be white. Brown on the outside and white on the inside. There is a raw reaction to this choice. Especially having the word coconut stand alone even though its referring to his hair. Yet, hair can be an identifier for one’s culture and since Perdomo’s identity is being questioned every which way - his hair is a marker that he is black.

The African slave trade brought Africans to Puerto Rico. I feel Perdomo’s poem calls out to the many ways his appearance lumps him into one category, even though he may look black, he is Puerto Rican before he is a poet, before he is spic. He uses two racially charged terms in his poem that are harsh and conjure many emotions for me. To be called a spic is the same as being called a nigger.During his performance the different voices from the men come to life. I find it interesting that he chooses to have this dialogue with men. I think its a great choice because he is addressing community and manhood. He consciously chooses this and not a dialogue with a woman who may question his masculinity and machismo.
This is a poem about his drowning in other people's perceptions and surfacing to the top to say: "Boricua I am."

Truly a fan of his work
(took his class at VONA and absolutely loved it!!)

in poetry & pen,
Melissa

Sarah Jones & Aya de Leon

2009-11-15T18:54:00.000-08:00

There is a visual element to performance—the effect of which cannot truly be replicated on the page. Of course, timing, beat, intonation & other elements also change from page to stage, but I am thinking mainly of movement, expression and costuming—specifically in comparing Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution” and Aya de Leon’s “Hoe Supastar.” I found both to be pretty incredible. They are going after a similar problematic element of the African American hip hop industry—the exploitation of women in the interest of self-representation. Both are edgy and cut-throat; one is straight-up declarations through rhyme, the other is satire & musical performance.

I read the Jones first—I picked up on the musical references & was singing the lines of the songs in my head that were inserted into the poem; I didn’t need a performance there. I also immediately fell into the rhythm of the lines, picked up the beat and the rhyme scheme, and was experiencing the piece as a musical critique of a music industry. The last three lines read as a bit of a letdown for me. I was grooving with the repetition and the rhyme, expecting the climax (what IS the real revolution?) but then it just.. ended. Although I could see it working in terms of content, it left me wanting a more satisfying wrap-up of the pulsing rhythm. I’d like to hear how Jones would read this, I’m think she had a plan with those last lines, as everything in the piece seems so carefully chosen. Maybe her pause, her intonation & her positioning would have made it all come together better for me.

Now, when I watched Aya de Leon’s piece (at least as much as I could because the sound cut out of the youtube video early in the second half…), I have to admit, my ears were burning. I felt shy and excited about the way she presented herself. For a moment, I wondered if I should be offended, particularly because of the intro to the piece, played with no visuals against a darkened screen:

Next up is one of the most controversial artists of our day. Also on the Mighty Ignant label. She has been called one of the 10 most negative women in the U.S. by Ms. Magazine, and her world tour was picketed by angry women in Europe and Japan. Give it up y’all for Lady XXX-Rated.

I wondered if the correct link was sent out, and braced myself for what I was going to see. Then I thought of the Performance Group—Meg, Naamen, Micah & Jennifer—and told myself: Cool it, and trust these folks. Lady XXX-Rated struts onto the stage, displaying her body in her skimpy outfit to a cheering crowd. Once she started speaking, I understood that all this—the clothes, the wig, the announcer—was part of the image she was creating. She was in character—a character in the unique position of being a participant in a misogynistic element of the hip hop industry, but also an outspoken proponent of her placement within that industry (or at least the benefits that could be reaped from it).

This was taking Patricia Smith’s skinhead poem to another level—de Leon’s character is so fluid that we are forced to wonder whether there is some truth to her, and question how we fall in relation to her. de Leon further implicates the viewer in this manner when Lady XXX-Rated calls out the feminists of the Ivory Tower for critiquing her. So we are unable to write this character off as a subjugated woman who doesn’t even realize she is creating more problems for other women because then we are those finger-pointing, disconnected critics. And everybody seemed to freaking love Lady XXX-Rated (not sure if she is a parody of an actual person..). As soon as she started singing & dancing my cheeks burned even more. I loved the beat even though the lyrics made me angry. I loved the confidence of this woman, how assured she was in her body—even though I know this was supposed to represent a false confidence and problematic representations of the body.

So we are wooed by this character while at once aware of how she is knocking “herself” down. de Leon creates a fabulously complex image with this piece: she triggers our love for a good beat & an engaging character, and uses it to break down the entrapping misogyny of the mainstream (corporate) hip hop machine. She is using her body to display the misdirected way women have used they bodies to gain a lucrative position in a classist/racist nation. The costuming & movement she incorporates are absolutely critical to the success of this piece—making me wonder what effect it could have had on the page. But de Leon doesn’t give us the easy out, either, of being disgusted by or critical of this representative character. Because this character has a voice. The final message, if there can be one in so few words, is that we need to come down not on the women in this industry, but on those who put them in these positions; and, we need to reclaim this art from, as women, for our own self-representation & direct financial gain.

And, just a minute… could that be the “real revolution?”

2009-11-15T17:56:00.000-08:00

After watching the video for “Nigger-Reecan Blues,” I found that the performing of the piece added more to the piece than was visible on the page. Without Perdomo’s intonation, hand movements and facial expressions, the page poem did not exhibit the humor so prevalent in the performed version. On the page, the poem seems more confrontational while in the performed version the writer/performer could make the listener feel a part of the action not an object of it. In addition, Perdomo added some additional words in the performed piece that I thought made his observations more vivid and enjoyable. For example, the page poem presents the following lines:

I can’t even catch a taxi late at night and the newspapers say that if I’m not in front of a gun, chances are that I’ll be behind one. I wonder why. . .

In the performed version, the image becomes more poignant when the line “I can’t even catch a taxi late at night,” is changed to:

Taxi drivers are quick to turn on those off-duty signs when they see my hand in the air

This language removes the culpability from the speaker by moving the action from the speaker to the taxi driver, from, “I can’t” to “Taxi drivers.” The syntax is more stimulating and conversational, less didactic. It also seems that the page version is dependent on the element of spoken sound. The dashes used to indicate dialogue give this away. In the performed version, certain movements of the speaker’s head and neck, certain vocal conceits, give us an indication that the speaker is speaking through the voices of those that are speaking to him. On the page, we require dashes to signal this move, and the dashes on the page seem clunky and somewhat out of place when judged against the flowing, conversational nature of the piece. The punctuation serves as an unwanted revelation of the bones of the work, like a ribcage exposed on a still-living person.

Whereas I liked the performed version of “Nigger-Reecan Blues” better than the page version, I did not feel the same way about “Rock Me, Goong Hay!” I thoroughly enjoyed the page version of this piece, admiring its clever rhymes, its intrinsic rhythms and its tongue in cheek humor. Unlike Perdomo’s piece, the humor in “Rock Me, Goong Hay!” was inescapable and effective. In the performed rap version, however, physical limitations of the speed of the reader’s human voice, the microphone, electronic equipment, and other issues regarding the venue served to put the poem at a disadvantage. For one thing, the speaker was required to talk so fast that many of the words were not audible and therefore, the message was not clear. Also, I felt that the internal music of the piece was overwritten by the rap beats produced by the musical instruments. It seemed that as a listener, my attention was more on the rhythmic drumbeat than on the message, which might have been okay had the words to the poem not been so involved or clever. I felt that when having to vy for attention with the drums and the lights of the venue, something was irrevocably lost.

Finally, after reading Tony Medina’s “New York City Rundown,” I was somewhat glad I didn’t have to hear this poem performed aloud. The content of the poem was so very confrontational that I felt that watching the reactions of myself and of the other listeners would be supremely uncomfortable. I am all about speaking the truth, but I felt assaulted by this poem even though I don’t feel guilty of most of the things “I” am being accused of as a result of the color I was born. I have come to understand that “whiteness” is now a common catchphrase for intolerance, for the mainstream that attempts to blend everything different into one shade, the fairer the better, to swallow into itself and pulverize anything outside the norm; however, I am not that individual, as far as I can tell. I feel that the poem intentionally excluded me on every level. Not only that, the poem belittled me and was enraged with me, pushing me aside. Of no small consequence is the fact that the poem was LONG. I’m afraid that hearing it performed, not being able to step away from the content, swallow my anger, and digest its message in smaller doses, the poem and I would never be able to reconcile our relationship.

Performance

2009-11-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

The page and the stage have a complex relationship. Reading poetry on the page is one activity, reading it aloud yourself is another, and having the poet recite/read/perform it is yet another.

I can read it on the page, and with the guidance of language, form, arrangement, and punctuation, I can get some of the intonations and meanings the poet designed in the poem. If I read it aloud, I both see it on the page and hear it outside of my head, and it increases the sensory experience. In forming the words in my own mouth and ears, I’m actively re-creating the poem. If the poet is performing the piece, I’ve got the image of the poet as well as the images the poet has created in the poem, along with the aural experience of listening to the words, the tones, and the focus of the poet – both in the moment and when the poem was written. Presumably, the poet communicates his or her intention in the reading and the performance of his or her own poem, and I get some information that I might not have by reading the poem myself. My impressions and my interpretations of the poem are different because of the emotion, the expression, the life the poem is given by the performance. One drawback of watching the performance is that I can’t have it repeated as many times as I want as I can with reading the poem myself. I get so much depth reading a poem again and again that I miss that experience with the performance. Sometimes the beauty of a word cluster or choice of language fades into the performance of the piece. If I’m watching the performance on video, I can watch it over and over again, but I may miss something anyway if the words go by too fast or if two performers talk over each other or if there’s music and it’s distracting in some way.

The poem on the page is the same words and form every time, but my reading might change depending on where I am, what mood I’m in, or for what purpose I’m reading it. The poet has done what he or she could to present his or her message, but now that I’m reading it, it’s all about me. With the poem on the stage, the poet is center-stage – in the moment – to present the poem. The poem can change with each performance. My listening may change depending on the same factors as with reading it, but there are fewer filters for the form because the poet is performing it, and the breaths, the stopping, the continuing are done for me. The poet controls how I hear it and has the freedom to add, delete, pause, use facial expressions, and use body language to contribute to the meaning of the poem. I am no longer responsible for approaching the poem with just what I bring to the poem; I have visual and auditory clues to assist me in my understanding.

Willie Perdomo, in “Nigger-Reecan Blues,” adds to the piece and changes it in his performance. He brings the conversation to life and creates the dialogue. There’s more humor – there’s different voices. It’s more of a one-man show – a play where he’s doing all the parts. He goes faster than I could read it and, although I couldn’t get every word in the performance, the expression and emotion is clearly better than I could do myself either in my head or aloud.

In Alvin Eng’s, “Rock me Goong Hay,” the performance is so much more about the music than the words. It was livelier and happier than reading it on the page. Where there was anger on the page, there was joy in the music. I had read the poem first and did not expect this performance for this poem. Everyone is smiling and bopping to the music, each musician is introduced and has a solo, there’s community and individuality. The concert atmosphere overshadowed the message in this poem for me. The caps on the page transferred to his shouting at the end, but the repetition of “Rock Me, Goong Hay” was the refrain that stayed in my head after the performance was over. There was confusion between the presentation on stage and the words in the anthology. When I read the poem, I felt the twist of the Chinese New Year’s greeting, but when I watched the performance, it was just a snappy entry into the rhythm and beat of the music. I found myself rocking along, but I lost the words and, therefore, the point of the piece as I understood it from the writing on the page.

“Tito Puente” was a performance for which we did not have the words on the page, and I think that helped. I took it for a performance, did my best at hearing and understanding the words, and appreciated this different entry point. The two performers, Meyda Del Valle and Lemon, talked over each other in parts, but the musical effects they produced were very cool, and I could actually see the homage – the reasons for the admiration and adoration – in their interaction. I don’t know how this would be done on the page.

Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution,” for which we did not have the video, leapt off the page for me. I went looking for the video after I read it because I knew I needed the poet. I needed her voice, not my own, to say these words, to give it the full visual sound. The version I found varied a little from the words we had, but the tone, the attitude, the posture was there in the performance. I had read and re-read the piece on the page and looked up the referentials I did not know, but seeing Jones perform the piece did much more for my understanding.

I’m going to still read poems on the page, but if there are performances available, I’m going to look for them because the “vivid imagery” of poetry is made that much more vivid and visible by hearing it and seeing it performed by the person who created it.

Sheila Joseph

It's Alive!

2009-11-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

Willie Perdomo's poem, "Nigger-Rican Blues," needs to be performed to get the complete effect. It is a conversation about the poet's identity in relation to how he is perceived. The subject matter lends itself to performance, and the form in which it is delivered, the different speaking parts, seems to require the poet's interpretation for the humor and the absurdity to lend their full weight to the poem. And because the poem is about perceptions, having an audience rounds out this meaning.

To understand the speaker's relationship to Puerto Rican culture, we have to hear him speak Spanish. Fluency is a demarcation of belonging. The authenticity only comes through on the stage.

Also, race is more informative to the meaning of the poem if we see the poet perform. This would be a very different poem if a White, non-Spanish speaking person delivered the piece. Race is interesting in "Nigger-Rican Blues" because in Puerto Rico, there are many more races than Black and White. Each mark on the skin tone scale between those two has a name. The poet keeps claiming that he isn't Black, and one of the characters in the poem keeps reminding him that he is. Because, in this country, you are either white or in various stages of being caught up in the criminalization of people of color, no matter how close you get to the top.

Performance brings the body to bear on meaning. Pieces that are written for the stage seem that way when reading them because the context clues are missing. A performance poet may neglect to write in context clues because they know that delivery is an essential element, and they expect to be able to "be" the poem as well as having written it. A dull rhyme scheme can come to life in a poet's mouth, the poet being able to deliver the words with authority of emotion that is stripped by the page.

Tony Medina must be an old school spoken word poet. The pages of little-line left-margin, and the phrasing, the word play, is classic. This is one in which the anger of the speaker does come through the words on the page, though the arrangement (form) does nothing extra for the piece.

We can certainly see the perspective and feel the anger of the speaker in "New York City Rundown," when he talks of "Aunt Jemima Oprahs" and "old white ladies / suckin on her / big bourgeois boob / tube," and the double duty the words are doing is delight. I was reading it out loud, for the first time, and two pages in I found myself saying "get the fuck out" with vehemence right on cue. The length of the poem allows a reader to get into character.

Still, when the refrain comes in, "european on me," this poem needs its creator. It needs the stage and the energy that has been built up through the preceding pages. It needs the audience to be riled up by the word play, to have been worked into a frenzy and be emboldened by it in order to participate when the call and response part comes around. The poem doesn't have stage direction; it doesn't say "audience repeat," but reading it I get the feeling that if this were live, it would be an interactive piece. And maybe even involuntarily so. The poet is on a roll, and the piece has enough snap phrases to have the audience on his side, and they would pick up on the repeated line and enter the poem as participants "in this great big toilet bowl / addressing the flusher."

It is possible that there is movement within a poem, and around it. If a poem was written to live on the page, it must be wholly self-sufficient. It has to be able to move a reader without the author present. All context clues must exist within the poem. Movement can also be indicated by using white space as a presence, rather than as absence of words. Enjambment for page and stage poetry indicates a direction through the break of the line, momentum. Piled-on rhyme indicates quickness, choice of syllables that zip or loll in the mouth can invoke or inhibit speed.

Many pieces written for performance don't bother with showing on the page what they know they will fill in on stage. There is so much more to communication than words. We read a thousand non-verbal clues for each word uttered. The construction of a poem requires anticipation of non-verbal clues, and figuring out how to direct that information without the author being visible. When this is done well, we say, "it works." It is working on all levels of information provided to the reader. I'm not sure that same care is taken in writing a performance. I believe that these non-verbal elements are thought of and planned for, but not as an element of the writing. The paper the piece is written on is a prop, not the whole show, and often is not allowed on stage at all.

I don't think it's worse or better, more or less capable. I might have called stage poetry lazy on the page; but in a more enlightened state, I see different beasts.

"Nigger-Reecan Blues"

2009-11-14T18:36:00.000-08:00

Moving poetry from the page to the stage allows the poet to read his or her work the way he or she intended it to be read. In my opinion, I think performing poetry gives the poet the opportunity to enhance his or her work, because he or she can emphasize particular words or sentences. This emphasis allows the audience to interpret that word in many ways, or acknowledge the importance of that particular word or sentence.

When I first read William Perdomo’s poem, “Nigger-Reecan Blues," I kept wondering how this piece would be performed in front of live audience and I figured it would be performed by two people given that their is a dialogue between people. However, when I heard/saw the piece being performed I realized that there was more than one speaker. I realized there were more speakers because of the emphasis he places on each of the stances, he does so by making different voices for each new speaker. I think the multiple speakers in this particular piece are lost on the page, because the reader cannot tell who is speaking and if the voices are different people or just one speaker. When delivered on stage it is a different experience because of the poets power, power in terms of relaying his poem to the audience.

In addition, the comedic value of the piece is also lost on the page, in contrast to it being read and performed.I do not think that a piece being on the page detracts from the overall message, but I do think that performance helps enhance and illustrate the meaning of a poem.In my opinion I think performance is necessary when it comes to poetry because of all of the emotion that pours out of the poets mouth.

--Lizzie

group 4 post

2009-11-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

Wow, off top Gabrielle N. Lane Clarke's Ode to a Black Child (AKA Mr. America) is great. Unlike many of the poems we have read so far this poem starts off as a tradtional writing form with a story being told about what was told to the author. The introduction almost seems as if it going to be information about the poet's background and accomplishes but instread it ends up being apart of the poem itself. In this poem I believe politics are defined by the mention of the civil rights movement and how that movement was a pillar attribute in Black culture. The title itself has a very political aspect to it, AKA Mr. America. As I said before I believe poets and comedians are the people's politicians. They bring the knowledge and information from the government and inform us the plain terms of information given. I take the poem more seriously when there is a political significance in the poem, because politics are things that everyone has a hand in whether they are aware of it or not. Just as I was saying of how poets give information about government or certain legislations, they have the power to relay that information however it pleases them. Though most poets relay information on its seriousness and relativeness to the community or audience it is intended to be heard by. This poem in particular I feel I can relate. It has been plenty of situations where I was one of two black people in the classroom, or at times the only black person in the classroom. And when you are not able to familiarize yourself with anyone else in the room, its hard to find a sense of self or community when everyone in the room looks different. You also start to notice differences in the way you are treated at an early age. Whether you are being treated differently based on color, ethnic background, religion, or SES. You do notice a difference. The last lines...

and why is it--
when I knock

Mr. America--
no one seems
to be HOME??!!
I love this line because it does not say that the knock on the door is being ignored when someone is in the house, but how the house is empty to begin with....hmph.....that makes me think, what does that mean??????????
-Dorothy

9/8 Post

2009-11-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

History and poetry do indeed create one another. Poetry mostly comes from the history that has gone on in cultures, countries, communities, and individual lives'. I believe that is where most poets gain their strength and insight from; history. There is never a moment where the two topics do not intersect or can go unrelated. They are very much so related and dependent on what resources are given by history. A Prayer for My Friend, As Bombs Fall on Beirut by Phoebe Rusch is a great example of history and poetry because one would have to know the history of Beirut or have a gist of what goes on in other countries to understand why the poem was written. It is obvious that history inspired this poem and can offer additional referentials for the reader to enjoy. My favorite part of the poem is in the last stanza,

I pray for your family and all families
who have never known true peace,
whose every glass of milk is delicious.
for all people suspended
between night and morning. I pray
that as you breathe and I breathe,
our breaths coincide
and yours will slow so you may sleep.
I pray that you will take tiny risks:
step out on the balcony, feel the breeze
on your face. Go back inside quickly
knowing there are angels
at your heels.

The poem almost seems more like a biblical scripture than a poem, it made me think of religion and the significance one's religion may have on morals and values in life. That stand out of choice of words made this poem special and that much more important for readers to come across.

- Dorothy

Politics and John Olivares Espinoza

2009-11-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Espinoza's poems, Contemporary American Hunger, Learning Economics at Gemco, and Las Cucarachas are not only political statements, they are poignant and powerful commentary on how Americans view poverty.

I selected these three poems because reading them one after the other I saw the poet highlighting one side of poverty and in many ways saying that poverty is a matter of perspective. Since poverty is often considered a direct result of the politics of economy, I found it fitting to combine my discussion of these poems for this week.

One of the questions from this week's group was: How does the theme of politics influence your reading of these poems? For me, I kept thinking about how the definition of poverty seemed different when I was growing up. I mean we were probably poor by the politician'ss and statistician's definitions, but I didn't know it until I was an adult.

I think Espinoza does a great job of demonstrating this reality in the poem Contemporary American Hunger.

Satisfied, we ventured through a rainbow
Of tubes and balls with the other kids,
Their stomachs full of Big Macs or Happy Meals.
But we were happy too--better than staying
At home on a Saturday
Eating potato tacos after our yard chores.

and in Learning Economics at Gemco

I place the coins into his cupped hands
And he stacks two neat columns of cents
Next to his seat on the curb.
He nods his chin, half-solemnly.

...I ask Mom why?--
We only tried to help.

These poems, told from the perspective of a child living with poor parents, make it a point to state the complex using simple language. Giving us setting and circumstance helps to establish a tone that is non-accusatory, but in many ways speaks volumes.

In Las Cucarachas, Espinoza starts by establishing who (the roaches) and where (everywhere in your house), thus showing a universal picture of the place where roaches reside. He speaks of the roaches as beings graced and favored by God.

offering thanks
and grace
to a god who favors
them with the lost
harvest of the earth.

but he never accuses anyone for the roaches and never states directly that they are a result of poverty, it just seems understood. It could be that I'm detecting politics as humor or irony in the three poems.

Like the ironic moment in stanza 5 of Learning Economics at Gemco:

The cop says bums make thirty bucks a week
Begging for change
And are not so unhappy
When arrested
Since they get food, shelter,
And a hot shower for a least a week.

or the humorous moment in lines 9 - 11 of Las Cucarachas:

They munch on dry corn
flakes you thought
were raisin bran.

Espinoza is the one writer this week that really caught my eye because of his use of irony and humor in his writing. I found that I was able to connect to it in many ways. He provides lots of access points into his work because he does not point the finger at anyone, he simply uses poetry to point at what's always been there.

peacelovelight
Kiala

2009-11-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

On poetryfoundation.org, I found a ‘micro essay’ by Linh Dinh on teaching poetry, in which he states, “Poetry should astound and frighten.” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/01/what-i-usually-say-to-my-students/

I was drawn to and puzzled by his pieces, so I wanted to learn more about where he was coming from. Dinh immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1975 (as an 11 or 12-year-old), so it is presumable that the imagery in his poems, “The Fox Hole” and “The Most Beautiful Word” was informed by the child’s experience of direct war. Read without context, it would not be clear whether these episodes were from that war or another—they are not accompanied by the usual dogma of Vietnam War literature. And so they escape categorization. Each is a fresh, brutal, grizzly—and at once oddly comic, romantic—depiction human-imposed suffering, fear, and death. These poems startle their way into our systems, jolt and fragment our awareness.

“The Fox Hole” reads like a short story. The first sentence, “‘Oh great,’ she yells, ‘a fox hole!’” reads as light-hearted and jovial, as though an adventure is about to begun. Upon second and third readings, it is unclear what the woman’s emotions are behind this line—it could be frustration, relief. But Dinh immediately begins by turning us on our heads: the foxhole is a referential for a wartime setting, but the tone and punctuation of the statement doesn’t necessarily suggest the fear or anxiety that one associates with that setting. The proceeding images transform the foxhole into a grave, a living tomb: “throwing a clump of dirt on her head…bunched up like a mummy…almost completely buried.” The references to her beauty and her youth contrast the grave imagery: “flush of youth…pretty woman.”

One could almost read over the line, “There’s dirt in her nose, in her eyes, in her mouth,” because it blends right into the center of the paragraph-block. But I found this image, on second reading, to be the most horrifying. Imagining the sensation of having hard, gritty dirt in those orifices is unbearable—and the woman’s position suddenly jerks from living being (whom we were cheering on for successfully hiding and outwitting the soldiers) to cadaver. The dirt piles, she cannot get it out of her body, the feet are padding it down over her: she is being buried alive. The reference to a soldier being able to walk right over her also brings to mind the desecration of actual graves, and how colonization and war often disregards past graves. Here Dinh is flipping it around again—established graves are not just disturbed, but living graves are created and ignored.

Finally, the poem comes to a climactic end, when the woman questions what she has sat upon. We move from root (natural, benign), to hand (disturbing, but still safe) to hand grenade (death stamp). This last line demonstrates the same emotional progression as the rest of the poem: first relief, the growing horror, then devastation. In the last line and the last words it is confirmed that we are not on an adventure, that our heroine is not safe, that there is not safety in a war field.

In “The Most Beautiful Word,” the speaker is more defined than in “The Fox Hole”—which draws in the questions of complicity, and physical and emotional distance. We begin with a dreamy statement about language, specifically the English language. So our speaker knows English—did s/he know it then, at the time, or is s/he only using it now in reflection? (Clearly the poem is written in English but, in context, we can assume it is placed in Vietnam.) The next few images of the injured man conjure food and feasting: “steaming…harvest…” But the speaker’s tone remains casual, detached: “I myself was bleeding.” His injury’s are certainly not as extreme as the other man’s, but is he in a state of shock? The speaker has retreated from the present moment to an intellectual, ethereal meditation on language. He replaces the word “yaw” (movement from side to side), still in the context of injury/war/death, lyrical, playful words: “danced, tumbled.”

And suddenly we are in a scene between two would-be lovers—it is now “my man” who is lying, face-down, and the speaker is an “impatient lover”—still casual, distant. The dominoes of his bones or teeth “Clack! Clack!” and we are delivered from kitchen to bedroom to rec room. His blood is a “pink spray,” a “rainbow”, and the veins in his jaw are “blue threads to the soul”—all words that incite comfort, beauty. Is this to preserve the preciousness, the dignity of human life, or is this over-the-top language the mimics the ways in which we (English-speakers, Americans) are consistently protected from the gruesomeness of war? Several words also demonstrate medical knowledge: “C-spine” (cervical spine, or vertebrae just below the skull), “mandible” (lower jaw), “extracted.” So we wonder who the speaker is, a medic? Was he a doctor or will he be one? Or are these words all participants in active war learn because they are so consistently exposed to the body in a brutal way?

The word play this prose poem demonstrates the disjuncture between what death/war actually look like and what we are told. It also displays the human mind’s capacity for escapism in processing the horrifying—what cannot be processed. There are images from daily life/households, the spin off on sounds of words, and the movement into medical terms—all distracts from the suffering body blatantly displayed before us.

So how is this political? In every way that it’s not political: Dinh avoids a polemic with playful language, misleading storytelling, mixed metaphors, and ambivalent narration. He disarms us, but when we blink, look again, we realize he’s drug us into hell and left us there, marooned.

2009-11-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

Each poet approached and defined politics differently; however, each poet spoke about politics pertaining to a community rather than a world view. They did so by exposing the human condition, the struggles of everyday life and situations. Some themes the poets dealt with

were issues of racial discrimination, rape, self-image, spousal abuse, poverty, etc. etc. For me, the poems that stood out were the one's in BUM; particularly, Samiya A. Bashir's, "Her Scream Has Been Stolen."

From my understanding of the poem it is a piece about about a woman who doesn't realize her body is hers until it has been taken away from-- it is taken from her through the act of rape. The speaker of the poem states:

What does her scream sound

like can she hear it

when it echos off the leaves or the

cliffs or the streams or the mountains

peaks or canyons gardens marshes

beaches over water and land she

didn't know was her until she was told

it wasn't?

Here, the poet asks the questions if the subject could hear her screams when echos through nature. For me the act of screaming in this poem comes off as something violent because of the questions the speakers asks, particularly the last two lines, "she didn't know was her until she was told it wasn't. Reading this line made me think of rape because although one is aware his or her body belongs to themselves one isn't fully aware--i guess unless the situation arises (Like we don't walk around saying this is my body, I own it, it's something that we save in the back of our heads). Also because the areas she mentions seem to be places that are usually desolate--without people (at least that is the image in my head, because these are relaxing places).

Prior to the stanza I quoted above the speaker states: "What does her/ river taste like upstream and / downstream and how does it/ make love to her body as she bathes" I read this line as a symbol of her be private areas as well as her mouth. The speaker tends to also make lots of reference to mother nature which can be equivalent to describing women given that mother nature is always personified as a woman.

(For some reason I feel like I misread this poem just because it seems to be subtle in revealing the message of the poem).

2009-11-08T20:28:00.000-08:00

Just the word "political" is polarizing. Regardless of context or specifics, the word alone conjures up passionate sentiments, a loyalty to beliefs, and the steadfast opinion of right versus wrong. There are an almost infinitesimal number of political issues, each with their own set of proponents and opponents. With such emotionally charged topics, it is no wonder that poetry serves as an ideal medium for the articulation of political stance. Through the manipulation of poetic form and content, a writer is given the unique opportunity to create a piece that can effectively stimulate and inspire its readers without ever entering active dialogue (and sometimes, without even explicitly addressing the issue). The piece "Beginning at the End: Capital/Capitol Punishment" is able to achieve a charged affect through a recount of the speaker's experience. The poet never outright states his opinion on the subject (capital punishment), but instead leads the reader to a specific conclusion. The title itself is strongly referential by simply contrasting the term Capital with Capitol Punishment. This juxtaposition contrasts the idea of capital (which are components of production that are used to make a final good, but are not of value themselves) with the death penalty, achieving a parallel between the use of a human as a means to an end with that of a material good. What could such an end be? The speaker writes "I want to scream something like gendercide". The poet is not only speaking out against the general use of capitol punishment, but rather the specific use of capitol punishment to target groups of individuals.

The speaker humanizes an experience that has been demonized by society. Through this piece he is able to flip the standard scenario, by creating an alternate murderer and victim. Rather than the victim being the innocent individual who was killed by the person receiving the death penalty, the "criminal" becomes the victim as he has committed no crime. The murderer in the poem is the executioner, who seems to be knowingly killing an innocent man. The poet recounts,

"Here I sit, my head is shaved, they strapped me in, my mother just waved
Is there anything I can do to be saved, Lord, here I sit.
There is a grin on his face as he throws the switch
Is he a man or the devil, I can't tell which"

This stanza is so powerful. For me the first lines conjures up images of concentration camps and the murders of throngs of innocent people (which I believe is precisely the poet's purpose).

The poem itself sounds like a prayer, or a simple hymn that follows (for the most part) an aabb rhyme scheme and makes use of repetition. Throughout the poem the speaker is addressing his "Lord", and his frustration with the injustice of his situation is undeniable. As the poem progresses we get a sense that the speaker's faith in his "Lord" is faltering as he gets nearer to his death. He eventually writes,

"Well here I sit, now I don't give a s-. Lord, here I sit.
(Here I sit, I think my heart just quit, Lord, here I sit)."

The title also includes an interesting allusion to the afterlife ("Beginning at the End"), which interestingly ties in with the end of the poem. After the death of the speaker, he writes

"Back to your right hand is where I hope to stay
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...
Is it God, Lord, Jehovah, Lord? Yaweh, Lord? Krishna, Lord?
Obatalah, Lord? Wakantonka, Lord? Allah, Lord?"

Each of these names is used to refer to "God" in different religions. The speaker's questioning about which is correct is very interesting. I interpret this question as confusion or doubt on behalf of the speaker. It's as though the speaker's injustices have led him to doubt the sanctity and even the existence of his Lord.

-e. gutilla

2009-11-08T20:07:00.000-08:00

To be “political” assumes outspokenness. To be actively engaged. “Political” connotes a struggle, implies the walking of a line (as in politically correct, politically conscientious, one compliant with policies). Often it indicates a yielding. To pay attention to office politics, for example, means taking great care not to “step on someone else’s toes” not to “step out of line” to “follow the chain of command.” Yet, a politician is one whom no one can trust. The very designation of being a politician has come to mean liar, two-faced, socially irresponsible. Two poems stood out for me as examples of the two-sidedness of politics: one that aims to be outspoken and life-changing, and one that attempts to reveal the mechanisms behind a political language that seeks to obscure such outspokenness.

Alaan Bowe’s “Every Knotted Fist” is anything but silent. In this poem, the act of writing (and writing as a form of speech) is dangerous and divisive, even at times blinding the speaker of the poem with rage. Bowe identifies the knotted fist as the place where, “all my/ fuckin’ grudges” are held. The title points to the importance of this image as the center from which the poem radiates. These central lines are themselves “knotted” in the center of the page:

gonna hold all my
fuckin’ grudges
in every knotted fist

The pen, the words that flow from the pen are “little deaths” (the possible allusion to orgasm should not be ignored here), its strokes “bludgeon” the fingers and cause blood to “dapple the page.” In this poem, the tongue is burning with the need to speak, and the tongue refuses to be silenced by anything, even by physical interaction and the possibility of love:

Somebody gave me a hug yesterday
I don’t know who
I didn’t get that good a look at her

The rage contained in the poem, in isolated “knots” of words overpowers any positive emotion or outcome that could have occurred. The poem flows from Author, Audience and Community to Opposition, Murder, and Pain. The tone of the words Bowe uses are harsh and biting:

stroke
death
murder
rape
incest
torture
forced
bludgeon
spit
blood
knotted
clubbed

The use of the violent “o” sounds and the guttural “u” sounds speak of violence, their sounds cutting through the silence like blades. The structure of the words on the page forces the reader to pay attention to it. One must note the word clusters in order to behold the poem, is forced to feel the knotted anger inherent in the clumped lines.

By contrast, Linh Dinh’s “The Most Beautiful Word” has no truly distinctive form, but displays its message in prose poem style. The poem has no obvious line breaks to take the reader’s attention away from the message; therefore, the transparency of the message stands in direct contrast to the intent of the poem’s language to obscure certain “political” acts. In the lines “Don’t say, ‘The bullet yawed inside the body.’ Say, ‘The bullet danced inside the body,’” Dinh is revealing political language’s desire to obscure the cold, hard facts in a diffusive light. There is still a bullet, and there is still a body, but the act of the bullet dancing or tumbling hides the violent action of the bullet splitting the body open. Instead of an act of violence being enacted upon the body, the bullet becomes a sort of protagonist, beautifully dancing through its victim, “forward and upward.” Dinh calls attention to this desire of certain political language to put a lovely spin on acts of abhorrent violence by calling this strategy out and demanding that it answer for itself. The poem cannot answer and neither can the victim, for the victim has a collapsed face, a broken mandible, swallowed teeth and a punctured tongue.

It is important to these poets that the tongue have a place in these poems. As the organ of speech, the image representing voice, the tongue has two different lives in both of the poems. In Dinh’s poem, the tongue is useless and silent. In Bowe’s poem, the tongue is a dangerous weapon that spits blood on the page. When the tongue in “The Most Beautiful Word” is forced to use only beautiful-sounding words instead of ugly ones, we see the modern political machine’s attempts to remove dangerous, inciteful words from its vocabulary and thus sweeten the force of its blows. Dinh’s words are much more sonorous than Bowe’s:

beautiful
vesicle
harvest
danced
tumbled
upward
forward
llight
lover
rainbow
blue threads
soul

And yet, Dinh is not entirely successful at excoriating all the weighted words from his poem. The political machine has merely pulled a thin veneer over the rottenness hidden within:

burnt
steaming
bleeding
yaw
fracture
clanked.

These words are heavy, sounding weighted in the ear when spoken and weighted in the mind when read.

What's in a name?

2009-11-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

Politics. Discussing politics whether they be identity, cultural or governmental can be a bit of a minefield. People that you care about can turn out to have political ideals that offend or frighten you and change the way you look at them forever. Fights can break out, friendships can be destroyed, relationships can be broken, reputations damaged beyond repair. For all these reasons a lot of people do not discuss politics just as they don’t discuss religion. Politics, especially identity politics, become the elephant in the room, the presence of it cannot be denied but the discussion of it is stifled and repressed, made invisible. Of course this is mostly for the benefit of those that belong to the dominant group, so that they won’t be uncomfortable when discussing politics in which they are the privileged part of the equation. This effectively silences marginalized people positioning them as a “troublemaker” if they break the enforced silence.

Diane Burns’ poem Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question takes this forced invisibility of identity to task. She plops us into the middle of a conversation and only allows us to hear one side of it, her side, the side that matters to her. In this case she has reversed the silence and made the dominant position the one that is rendered unable to speak for itself. In this case her words take prominence and are the only ones that give us any context for the conversation taking place in this way she shapes the whole of the conversation. We are taken out of the world in which every conversation is in some way shaped by the white heteronormative patriarchal society in which we live and instead she becomes the shaper, she is in control of if not the direction of the conversation itself then in our perception and understanding of it for sure.

In the beginning of the poem she uses repetition to build up the momentum and emotion to a fever pitch.

No, I’m not Chinese.
No, not Spanish.
No, I’m American Indi—uh, Native American.
No, not from India.
No, we’re not extinct.
No, not Navajo.
No, not Sioux.
Yes, Indian.

The calmness of these replies, the stillness and steadiness point to the fact that this is not the first or second or even third time she’s had to answer these types of questions. These are questions that she has had to deal with numerous times before and the answers turn into a rote response to an interrogation of identity. The hesitation when identifying herself as American Indian is unexplained at first and then with the next line becomes clear. This is a part of the conversation she was hoping to avoid this time but she does not get to. Then with the break of the repetitious “No” beginning is a affirmation of her Indian identity and yet at the same time it’s not the identity she actually presents. She calls herself “Native American” and only by going back to an identifier that many Native folks have chosen to throw off as a name placed upon them by colonialists can she make her identity understood by the dominant culture.

The whole thing made me think of the politics of silence and the politics of naming. Who chooses who speaks? Who chooses who is silenced? Who chooses what we are called? What if no one acknowledges the name that you claim?

form and I hope this is on the right stuff

2009-11-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

A lost memory of Delhi
I want to say I completely understand this poem. But, I don't and that's okay. It could be said that it's just about remebering Delhi.I went to a reading recently where the poet explained each piece before she she read a poem. I was thinking more about her explainations than her poetry. So when I read this and wasn't sure I got it, I didn't mind . I was able to like it. I like 3 line couplets they are my fave for some reason. And becasue I wasn' t sure I got think of a couple stories. One being a child unborn killed in a bus accident knocking to let the parents he is a star still there. I also thought of a transgendered person shut out form their family.I wondered about" stars are coming out
ringing with tongues of glass"
and how the poem end with
" hear me they won't hear
my knocking drowning out
the tongues of stars"
I don't even know what to say about that but the repitition of tongues and being unheard and glass gets to me.

Beauty
I liked the /as a way of connecting quick internal thoughts.

Medusa

I love the repitition that is like glue to all the images that effected her as a girl the repitition of
"As a plaited girl
I was stung by "Medusa""

" As a plaited girl
I was stung by " Medusa
As a woman
I am unafraid to turn men to stone"

Nice......
It is interesting how different cultures shame and revere for certain physical attributes and how deep the wound can go. I just love the idea of her turning men to stone.

exceptions . Oh there is a whole lot here turning all those phrases on there heads. Too much to sy anout this one .
I connot for the life of me find Alsadr,Mrouelook in inclined I will kepp looking but may be I got directed to the wrong book?
So when I find it I will come back to it.

But some obvious form driven poem A Blue Black Pearl I thin that the four lists side by side added to the 40 years, made it feel, longer. more compact, more painful. I also like the way you could read across instead and find something different.

!Hey Yo/Yo Soy I love the way this spread across the page the repetition the mix if langugage.

Child emergency I have to finish this later
Suki

Mong-Lan does personal as political like whoa

2009-11-08T15:46:00.001-08:00

Whoa! Mong-Lan! Whoa! Personal as political! Whoa!

I’m blown out by this poet, by her insane diction and impeccable timing on and across the page. I looked her up right away to see what new book she has out & found that she hasn’t published since 2008 because she’s been busy with Fulbright scholarships in Vietnam and silly things like that. Psh, get back to work!

On her website, Mong-Lan is quoted as saying “Behind the image, the imagination.” I think this is a really acute & open-faced summary of the ways in which her poems are stacked thick with layers and tightly wound. I’m looking specifically at “Field” on page 102 of AAP. The poem itself doesn’t physically take up very much room, a half page at best. But the psychic space the poem inhabits unfolds indefinitely off the page and into my lap, my bed, the floor. I read her poetry and I think YES. THIS is what good poetry is supposed to be capable of doing.

“Crows land like horses’ neighs” and I’m on the floor. What just happened? She blew in and touched down like some tornado off the radar. The juxtapositioning of this first gusty line and the quiet flatness of the title allows this to happen, allows us to be surprised and engaged and yet not at all misled. This is where the layering begins, where we find the imagination behind the images. “Crows land like horses’ neighs / rush of rocks,” and we can hear it before we see it. This poem is so tightly crafted!

The poem continues with a question that, without these particular line breaks, would otherwise slow the poem significantly. “how many buffaloes / does it take to plow a disaster?” she writes, sliding more layers on quickly. We are shown the buffaloes right after the aural rush of power in the first stanza, allowing us to hear the buffaloes here too, a herd of them. But then Mong-Lan enacts the plow and we are watching buffaloes tear up land into a disaster and watching buffaloes working fields for an unyielding crop, all at once. When she calls upon women in the last two lines of this stanza, we are allowed to recognize the possible gendering of the buffaloes in the previous lines.

The next stanza complicates nouns into verbs, layering imagination upon images that we think we understand. “shoots of incense / hotly in her hands” represent both shoots or stalks of incense and also the shooting pains of aging hands, ones that have cleaned up many messes. “she bows toward the tombstones / face of her son” and suddenly she is not only looking at the tombstone, but at it’s face and that it’s face is that of her son. Her hands hold the pain of grief and of many years where the “revolutions [are not] realize[d].”

The final full stanza leaves the poem ringing before the last couplet. The last line, “to dye what she’s earned” infuses the poem with the death & disaster that’s obviously prevalent in this life, on this field, but takes it a step further to layer her own age and inevitable death as well. Mong-Lan shows us that there is no reason for the speaker to dye the grey hair she has earned in her lifetime, but the poet also deposits another coating by implying “to die for what she’s earned.”

The whole poem sits on that last line. On her back. The field, the animals, the disaster, the death, the hesitations, the refusals, the weather, the age. Everything sits on her back.

Mong-Lan brings the political into the personal in ways that invite the reader to investigate both more fully. I’m really excited to see how the groups elaborate on the personal as political, especially in terms of poetry’s responsibility to both.

The specific

2009-11-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

It was interesting to me that a lot of the political messages in the poetry for this week seemed to be about specific communities as opposed to world-wide peace and ending of poverty which I think added to the sense of integrity in there work. There was a lot of potential for generalization in the poetry of this week because when we talk about politics it is to get caught up in everyone’s suffering as opposed to trying to work on the small scale where it can be easier to make change. I think by breaking down the tragedies of specific communities the poets allow us to draw connections between their communities on there own. And there were plenty of intersections in the work this week.

One poem that really stuck out to me was Cornelius Eady’s poem How To Do because it connected to Learning Economics at Gemco by John Olivares Espinoza. Both poems are about the lengths that people go to survive poverty and the criminalization of this struggle. Both struggles are centered around Grocery carts, the narrator in Espinoza’s poem is following his mother as she pushes the cart, his sense of charity is related to the cart and the fact that he is able to go grocery shopping while this man sits outside is a privilege that is associated with the cart. For the narrator’s mother too, having the grocery cart and the change to give to the homeless man is a privilege she cannot deny as she “pushes the grocery cart without a word, /Knowing that as newlyweds she begged outside markets for change /While Dad stole bread and sliced honey-ham inside.” (103) For her the ability to walk into the store with her head held high to do some actual shopping as opposed stealing from the store.

For Eady the shopping cart is the site of poverty. Within it, the bottles that have been collected over the week this work that “embarrasses my niece to think of her mother/ walking the streets with a cart” the cart is where the bottles are collected and becomes a symbol of the narrator’s sisters poverty. Who knows what is in the cart unless you are looking hard but the act of pushing the cart outside of the shopping area where it belongs is a symbol of poverty. In the media we see homeless people pushing carts around and essentially living out of shopping carts and this is the image that Eady uses to illustrate the poverty that the narrator and his sister lived and live with. And they are not alone “There’s at least 15 carts, /At least 10 people in line” Eady shows the poverty of where they live and how they were raised and the way that the habits of poverty can be passed on through generations.

I think what’s great about the way that poets of color go about changing the world is that they understand that just saying “the world needs to change” I think sometimes with white writers there tends to be a blanket, let’s make things better as opposed to saying, this community is suffering and that needs to change. And here is how and here are the ways that this community is suffering. There is a lot more that can be accomplished with specifics and I think focusing on the specific is a trait that comes with being closer to a marginalized community. I don’t want to assume that all poets of color feel any of these experiences but I think when you come from a marginalized community you get linked to certain experiences no matter what the reality of your opportunities are and you begin to get interested in what happens to it.

I think that politics and poetry often go together. They are lovers who break up and get back together all the time. Sometimes Politics doesn’t understand the metaphor of poetry or feels it’s being weak when it should be bold and strong. Poetry feels that politics forgets the people and gets caught up in it’s own seriousness. When they work together, it can be beautiful or it can be ugly but they can work together when they choose.

Burns Like Fire-Poet Diane Burns, A Trailblazer Forever Remembered

2009-11-08T00:29:00.000-08:00

Diane Burns, Chemehuevi and Anishinabe Poet

(1957-2006)

“Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question”

How do you do?

No, I’m not Chinese

No, I’m not Spanish.

No, I’m not American Indi--uh, Native American

No, not from India.

No, we’re not extinct.

No, not Navajo

No, not Sioux.

Yes, Indian.

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian friend?

That close.

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian lover?

That tight.

Oh, so you’ve had an Indian servant?

That much.

Oh, so that’s where you got those high cheekbones.

Your great grandmother, eh?

Hair down to there?

Let me guess--Cherokee?

Oh, an Indian Princess.

No, I didn’t make it rain tonight.

No I don’t know where you can get Navajo rugs real cheap.

No, I don’t know where you can get peyote.

No, I didn’t make this--I bought it at Bloomingdale’s.

Yes, some of us drink too much.

Some of us can’t drink enuf.

This ain’t no stoic look.

This is my face.

The title of Diane Burns's poem “Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question” (Aloud, 187) is laden in satirical humor. Burns’s rhetorical and declarative style creates an increasingly tense dialogue, uncovering naive and curious offenders that cross her path. By using plain language, repetition, and short lines, she effectively delivers “a political punch” at every line in response to the question “How do you do?” and other implied statements and questions. “The gem” of this poem is that it exposes the numerous, tired stereotypes of Native Americans held by many Americans today. Undoubtedly Burns (like her name) is fire, in her words to destroy the misconceptions of what it means to be Native American.

Toward the end of the poem that follows, “Alphabet City Serenade,” Burns makes us laugh again with this hilarious, rhetorical rhyme-riff on American Hollywood and capitalism (Aloud, 189). She writes,

Do you know, do you know that

I hate Chevrolet

I hate Doris Day

I hate Norman Bates

And I’m at war with the United States

Diane Burns’s defiance rings true in her poetry as she consistently voices her honest refusal to accept American culture and all that is attached to it--greed, superficiality, Euro-centric standards of beauty, assimilation and oppression. Her use of repetition and short lines with no line breaks, again effectively increases the velocity and intensity of the poem.

Diane Burns is a trailblazer who for many of us will forever, be remembered.

-Mica Valdez

Bamuthi

2009-11-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

Seeing Bamuthi perform was so inspiring. He had so much energy and passion. I thought his interaction with the audience was great. There was a clear connection; it was fun to participate. When he compared us to the audience he faced in Albany NY, I had no doubt he was sincere, and he seemed to take genuine joy in being back in the Bay area. He also seemed to thrive off our reactions – except for the overly enthusiastic man he said he might be a little afraid of.

His break-dancing and hip-hopping contributed so much to the texture of what he was saying. I made a personal connection with his piece about how he’s “going to be a father in a week.” The communication of this growing realization was clearly authentic. There’s an awe, an amazement, about the experience until it dawns on you that life as you know it will never, ever be the same, and then there’s fear and disbelief. The feelings he expressed in the section about his son’s sonogram were also familiar. It is truly amazing to see life in the sound waves. This concept of transforming the aural to the visual was embodied by Bamuthi in his performance. So cool!

He created a community in the theater, and he created the community of the little village in Senegal onstage. I could see Molly meeting with the elders, and I could see Bamuthi keeping thousands transfixed by his performance even though he was actually alone on the stage at the Berkeley Rep. He claimed not to have a mic, but I could see how, as he said, he became an m.c. with that experience.

The piece about his brothers, “Self-hatred” and “Ignorance,” and their relationships with “Racism” brought me back to Miguel Pinero’s poem “The Records of Time” that we read this semester. These allegories remind me of “The Romance of the Rose,” and I wonder what other cultures have stories written this way. I seem to remember some of the Anansi tales and some of Chinua Achebe’s work having names that refer specifically and literally to attitudes and adjectives, but I would have to do more research about them to clarify. In any case, I’m always taken with how clever the word play is and how serious the messages are.

I appreciated the multi-media and multi-dimensional presentation. The work that Bamuthi’s organization is doing in Chicago and across the country as described in the documentary and during the Q & A is so important. Unfortunately, other green organizations have not been receptive to combining efforts to make a bigger impact. Just because things haven’t been done that way before nor do they look like how people think they’re “supposed to” look, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try something new – because what if it worked? Imagine how powerful that would be. It’s not a black and white issue – it’s green. Our theme this week is politics, and how appropriate to examine the maneuvering and negotiation of something that is in everyone’s interest to resolve. It was so great to see people in the video who had been observers in the street become participants in the event. Again, the energy and enthusiasm was apparent and motivated by Bamuthi’s work and by his inspiration. I’m really glad I went to his performance.

Sheila Joseph

Every Knotted Fist

2009-11-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

Reading Alaan Bowe’s “The Knotted Fist” made me go back to Meg’s blog about Clairesa Clay’s contrapuntal poem “A Blue Black Pearl” and H.K.’s blog about “everything is” in the center of Cordova’s “Of Sorts” because they gave me an explanation and some guidance for approaching this poem. There were so many ways of reading this poem – across the page, down and up, around the center – and they all contributed to my reading of the poem.

Our focus this week is politics, and the title “The Knotted Fist” struck me immediately. After seeing Bamuthi’s performance on Monday and viewing his “Clenched Fist” production, I visualized the “fist” of Bowe’s poem as representing a struggle, and the choice of the adjective “knotted” evoked an intricate image for me. The choice of words in the poem creates a sense of the speaker’s connection – “community,” “communication,” “interaction” – and, at the same time, his lack of connection – “juxtaposition,” “opposition,” “murder.” I saw the poem itself take the form of a fist in the center of which our speaker is

gonna hold all my
fuckin’ grudges
in every knotted fist

The four fingers surround the center of this poem physically but also metaphorically. They are intertwined rather than just clenched. I see the corners of the poem acting in counterpoint to the others and the mention of “Bach fugues” underscores this. The upper left corner of the fist and the lower right both have the word “murder” in them while the lower left and upper right contrast an intimacy and an absence of it. The upper left interacts with the lower right but also with the upper right. We can read this poem across and wonder about the relationship he has with the woman who has given him “a hug.” There’s distance in the hug if he “didn’t get that good a look at her” as there’s distance between him and the “poor fool/forced to sit through this poem.” There’s a missed connection if this listener/reader “winces.” But the wincing is being done in reaction to the bludgeoning of “fingers & tongue.” The use of “bludgeon” here and “clubbed” later is strong language but there’s also more delicate language – “dapple” and “whining.” There are counterpoints throughout and we see the action and reaction, the opposition and the struggle.

The opposable thumb, which makes us human, is present in the beginning of the poem: “murder / rape / incest / torture” overarching the rest of the words. There is cruelty in human interaction, and “any” attempt to get closer “hurts.” The contrast between the “stroke of [his] pen” and his “tongue” has sexual connotations revealing a level of exposure and intimacy with the audience while also bringing up the struggle of an artist. Is he writing the poem on the page with his pen – drawing blood from his fingers, or is he performing it – spitting blood and “spit[ting]/any sound?” The sheets on his bed give a masturbatory image. Is the purpose of his writing then for his own satisfaction or is there a larger world? The relationship and the conflict between him and the audience is being explored.

There’s a well-ordered, complex construction to the form of this poem and to the layers of meaning as we untie the knots that reveal the artist’s struggle with himself, with his art, with his audience, and we find the grudges. I read “every knotted fist” as not just a singular fist belonging to the speaker, but as “every” member of the larger audience whose mind is closed and who won’t listen to what he has to say. This poem, and poetry in general, is an expression from the poet who gives so much of himself in each poem, each “a little death,” that he bleeds on the page or on the stage, and is “clubbed...senseless/if it’s done right.” There’s a dynamic to the interaction that starts with “One,” but if the audience follows the speaker’s directive “don’t mind me,” the struggle to connect packs a powerful punch.

Sheila Joseph

tiger tiger burning bright

2009-11-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

I am a lion
Leo by nature
Feline by night
I use my teeth and claws sparingly
I am hungry
Looking through the dusk
For some kind of fulfillment
I haven't eaten in weeks
Yet my stomach no longer aches
It fiends
With instinct for nourishment
For bodily fulfillment
I try left over's
But the meats gone bad
Seeking
Searching
Alone
Separated from my pride
I will survive
But for how long
A lioness lives for her pride...

- parke

okay, i'll be the first one to report on Bamuthi's show

2009-11-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

The matter of the show Monday night is a direct contribution to this week's theme on identity. He starts with the sonogram --breaking it apart as a series of sounds representing the image of his son-- beats the heart of poetry--a series of sound representing image. and so i'm thinking this is what we try for in compiling *ya clustering* our sounds...or our symbols for sound, which is also thought. every lens bamuthi used was prismatic...the image was thrown down more than one way, turn it, turn it, turn it....never was the young boy, the blue sky, a thousand attributes. part of what a poet does is teach a reader a new way to observe, think, and vitalize the word, the image, the story, the sequence. lay it out so the map is redrawn. it's not enough to point out, or name, witnessing has eyes.

that was identity one

Identity two

the story of Senegal which he calls Africa (therein a popular assumption ya). breaking in down more than one way--through the sublimation of his power as a black american man, he finds a new identity and a new way to be. Molly becomes an exception in our eyes, but he convinces us that a Molly can be and be authentic. so we pay attention to labels, and appearances (or do we?)

identity three not necessarily in order

tap dancing and pop. We are from a history and a geography that comes with scars bump and physical history. the identity tapdancer which makes the boy rise up, makes the father turn away afraid of the colonizing power of it.

anyway, not to summarize the show, but to show appreciation for the relentlessness of his work, all which started out as conversation and transformed into poetry before we could stop it.

there is a wonderful diligence to his writing. and freedom

2009-11-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

Okay in the midst of choosing poems to write about and/or truly analyze, it was only natural that I choose Alone by Maya Angelou. This poem tells a lot about identity and association, but it says it very direct and simple. No complicated metaphors or mind blowing hidden messages, the messages are right there for you to look at and analyze without having to think so hard. Despite the fact that this poem as of many Maya Angelou's poems received more fame by being read in a motion picture, specifically speaking in regards to Poetic Justice starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, this poem did not become tainted by it's display within the film. Instead the film offered an doorway of opportunity for impoverished and urban kids to realize or identify poetry as a academic and fun style of writing that can tell any story. The poems chosen to be read in the movie as if they were written by Janet Jackson's character gave insight to how the is a so called rose growing from the concrete. Low-income and crime-ridden communities are filled with talent and insight that is barely touched or looked upon by the rest of the world. I personally believe that Maya Angelou's poem in the film GAVE the main character (Justice) an identity. An identity that both united and separated her from her community. The poems gave her the ability to claim that independence while also proclaiming her connection and social ties with her community. I strongly feel that I have a identify with this poem in particular because I come from a low-income urban community and it is right that you cannot make it alone. Not only in my community but in any community anywhere in this world as the poem says, you CANNOT make it alone. Without my family and close friends that I share my life with I would not be the person I am today. Let me not forget to also include the communities in which I have lived and grown in who have shaped my own perception of societal expectations. Family, friends, significant others, communities, mentors, employers are also very important factors in shaping identity and making you into the person you become. Without those boundaries or limitless boundaries you wouldn't be yourself, I don't even know if it would possible to be a person in general, who would one be without a community???

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

I love this stanza because she is not only saying that nobody can make it in this world alone, but also that nobody but nobody can make it. So if you do make it somehow in this world and you are alone, then you are still a nobody, you identity is not being claimed until you are able to compare it with someone else's standards. I think that is powerful to think about, because its basically saying that until you stand in the spotlight with someone under you, above you, or by your side, you are nobody because there is not any available references to compare you to. And why is it important to have those references? But then again how can we measure success without a basis? But who measures success the person her/himself or the public? These are the many questions I thought about as I read this poem.

As far as facebook and other social networking websites, I believe some people create a construed notion by constantly comparing themselves to others then continuously reevaluating their self worth. It also reconstructs the way human beings connect and associate with one another. We keep furthering and widening the gap between individuals with new technology and advanced software, lol, soon enough sex will be a rare way to make children because everyone will be participating in artificial insemination to conceive. Some of these technological creations do benefit, but most are more of a negative detriment than a benefit.

-Dorothy

Connections in disconnect

2009-11-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

Identity for me is a tricky thing in poetry. So often we assume that the identity of a narrator is the poet themselves and often we can find evidence to that fact but identity in poetry is tricky and isn’t always as confessional as we might think. The great thing about poetry is that you can embody the voice of anyone and therefore take on an identity. What I found really interesting about the work for this week is that while each of the poem spoke to a personal identity it also spoke to larger identities as well.

Alone by Maya Angelou is the story of a person’s personal struggle with Lonliness but Angelou doesn’t just make it personal she adds a refrain which makes the poem connectable for more people:

“nobody,
but nobody
can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.”

While the first stanza is personal and close, Angelou begins to identify others who suffer from loneliness. She creates intersections between people as opposed to separating them by making it too personal or limiting her connection to a specific group. She could have made the choice to make the poem extremely personal but instead she uses the idea of loneliness to bring people together, as though not wanting to be alone is really what connects us all.

In comparison, Marian Haddad’s poem I have no history here feels as though it’s limiting the connection between people. She builds this place that separatist in our minds, “ where people seem distant/ and unhearing.” but this poem feels as though it is about creating space in an unfamiliar place. Haddad uses form to show the disconnect between the people who are coming to America:

“ are we not all welcome
in this salty land by the sea

out my window the sea
no longer the night nearing

a few lights yellow
and white between the hills”

The poem begins to come further and further apart to show the feeling of loneliness and discrimination felt in this country. It is a struggle to feel connected to this new home. But then Haddad pulls it back. Making the choice to feel connected, forcing space to be made for her words. Then in her final to lines she takes the next step “my southwest skin/has scaled off/dropping quietly/into the grass” by leaving her skin in the land she forces a connection. Just like so many other people has bleed, sweat and shed skin in this land and make it her own so does she. Her title indicates that she has no history here but in this last moment, she begins to make memories. It almost acts as a manual to others, create your history in lost flesh, whatever that means for you.

Identity

2009-11-01T23:34:00.000-08:00

Marian Haddad has my full attention this week. She and I are having a great conversation about what it means to identify (or not identify) through place. Starting with the title, I am drawn in because I've lived in the bay area for 16 months and often find myself saying, "I have no history here."

It often feels like I no longer belong to Florida, but that I don't quite belong to California either. This line of thinking brings me to lots of questions about how identity and place work together. I'm Floridian and always will be in many ways, but I also find that I am very much "of" the east bay.

So is identity about what we identify with/as?

Haddad suggests that it has something to do with length of time,

nothing but a year
and a few months of turning

She then goes on to suggest that where we make our home

I have made a home
in a land I never knew

and where we write ourselves is who we are,

I am starting to write myself
down inscribe myself

later she talks about shedding her "southwest skin" and I feel her in that moment of deciding what to keep and what to drop quietly into the grass.

For me, identity is about the micro and the macro, so when I step back and look at this poem with a wider lens, I wonder what the poem does when/if we change the "I" to "We". When I make this shift, the micro moments no longer stand out. Instead, the last five stanzas become an identity of the "we".

something quiet
about this place

this is no desert
the air here is damp

water seems present
where water is not

my southwest skin
has scaled off

dropping quietly
into this grass

place starts to take on an identity. It has sound and it feels and we can see it and hear it and if we back up three stanzas, we can taste it,

are we not all welcome
in this salty land by sea

Haddad reminds me that identity exists on many levels from the "i" to the "I" to the "We" and with those, there is the spectator and the participator and identity can be different depending on which "-tor" you happen to be.

I'm struggling with the concept of "Identity" in my poetry (yes, capital 'I') so when I come across poems that deal with it in fresh and unexpected ways, I am fascinated and inspired at the same time. This poem does that for me.

Hopefully our discussion this week will spark (or fuel) further conversation about the role of identity in our own writing and dealings with the world.

peacelovelight

Kiala

Issues of Sovereignty and Identity: Mahealani Perez-Wendt

2009-11-01T22:47:00.000-08:00

Identity is something we are taught or we have been passed down to, we create, we claim or do not. Identity can also be something that changes or transforms as we change or transform as individuals. Poetry reflects this multiplicity and intersection of various identities as poets of color, women, lgbtq, and others not represented in the traditional literary canon make our mark. The digital era of Facebook, MySpace, and U-Tube have helped increase accessibility for non-traditional poets to enter into the field by showcasing our work, networking, and publicizing all on-line without monetary limitations or confines which have often been relegated to being produced from “the academy.”

In “We Are Not the Crime We Are the Evidence” by Mahealani Perez-Wendt from Effigies identity emerges through the theme of “the colonizer” and “the colonized.” “They” being the colonizer. The declarative title of the poem cleverly delivers irony and explains the current criminal treatment of Native Hawaiians, their very existence evidence of a crime being committed by it’s colonizer, in this case the U.S. (The U.S. colonized Hawaii making it a U.S. territory in 1900 and the 50th U.S. state in 1959.) The repetition of the lines below increases the velocity and intensity of the subject of subjugation being addressed in the poem (Effigies, p 114).

“They’ve kicked the chair

From under us”

The metaphor of a chair being kicked out from under one, provides the reader with an image of a violent and jarring action and a feeling of angst. This is very effective as anyone can relate to this feeling of being wronged and empathy is conveyed. At the same time the author challenges the reader to question and uncover this treatment. Ultimately, in addressing these undesirable actions by the U.S. upon Hawaii both past and present, Perez-Wendt places the issue of sovereignty and restorative justice “on the table.”

I identify with this because Perez-Wendt and I share a commonality of our Native peoples' intergenerational genocide and colonization. My experience within the context of the historical and present occupation of the majority of Turtle Island (North America) by the U.S. For the anthology I put forth to edit I consciously chose identity as a point of intersection and emergence. The purpose, a transgression towards a political movement for decolonization and sovereignty for Native Americans through the power of art and poetry by Native American women. Part of bringing this idea to fruition has involved participation from the artists including naming the book. The title “Turtle Island to Abya Yala” now reflects our aim of coming together from the north and south across boundaries and current borders.

Response to Perez-Wendt

2009-11-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I found all the poems for this week to be an enjoyable read, but my favorite one by far is Perez-Wendt’s, “We Are Not the Crime We Are the Evidence.” In this poem the speaker is creating identity by using the words “they” and “us”. Because the speaker uses these words we can tell that there is a separation between two different types of people who are against each other. Although it is not clear what type of people we get that feeling because the words “they” and “us” make it seem like one group is better than the other.

From my understanding/reading of the poem I came to the conclusion that it is a piece about colonization. The reason I think it is poem about colonization is because the speaker of the poem uses words and sentences that can be interpreted as an act of colonialism. For instance, the speaker states, “ They’ve dusted us,” “Their fingerprints/ All over us.” For me that read as an act of colonialism because the speaker is not saying this in a positive light, instead he or she is presenting it negatively. The fact that the speaker says “they’ve dusted us” shows that he or she feels as if he or she is being swept away and forced to disappear. Also, the speaker may speaker feel as if he or she is being cleansed from his or her “savagery.” One can infer that this is a form of colonialism given that the elements of colonization are to cleanse and correct the ways of the other that are not like colonizer. Also, the fact that the speaker says they have fingerprints all over them shows that he or she feels as if his or her people are marked with the colonizers fingerprints.

In addition, the poem is filled with strong verbs such as “Chastened,” “Acquitted,” “Dismantled,” “Ignored,” and “Consigned.” When reading these verbs the first thing that came to mind was the act of colonization. These words can be used a description to show how the colonized subject has been torn apart by the colonizer. The colonized has been confined in “chastened cell” meaning he or she being restrained from what he or she wants to do or is being forced to do something. They have also been “dismantled” and “ignored” which for me means they have taken apart and put aside. This process of being taken apart and tossed to the side is very similar to act of colonization in terms of the colonizer changing the ways of the colonized to “correct” way of living.

So in this poem the poet is creating identity through the perspective of a colonized subject. The poet is challenging the generic term of identity because the speaker is identifying is his or herself as a colonized subject in contrast to identifying his or herself by his or her ethnicity. I like the fact that the speaker does not identify his or her ethnicity because anyone can relate to this piece, particularly if someone or a group of people has been colonized him or her. Does that make sense?

-Lizzie Chaidez

2009-11-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

Identity is like a prism or a diamond: there are many different ways we view our own identities, many different aspects to our personalities, many different histories through which we define what we consider to be our selves. The light refracted through the different surfaces of the prism shoots out in all directions, making a single definition of identity impossible. Steven Cordova’s “Of Sorts” is a good example of a prismatic identity poem. First and foremost (particularly for the writer), we are what we document. Cordova’s narrator is “faithful to that morning diary entry” and later on admonishes “write it down./ Or it will leave you.” The concrete nature of the word, its presence as a solid object, encapsulates the speaker’s identity, gives a narrative proof of the existence of the self. Parallel to this existence in words, there is also the life of the body. As thinking beings, we know no life without this. The body both does and does not belong to “us.” It does what it does often without permission from the intellectual mind. The body contains us. The body constrains us. We can never be more intelligent than the allowed potential of our minds. We can never achieve more than our bodies, our individual makeup, will permit. One man’s body designates that he can be a contortionist; another body allows only rigidity. Disease and disability define identity and are beyond the control of the intellectual mind. The body will do what the body will do. For this reason, Cordova’s poem brings us again and again to the body and its urgency. For the narrator, “the appointment with the doctor’s cold scope at noon” is a defining characteristic. If identity is defined by a person’s repeated actions, this recurring visit to the doctor, the “good-bye and hello” of it, becomes part of the narrator’s definition of the self. Cordova also ends the poem with the body: “You’re awake again, and must attend to something all too real, the need to pee.” Thus, the poem becomes a capsule for the self, the body containing the meat of the poem within, like a nesting doll.

There is a point in the center of the poem where the focus of identity turns from the exterior self to the interior self: from the body to the life of the mind and the dreams that it nurtures. This narrator’s dreams are antagonistic, illustrating for the dreamer his disbelief (or unfaithfulness) in himself and his discomfort with his present circumstances: “you’re in a place you’ve never been: a place you didn’t plan to go; but a place you did buy the ticket to.” This talk of dreams occurs in the center of the poem, following the circular motion the author has designed. In the center of the poem also appears a point where focus shifts from the narrator’s definition of identity to other people’s definition of his identity: “to begin, you’re in the home you’ve made for yourself; then you’re in a home others made for you.” This statement illustrates that there is a part of us that we define by what we believe are other people’s perceptions of us. An old adage states that there are three parts to the self: who we believe we are, who others perceive us to be, and who we really are. There are other triad groups that are used when referring to the self: “the Id, Ego and Superego," the “me, myself, and I,” the “Past, Present and Future.” Since Cordova’s poem reads like a capsule, we might expect to find in Cordova’s poem, a third inner layer nestled between the life of the body and the life of the mind. Is it coincidence then, that directly in the center of the poem, seven lines from both the top and the bottom, and directly in the middle of the page, we have the two words, “everything is?” Could this be the true self? The ineffable, indescribable self? Can one actually know oneself? Is who we actually are indefinable and unexplainable? Cordova is not talking about what happened to us in the past or what will happen to us in the future, but what currently is. Who we are now, unable to be examined and made sense of using the clarity provided by time and distance. Like stepping back from an impressionist painting, we desire to put ourselves in some sort of narrative form, to make sense of our identities and who we are, yet, in reality, all we have to hold on to is that “everything is.” In the up-close and personal view of the painting, we can divine the individual strokes and colors, but we cannot make sense of the painting as a whole. We are too close to the actual self to see it clearly, so we can only be what we are in that moment: the emotions and actions of each passing second. The poem moves in between these views, starting at a point standing back from the individual and approaching closer and closer until identity becomes blurred and unrecognizable, like a telescope narrowing in on an object until it becomes shapeless. Then Cordova pulls us back again, brings us back to the word, back to the body. Ultimately, as his last line suggests, the only things that we have of ourselves are things we are eventually bound to let go: “to expel what, for such a short time, was yours and yours alone."

Through his positioning of the words within the poem, Cordova makes two parallels: the word is the body and the dream is the mind. In between these two, there is everything else.

Finally, a brief word on the form of the poem. Cordova could have used any number of line breaks or created any shape for his poem, but the circular nature of the work leads me to believe that he might have found line breaks to be distracting from the poem's internal form. The poet begins and ends with statements about the body and writing, in the center of the poem is talk about the mind and dreams. He even uses the words "round trip." If the poem were arranged in lines instead of one solid block of text, we would not be able to see the circular pattern or appreciate the regularity of its shape. Is the form reminiscent of the "circle of life?" Is it meant to draw our attention to the presence of death (we were made from the dust and to the dust we will return)? I don't know for sure, but it definitely seems to me that any other arrangement would not even allow these considerations to be possible.

H.K.

2009-11-01T21:01:00.001-08:00

Ignorant IN IOWA by Victor Camillo dramatizes the conflicts between the realities of the speaker, particularly as this conflict relates to the speaker's guttural reaction to the world events and deaths he reads about in the paper. The speaker begins the line with "I am ignorant in Iowa." He creates his identity right away, yet he challenges what his identity means to himself and to his audience by stating:
"My watch should keep a little time
For the tortured who are shaking for their end."
The speaker needs to be reminded, that there are other people in the world who do have the same freedoms, who live on the brink of death every day, and that his ignorance needs to checked and reminded as to not to fall into complacency. The speaker's situation is not removed from the world, as he sits and chops it up with the folks from the community: "A man sat talking baseball and the lost with me in a coffee shop, How easy it is to wrap them up in words."

This moment with the man is not sustained throughout the poem, since the speaker's heart is not in forgetting or ignoring. The line "how easy it is to wrap them up in words" stands out to me because I identify with the push and pull of what is mine and what are the worlds. The rapes and murders of Juarez women is mine, there is no way to not have an emotional reaction to it. The speaker's voice feels sad and guilty that he cannot do anything about it and some react only to Jesus' s death:
In Iowa we eat our Easter cake with small forks, Sip coffee and talk on the day of the end of the death of Jesus, We are not the dark ones who die for no reason.

The speaker looks through a different lens in Iowa. Iowa is in the middle of nowhere, Iowa is Middle America, where not much happens, its not really diverse, yet there is an upsurge of Mexican immigrants there - working rural Iowa and making it grow. The people of Iowa live in an ignorant and sheltered world; religion seems to be a theme in the poem and how religion keeps the people stagnant and lost in their own world. The speaker creates his identity by changing his tone and stance: “Nobody will dare to walk over to the other side:
But nobody's prayers, knowing what the day is for, Will walk through the church isles and down the stairs, over the border of language through Mexico To Guatemala and El Salvador.” The fact that the speaker gets his news from the New York Times about the deaths and nameless faces of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala reveals that he is conflicted with his identity. He reveals in this line that the narrator is neither here nor there, neither American enough for Iowa or conscious and politicized enough to know what is going on in the world at every moment. Yet, in the most intimate parts of the day when he is face to face within the mirror:
"And when the hot water steams it and my image twists and bends,
I should be looking at the gray remnants of those who have been erased” the narrator’s face twists and bends, breaks and bends, twists and turns down roads that the darker people will never go down. The narrator’s identity is multifaceted, it seems he can live in many different worlds at once and then
Interestingly, the words that rhyme are "face" and "erased.” Also, there is a tone and rhythm in this poem where words rhyme but not every other line. The rhyme works well with this personal and sometimes fading piece. I say fading because the characters in the poem are only told through the perspective of the narrator, and the narrator has some conflicting emotions about his existence in Iowa, is it privilege or is it "A dot of ink in a newspaper, so many here, a few dozen there."

In poetry & pen,
Melissa

Identity continued

2009-11-01T18:50:00.000-08:00

I felt like my last blog was so short becuase what I wrote had copied so many times it was saying I had written to much.But I can see I hadn't. I wanted to let everyone know how much I miss hearing the amazing free-writes from the incredible poets in out class. But I have been having my own identity crisis so, so be it. You can only do what you can do. We are not the Crime We are the Evidence I do really like this piece and as I see it relate to identity I feel that it tell the story of having ones identity stripped, stolen, and removed. I alao think that is very powerful that the perpetrators are allowed to hide thier identity or what they have done. I get that in the line, " Aquitted themselves as well"
Of Sort by Sreven Cordova This prose piece is interesting. Its like everything about his identity is laid out for him wether he chose it, it was chosen for him or he doesn't even know who chose it. (His identity) But I love the ending. HOw funnny that peeing something your body who you are tell you you have to do. It is yours. It makes me question is identity that thing that is what make us who we are and yet me have no choice about. It seems like a more realistic view of identity. Rather than all the thing we are born into told we are, try on as being. All of those things don't strike me as very authentic.

I think I need to write a poem as a part of my freewrite missing from class
If I am wrong I'll find out.

So Here's my piece on identity

I got a name

I got a name
no its not
ms. blue hair
even with my big fat
black blue lip
I won't shut up

I got a name
one that was stolen
or sold
one that I cling to
like a story that explains
my I

the eyes that take in
too much
never enough

I got a name
and I'll spend a lifetime
or what time I have left
trying to remeber it

So I can
finally
shut up
and whisper softly
to myself
over and over

rembering who I am
who I was
before I was ever touched.

rembering I got a name.

2009-11-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

This week's theme of identity lends itself to several interpretations. Identity can either be illuminated by the unique experiences that distinguish individuals or by the interconnections that relate seemingly divergent groups of people. Both perspectives have merit and are deserved of expression. Maya Angelou establishes a universal identity in her poem Alone, that serves to not only parameterize her position but also that of every other person regardless of their particular experiences.

Angelou begins this piece with a specific personal experience that she then broadens to accommodate the general population. This progression first gives the reader an opportunity to identify with the speaker's experience and then with the experience of a seemingly foreign population (that may in fact be more familiar than the reader would prefer). Angelou writes,

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

This stanza simultaneously introduces and expands on the theme of the poem that the title alludes to. Angelou's usage of "out here" in the last line of this stanza defines the space that she is writing about. This vague description is both inclusive and exclusive. It serves to include every geographic, cultural, and religious experience while also highlighting the experience as exclusively human. The second stanza solidifies precisely what this unifying experience is- the interdependence that we all have on one another. As Angelou writes, "Nobody, but nobody/
Can make it out here alone."

Regardless of individual circumstance or location the speaker argues that none of us are capable of making it on our own. An important component to interpreting this unifying experience is the speaker's precise definition of "making it". In the first stanza Angelou writes that the only way "to find my soul a home/ Where water is not thirsty/ And bread loaf is not stone" is to recognize that we cannot find happiness in solitude. It is not that we are incapable of surviving alone, but rather that we cannot truly live until we allow ourselves to appreciate and connect with one another.

Every individual is able to identify with this poem, as each of us struggles to develop and maintain the relationships that make our lives worth leading. Of course it is the loss or destruction of these same relationships that can leave us feeling inconceivably alone and isolated. Angelou does not deny this, as the first few lines hint at the speaker's own feelings of solitude. These feelings are the catalyst to her understanding of the truest human experience- interconnectedness. As the speaker explains, loneliness should not be a deterrent from engaging in relationships but rather a motivational force to seek each other out .

The speaker also explains the inherent lack of a substitute for relationships. She writes of "some millionaires/ With money they can't use", who neglect their wives and families in exchange for work and social stature. In turn, they rely on "expensive doctors/ To cure their hearts of stone". Hearts of stone- a diagnosis with no medical remedy. Only a human one. It is not until each of us accepts our reliance on each other for support, appreciation, and love that we will be able to cure the stone hearts that plague our world. We are all uniquely human, with an undeniable need to identify with one another in the face of our differences. For "Nobody, but nobody/ Can make it out here alone".

-e. gutilla

Us & Them(s)

2009-11-01T14:41:00.000-08:00

Like Shel, I've been sitting with this piece by Perez-Wendt for a few days, wondering how it is we are meant to access the poem. “We Are Not the Crime / We Are the Evidence” is such a pointed title that it took me many reads to even begin absorbing what was going on inside the frame. I think perhaps the title is supposed to have that effect, the proverbial “stick ‘em up” moment of having a gun pointed in your direction. When I read it, I froze. I couldn’t remember anything that happened afterwards. I couldn’t really tell you any specifics about the initial encounter of the title, either, except to say that I sucked in my breath. Perez-Wendt turns the tables here, puts us (the general, the canon, the capital-u Us) on defense for once.

What’s interesting about the beginning of the poem is that without the title, it would be an easy access point. Like Shel mentioned, there is an intuitive understanding of a nursery rhyme here, or at the very least, a sing-song sway between punctuation. “They’ve dusted us / From toe to top / Well nigh / Two hundred years;” and we breathe, then begin again. She accomplishes this by shortening that third line and accenting in a way that drives forward motion. “Well nigh” (as well as “All over us” in the next section) has a forward lean to it, a momentum that helps us through “Two hundred years;” (and through “Uncontroverted, clear;”). Perez-Wendt is a master in these moments, truly schooling the form and working it for her benefit.

What’s happening while she’s linguistically manipulating us? The dusting of a people, specifically Hawaiian I think, over the entire period of the missionary occupation leading up to and through the (unconsensual) annexing by the United States in 1898. The searching for blame, even today, as Hawaiian is still rapidly eaten up and swallowed away by the imperialist language that, while no longer “required” there, has injected its colonial venom and is slowly wiping out history. “They’ve dusted us,” the speaker says, only to find “their fingerprints / All over us / Uncontroverted, clear.”

This is not a new story – the searching for a group or people or person or culture or whatever to blame for “substandard” or “uncivilized” or “urban” or “inner-city” living, only to find that the ones trying to point the finger are, in fact, the ones to blame.

“They’ve kicked the chair / From under us,” the speaker continues, “Acquitted themselves well.” The repetition that follows supports this recycling of history. The powerful and imperialistic repeatedly pull out the chair from under an area or people they have invited to “sit down,” if you will, and then look the other way when the area or people fall on their asses.

Perez-Wendt goes on, using the same imagery, but changing the metaphor of the chair. It goes from representing bailing on some kind of assistance, to stealing the chair (& thereby appropriating, like the US appropriates so many cultures for monetary gain). She doesn’t bother with the rest; there is too much to list. In the last two repetitions of this impacted triplet, we finally get the emotion. “Ignored the tolling bell,” whether that is a warning bell or an alarm bell, it doesn’t matter because both apply to the US, who has both continued to take from a country well past the point of subsistence, and continued to disregard requests (or rulings or laws or peace treaties) to stop its abuse after they’ve been made. They’ve “Consigned themselves to hell,” she writes, before volunteering “Etc. etc.” The poem doesn’t need more examples at this point, but including the “etc” really drives home that she would need more pages than available to really get into the wrongdoings. What’s important here, though, is that she has made her point that “We Are Not the Crime / We Are the Evidence.”

Just as a final note, there’s an interesting juxtaposition here of Us & Them. The “They”s aren’t clear and I’m not sure they have to be. Who is on Hawaii’s side except Hawaii? The United States (post-annexation) is what made Hawaii into a tourist destination, crowding its islands with vacationers and co-opting its culture for profit. The title infuses us with the idea of cause and effect and it would seem that Perez-Wendt is arguing that the only effects are visible in Hawaii, making everything else a cause. I only mention this because the “They” has multiple identities in this poem, showing up in a variety of faces and roles, while the “Us” stays the same. Even within the repetition, the Us never changes, but the lines including They are always different. Great technique, I think, for showing the tally marks building against Us.

Identity

2009-11-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Am I wrong to read Langston Hughes poem “As I Grew Older” optimistically? It begins with “It was a long time ago,” and I feel as if he has realized something in the intervening time about how to achieve his dream, how to “break through” the obstacles – the wall, the shadow, his blackness – that are preventing him from reaching it. He sees his dream “bright like a sun,” and he uses his “hands! [His own] dark hands!” to find the dream and “shatter the darkness.” I read this poem, and I find a message of taking control over one’s future. Our speaker redefines the blackness of himself to achieve his dream rather than let it stand in his way. He is capable of taking the pieces and putting them back together to again see the sun.

This vision of the sun appears again in Marian Haddad’s “I Have No History Here.” The sun here also represents a change in the poet’s view, and she makes a transition from having no history in her new location to acclimating. Her lack of punctuation in this piece is so interesting to me. The white spaces provide the separation and hesitation, but it’s almost seamless in the way it happens. We go from the past to the future, and, because there is no final period, there is no end. She drops into the grass with all of its allusions to growth and new beginnings. How does this occur? How has she “made a home/in a land [she] never knew?” Not only does she “write” herself, she “inscribes” herself. She re-creates her identity in a place that is unfamiliar by writing, expressing, and permanently putting her mark.

The line “are we not all welcome” keeps reading “we are not all welcome” to me, and I sense her discomfort in making this transition. She finds comrades “in-between the crowds” and the sun “between hills.” This “in-between-ness” is emphasized and is familiar to anyone who is limbo. You want to instantly belong when you make a move, but that can’t happen. There’s “something quiet” about discovering a new place – a quiet joy, but also a quiet trepidation. Will you fit in? Will you find others with whom you can identify? They won’t know your history; they will only know what you tell them and what they perceive.

Steven Cordova’s poem “Of Sorts” gave me similar impressions. Our speaker is someplace he never expected to be. He says, “you’re in a place...you didn’t plan to go; but a place you did buy the ticket to.” Even when you have bought the ticket, things don’t always turn out the way you had planned. You cannot anticipate how things will be before you get there. His poem, like Langston’s, speaks of dreams, and there are connections to be made between the idea of a dream as a goal and the idea of a dream as what our unconscious experiences and demonstrates when we are asleep. These ideas are intertwined in this poem when we’re told that it must be “writ[ten] down. Or it will leave...” The idea of writing as the method of holding onto something and, in some sense, making it real connects again to Haddad’s poem. The dream becomes tangible and recognizable the way “myself” does. It gets it out of your head and onto paper, and it’s easier to deal with. Cordova uses the word “philander” to describe how dreams cheat the transition “between present, past, and future.” We want to experience all simultaneously, and although physically, we cannot do this, aren’t we the sum total of our experiences? I may have relocated to a different location, but don’t I bring with me the place I was before? Am I the same person, or can I really leave my baggage behind?

These poems spoke to me on personal level because I have moved so many times and have had to start over in new locations. Each move has been an enriching experience, but it’s also been painful. When you leave behind what’s familiar, you leave behind your support systems, and you often leave behind what’s been keeping you grounded. Each time, you have to redefine yourself and overcome “the wall,” the “shadow.” Perhaps if I had been writing poetry about these changes, it would have given me an outlet to articulate the feelings and made it easier to make the “whirling” pieces fit together in their new configuration.

Sheila Joseph

Identity

2009-10-31T23:09:00.000-07:00

Marian Haddad
First of all I like the forward stating about her poetry that it, “insists on the ‘connective instead of the divisive’ aspect of difference” (Inclined, 102). The range of her cultural experiences and knowledge of languages reminds me of a certain Professor I know.
Malfunctioning FLOWTRON
I love the two line rhythm and the dashes. I think this is a poem about her father dying of cancer But the relationship of identity comes out in his asking for Agua instead of water or the Arabic word for water. What I took away from this piece is that dying or being close to death reminds us that we are in the end the sum of all our experiences, homes, identities, and that being close to death makes the censor of our thoughts quite. So, the internal fight about identity is no longer an issue that shows itself in external thoughts or choices regarding what language we ask for our basic needs. His snoring mouth informs the reader that he is alive and that is music to the poets ears.
I Have No History Here
Again I like the two line rhythm. But this piece is broken also in space between words. The spaces really work to make the reader pause long enough to get the poets intention and not skip over how much weight two, three, words or a word can hold.
“out my window the sun
no longer the night nearing”
The spacing makes it feel different. I can imagine her seeing the sun out the window and being relived to have the darkness of night and fear distant at least for a moment. To be able to convey that with word spacing and order is really great. Order is important in achieving this as well. The line would be so different if it read, The night no longer out my window the sun nearing.
Because the night will in reality always be nearing, with the space and the order of the words it gives the feeling that somehow the sun out side of her window erases the possibility of night being an impending force. Pretty complicated for two lines.
The lines I liked the best were
“I have made a home
In a land I never knew”
“I am starting to write myself
down inscribe myself”
In this line again it is the spacing that is so significant.
I love the idea of writing yourself down. But with down being separate it can give the word many meanings. In one way I think of down as being depressed and writing about one self can certainly so that. Or it can be putting your self on to the page writing yourself into existence. But “inscribe myself” makes me think of tattooing or permanently carving a place into the world through words and your own body. In the context of identity I think that both creating a home and carving out a place where you exist in the world is the crux of what identity means. The way that identity express both the extremely private and public simultaneously makes identity an intensely complicated concept that people struggle with individually and collectively throughout their entire lives. Individually identity resides in the home or the soul and collectively identity resides with public perceptions or representations of issues like race, gender, culture, ect…

Who are I - Who is we

2009-10-31T21:01:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween everybody. Interesting that our blog topic is Identity on the one weekend a year that we celebrate the opportunity to be someone else.

Perez-Wendt's poem in Effigies, "We Are Not the Crime / We Are the Evidence," reclaims identity with the title. Labeled "crime" or criminal by conquerors, the "we" of this poem can hold their heads high - they have been renamed in ownership of history and the wrongs laid on them.

The poem is a re-writing of a nursery rhyme. It demonstrates identity by setting the form in contrast to the content. The European rhythm speaks of the structure of history, the parameters for the people set by foreign invaders, and also of the disdain the European invaders (dressed benignly as missionaries) had for the people, looking upon them as children, uneducated uncivilized underlings that needed help. The content within this structure objects to that perspective, and retells the history from the truth of the people.

The choice of language is a thumb to European indoctrination: "nigh," "uncontroverted," "chastened," "the tolling bell," "consigned," all hint at the imposed culture, attitude, and objectives of the conquerors. "They've kicked the chair from under us" demonstrates through repetition the waves of invaders that have inundated the Pacific island chain. "The chair" referring perhaps to sovereignty, "from under us" indicating the foundation of tradition lost each time. The "Etc. etc." is awesome! Who ends a poem like that? How better to show the volume of injustice, the boredom of the imposed structure, the lies ad nauseum.

Identity intersects within the poem by turning the presumed binary on its head. Where the meeting of cultures has been recorded from the view of the conquerors, this poem re-orients the identity of us v. them. "Them" often refers to the subjugated, the expelled; here, identity is reclaimed by placing the honor of the label "us" within the perspective of the indigenous population.

Perez-Wendt is of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Spanish ancestry. The blend of invader and indigenous in her blood must make for an interesting battle of identity. Though we cannot know to what class her Spanish grandparents belonged, they were able to acquire land, which demonstrates some level of social mobility. It is also telling of the blend we all are, and the struggle for identity faced by most people of mixed ancestry. The Spanish parts likely include Arabic blood, as her grandparents emigrated from Malaga, Spain, a city in Andalusia, the hub of Muslim power in Spain from 711 to 1492. Interesting then, that the conqueror portion of her ancestry likely includes blood from its conquerors as well.

Perhaps because of the multiple perspectives she speaks from, though they may be unified in her being, this poem speaks not only to Hawaiian people, but to all who have endured subjugation by invaders. I connect with this poem through its underdog identification, the fight from the floor, the refusal to stay down. Though my skin is white, I have always identified with the persecuted portion of the world's population. I am always eager to apply my skills to the side of the fight that is not supposed to win, that is unfairly matched, that is unjustly treated. Maybe I'm serving out a sentence for past-life wrongs. Maybe I wasn't always white.

Struggles with my own identity will be played out in my work, I'm sure. Right now, my mind is blown by Steven Cordova's poem, "Of Sorts." The title itself suggests a conglomeration of identities, pieces and parts and uncertainty about where they fit. So much is happening in this poem, I don't even know what's going on. He seems to be questioning identity as a human even, defined as having a body that we are necessarily committed to. By bringing dreams and changing relationships in the space-time continuum into the mix, he puts the corporeal definition of humanity to task.

This may be a stretch, but work with me. In searching the poem for reference to identity, some revelation (as in a revealing) of who is searching and who is found in this poem, I submit that the identity (at least one) he writes about is that of a writer. I think this because of the following lines:

"...recount out loud...Or write it down. Or it will leave you...the need...to expel what, for such a short time, was yours and yours alone."

These words remind me of the dilemma for writers, the lack of ownership of a created thing once the words are laid on the page or stage.

"the need to pee" (after waking up from a dream) relates the physical to the metaphysical. And also hints at the relationship of creation to waste. What this relationship is I don't know, but it makes me think of something we read in Gevirtz' Craft of Poetry that I cannot remember well enough to quote or find. Maybe a classmate can help me out - it was something about art being beautiful waste.

I have more questions of this poem than answers for it. I will ask them in hopes that it sparks discussion or comment.

In the section, "To begin...did buy the ticket to," that describes the flip-flopping of time and space in dreamland, and the changing aspects of ownership from waking to dreaming, he seems to be focused on "movement," and it strikes me that there is some relationship of movement to identity. The changes in identity for populations caused by movement across the globe, the internal movement of shifting identities - anybody got a handle on this?

A diary seems to relate to identity as a record of time and thought. He describes it as necessary discomfort: "the appointment with the doctor's." I wonder if this characterization relates to the grounding activities we feel are required to define ourselves, to stay positioned as a replacement for being "healthy."

Body as ground, as nation, is suggested in this waking space. Commitment to the physical as real. He confounds me on the fourth line, saying, "in your dreams at night you're a bigger infidel." Bigger than what? This is the first mention of being an infidel at all. The notion of treason, within oneself and among bodily processes (sleep) required for health, is fascinating. Maybe the faithfulness he speaks of in waking hours is a facade, for the subconscious takes over in dreams and we cannot control perception. This brings up the question, to which or whom are we unfaithful and when - the waking hours may actually belie the truth of existence. And also draws upon the shaky ground of the word "infidel." Used so often (especially since the U.S. invaded Iraq) as a term of perspective, its meaning determined by the identity of the person speaking it. What do they say? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Anyway, I think what Cordova does in this poem is breathtaking. And I am hoping for more minds at work on what is happening here. The connection of time, space, movement, and physical/metaphysical states to the notion of identity deserves a collaborative inspection.

Haddad & Identity

2009-10-31T17:47:00.001-07:00

Thanks for the very directed reading response questions, Identity group—I’m excited to go deeper into these twelve poems on Tuesday! (Especially Camillo’s “The Monster of the Dead”, which I didn’t have space to blog about – his crying for the immortality of the doll, the beauty of the wine, the transparency of its glass – amazing stuff!)

When considering how these poets create or challenge identity in their pieces, I thought of Marian Haddad’s “Malfunctioning FLOWTRON.” This poem places us in the hospital room of a dying man; we do not know his relationship to the poet—he could be a grandfather, father, uncle, father-in-law, mentor—because that element is not critical to this piece. The tension established in the early lines tells us there is a close relationship and impending sorrow: “—he is /sleeping better now—quiet/makes us think—our minds/crank every few minutes, eyes/open…” The enjambment (yea, I wrote that word down in my notebook) and series of m-dashes make the verse stutter, and mimic the “cadence/of the high pitched beep…” The words are caught in this image of cranking minds, minds that seem afraid of the quiet that will force them to think. We know that the speaker is tired, stretched out, and anxious about the state of this man; so we gather she loves him without needing to know who he is to her.

His identity is then tossed around even more—we are offered suggestions and then those suggestions are negated. He asks for Agua in his hazy, Morphine-padded state, so we gather this word must be quite familiar to him, a word that comes from his deep subconscious. Then we are told he is not Mexican (as though this is the only type of person who could ask for water in Spanish). I was slightly offended by that line, and wondered if the poet chose it to play on the assumptions some Americans have that all Spanish-speakers are of Mexican heritage or nationality. Two lines later we learn that he is American and Arabic. But wait—Arabic is a language, not an identity. Again, the poet seems to be playing with our assumptions—that if a person speaks Arabic, it must mean he is an Arab. I’m fairly certain this isn’t true, considering the fact that millions of people around the world, primarily in Northern Africa and what is known as the Middle East speak Arabic but may not consider themselves Arabs. (If anyone else has more insight on this cultural identity, please speak up!) Defining Spanish-speakers as Mexican disacknowledges all other Spanish-speaking South and Central American (not to mention European) nationalities as much as defining all speakers of Arabic as Arabs homogenizes many ethnic identities into one umbrella term.

Of course, after I spent some time breaking this down and presuming what stereotypes Haddad is playing on, I read her bio, which identifies her family as Syrian-Americans living on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border, and as speaking English, Arabic and Spanish at home. So perhaps her use of the word “Mexican” is more intentional; perhaps the man in the poem was often mistaken for Mexican because of the family’s proximity to the border and his Syrian features. (My partner is Sri Lankan and is often mis-identified as Latino—folks will speak Spanish to him when he walks around Berkeley and he doesn’t understand a word of it.) I might even go so far to say that this potential mis-identification of the man in the poem was not always disadvantageous—perhaps he felt more at home on one side of the border than the other; perhaps his new-forged identity as a Spanish-speaker had some commonality with his identity as an Arab-American; perhaps there is even an degree of “passing” here that happened between the two. I bring this up because, in her bio, Haddad is quoted as seeking the “‘connective instead of divisive’ aspects of difference” in her work.

Later in the poem, the subject is infantilized, as he is portrayed sucking the water sponge like a mother’s nipple. Finally, he sleeps and we end with the sound of his snores, much like we began with the sound of the beeping—the sound of the living versus the sound of the dying. Haddad is further exploring the connectivity of these opposing identities—elderly and newborn, living and dying—as she pairs these sounds and images and synthesizes their presence in one person.

So many of the images in this poem could have been taken from my own witnessing of grandparents struggle against age and health—the dryness of the mouth caused by the Morphine, the beeping of the monitors (wondering if they hear, how it affects them), the feeding of the sponge stick. In the last days of my stepgrandfather’s life, he lay with his head back and mouth sticky-dry. All he asked for was water and all we could do was run that moist little sponge over his lips and his tongue. Sometimes he gripped it with the muscles of his mouth, absorbing the only fluid allowed (drinking water would have actually been harmful to him at this state). This man never asked anyone to do anything for him in life, and here we—the women of his family, only recently joined by marriage—were feeding him droplets of water, massaging his arms, warming his cool-shallow cheeks, and inserting Morphine enemas. He was transformed from a regal man into a helpless child, and witnessing this transformation made me feel first slightly sickened, and later, more intimately close to him than ever before.

I imagine many people have held this same sort of vigil over the loved and the dying, and that this poem is not just for Haddad’s unnamed loved one, but for each of ours, or for the shared love/pain that life’s last transformation erupts in us.

2009-10-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

A Lost Memory of Delhi, reads just as such. A lost memory. Something that you can barely remember and maybe it's just a color, or a pattern, or a flash of people. This poem reads like any train of thought or memory should, and it packs a punch to go with it.

I am not born
it is 1948 and the bus turns
onto a road without a name

This poem is immediately confusing or startling because of the voice of the narrator, the child. Where are they physically in this? Do they exist, are they merely watching. The tone in this pieces speaks as if the narrator is viewing their parents from a great distance, it doesn't feel close, and this isn't the normal, "observing my parents." There is some subtle and some blatant use of phrase that makes this piece a little darker than most, as if the person, (who we know is directly involved because they are the child,) is an outsider looking into a very beautiful world that they aren't exactly belonging to.
The poem is divided into 3 line stanzas that make up this piece, which gives each stanza a mini story, or a snap-shot of a moment, which is very fitting when they talk of family albums. Within the stanza there is a beautiful image, but to juxtapose it, there is a very uncomfortable aura that comes with it. Lines such as: I am not born, I pass my parents, She doesn't see me, all of these lines alone don't have the same impact as they do when they are accompanied by the beauty that is so OBVIOUSLY separate from this person. This comes to a head at the very end of the poem in the last three stanzas:

I want to tell them I am their son
older much older than they are
I knock keep knocking

but for them the night is quiet
this night of my being
they don't they won't

hear me they won't hear
my knocking drowning out
the tongues of stars

Wow. That is an AMAZING, and visceral way to end this poem. From "I am not born," to the "night of my being," it come to a full circle. When I first read this poem, I thought of conceiving a child, from the view-point of the fetus: viewing a world that they dont belong to yet. However we do see that the narrator is viewing these things, which makes this even more confusing. It'll be interesting to get some thoughts on this in discussion. I think this has a lot to do with the insider outsiders within family, but also children relating to their parents. The narrator stresses SO hard that he is older than they are. Of course it is not literal, but why would a child think that they are older than their parents? Old soul? It feels like the parents are so carefree, living this beautiful life, and the son, the narrator is more realistic. They see the faded photographs and the broken lamp, they see reality for what it is, and it is that alone that separates them in this poem.

... Sigh

Can I just hear that one part again?

hear me they won't hear
my knocking drowning out
the tongues of stars

mmmm.

Bluey aka Michaela C. Ellis

Amiri Baraka ( Via Amanda Johnston's blog)

2009-10-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

eh yo!

2009-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

What I really thought was interesting about what we read from Bum this week was how much form varied from poem to poem. I think most of the time when people think of Spoken word or performance poetry they assume that it has no relationship to the page. But poems like Beauty Ritual, Medusa, A Blue Black Pearl, and Hey Yo/Yo Soy! show just how important the page and space can be even when the poem is being read.

The poem that stood out for me the most was Hey Yo/Yo Soy! because it takes over the page so much. It’s a poem that to me seems to have a sense of machismo but also this sort of sadness at the way that this machismo plays at. The way that it moves across the page and takes up so much space, adds to this sense of oppressive energy. There is nowhere to run to because Jesus Papoleto Melendez, uses practically every inch of the page. He is completely in your face as you read the poem. In performance, this kind of space might be shown by walk around the stage and really engaging with the audience but what reading the work on the page forces your mind to feel invaded in a way in which the performance can’t.
In terms of content v. form, I think the two are working together in this poem. I think in this poem especially the form of the poem is building upon the content. It helps us get a sense for where the poem is coming from and feel the full weight of the poem. I think in some poetry form and content can feel like they don’t really go together or it feels like one is consuming the other. Hey Yo/Yo Soy! incorporates form into content to a point where they feel as though they cannot be separated from each other. For me the words by themselves feel a little abstract at times and at times, it could feel exclusionary with the Spanish but I think that the form adds this other element.

I think the big question for me is whether form is necessary for poetry. Personally, I think that this question is way bigger than it seems. For some poets form and content and intrinsically linked and this tends to be people who have more traditional styles but also for people who believe that poetry is solely meant to be read on the page. For some people poetry is a solely oral tradition. And in most of those cases, I would say that form just isn’t necessary. Personally, I’m of the camp that poetry should be both for the page and the stage and if that means that form becomes necessary then great. I guess I’m saying that writing poetry in itself is a form so it is necessary. Now the more hardcore methods of creating form…. not so much.

Kai's Beauty Rituals 2000

2009-10-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

I don't think I ever thought about form as much as I have in the last year. It has become a part of what I see on the page as much as the content of the poem. In my own writing, I experiment with form now and then (or as the poem requests). So this week's look at form helps me continue an internal conversation with all of you.

I've always thought of poetic form as a sort of "order" to the writing. By that I mean, the poem's form is a way for the poet to use the page to "order" the words and sometimes the meaning so that the reader can interact with the writing more closely to the way the poet intends. Of course we (poets) have no real control over what the reader does once they are alone with the poem, but form gives us a false sense of security over the poem. I guess I think of form as the outside of the poem and the content as the inside, but that they cannot (and should not) be separated (if done well). [I already know the stage folks are saying, but what if a poem doesn't live on the page? -- right, right. I'm talking about page poetry here! And I do know/believe that stage poetry has form as well -- that's another discussion.]

So, with all that rambling done, here's what this week's reading made me think:
The shape of a poem gives me the first impression. I look at the poem and before I read anything, I see the shape it has on the page. It's kinda like meeting someone for the first time. Before they say anything, you've already made a "judgment" or assessment based on the way they look. (And if you are digging them, you look at their shape -- right?)

Then, I look past the outside and try to connect to the inside, the content. Once I interact with the content, I try to find a relationship to the form and the content. Sometimes I see it right away and sometimes I must look a little deeper than the surface and still other times, I realize that there isn't a relationship, it was just a choice (or lack of choice) the poet made.

The inherited form in beauty rituals 2000 by Nwenna Kai caught my attention as I flipped through the beauty is moving us forward section of Bum Rush. I call it inherited (not my original idea) because it reminds me of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls poem. The slashes catch me first and I go to my brain file for Shange and remember Kearney, who we read last week, and then I read Kai.

Kai's poem gives us a list of what makes her ritual of beautification. It's a list and so I find the slashes work to separate the list while simultaneously giving the reader direction on how to read the poem and where to breath. I also think it was a conscious choice to use only one stanza (another element of form). The compactness of this one stanza gives the feeling that all of things must be in place for the ritual to take place; well, except the item that reads /maybe maple brown lip gloss open-toed shoes/

Ending with God is an interesting choice. Because we've gotten use to the listing of items, it almost seems like Kai wants us to know that in the end, God is the item that matters. And God can represent nature and natural-ness in this case. The list starts with really unnatural elements: comb/toe rings/titty rings/rings for the clitoris too/ and gradually shifts to more natural items:

extra virgin olive oil
shea butter
maple brown
cypress leaves
cranberry
henna
oranges and lemons
hot steaming water
exhalation

In this instance, the poem and the form are working with one another. Kai's list and use of slash marks provide a dual reading of the poem -- as a list slowly written out or as a rapidly fired list of things one must check off. Either way the reader interacts with the poem, the form serves it well.

peacelovelight
Kiala

A Word or 500 on Form

2009-10-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

"the poem alone"
hmmm. what is that exactly? it sounds so much like poetry, like it should fit. "alone" and "poem," linked in the psyche of 10,000 poets, and the reason 10,000,000 more attempt poetry. But "poem" is itself 10,000 things; by definition, "it" cannot be singled out; "it" is connection.

I do not begin this way to pick at our esteemed discussion leaders (though by now you know me to revel in playful barb), but to get to this talk of form and the intricacies traversed by poetry.

Form, to me, in this post-sonnet and line measure, post-free verse landscape, is a way of enacting nonverbal cues. Stage direction. Even for poetry not written for stage, there is presence to a poem; there is a space that the poem creates and inhabits, with movement and meaning that cannot be expressed in word. Setting. And instruction. A direction, which, ironically, often provides freedom from established reading norms. Structure that invites, provokes, entices the reader to consider the direction a word might take - form makes line and yet makes possible a reading between the lines.

Aloud, the poet interprets these stops and questions through body language and inflection. Often line breaks aren't followed, because they are not needed to slow and manage the sight read of a poem. Some meanings are missed and left on the page, but perhaps a poem is different in air than it is in the mind. Perhaps it is a different poem all together, no more and no less than the one on the page.

I think what is missing from many of the poems we read for this week is an integration of form and content. You can slap a poem on a page, and if all elements are not considered, then I consider it weak. At the same time, you can impose structure on a poem, and if it is only a casing, not informing the content, then I say there is work to be done. Because whether or not you intend it, the form does inform the content. This is why it is crucial to consider form in the crafting. If you don't pay attention to it, the form might be saying, "I don't know what I'm doing." Poems are loudmouths - they will tell on you.

The old guy that's glad to be alive and writes in all caps, calls up for me a person who did not grow up in the computer age, who stuck the keyboard on caps lock and went to town. This doesn't speak informative form to me. It speaks a lack of familiarity with computer etiquette, or "I survived so I'm going to scream at everybody." And I think of all the double or triple margins that might have helped this poem, the space that could have hinted at the passage of time, the thought of placement on the stage of the paper that might have made the work seem more like a poem and less like a 12-step journal entry (no offense meant, big up and much love to those in recovery).

Aside from attempted set structures, I believe a poem calls for it's form. Often a poet gets in the way of what a poem wants to say. And so to be open to the poem, in conversation with it, as it becomes (or occurs) can only enhance the connection of form and content and make for a tighter, "better" poem. Whether or not the form enhances the poem or detracts from it depends on how well the poet listened to the poem, thought of each space and the meaning lent to the message. At sixteen we were all putting words on paper. Would you look back now and call the early stuff your best work? I wouldn't. I understand much more now about the entry points for meaning, how to create levels, how to write about more than a broken heart.

Form, or the consideration of what the poem's construction says in conversation with the content, seems as essential to me as a skeletal system. Without this, a poem is often mush on a page. Is it necessary? Only if you want people besides your mother to call it a poem.

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie does some interesting things with form in her poem "Medusa." The placement of words adds to the setting, to the turn of past and present that she speaks of in the poem. The left-most margin represents today; she starts here to show the strength of her reclamation, presses it up to the spine of the book. The next margin that appears, though third from the left, represents the painful past of being excluded for her appearance, and is set by the end of "a shedding," to demonstrate what she has shed.

The two stanzas on this margin seem interrupted by three lines that push toward the left strong-woman edge but don't quite make it there. They fall short because in them, she and the friends try to feel beautiful in a way that denies their own beauty.

She returns to the left margin as she speaks proudly and playfully of her hair with a mind of its own, and the final line in that stanza, "beckoning brown hand," returns to the margin where she spoke of the old notion of seductive qualities. This shows a reclamation of what is beautiful; her qualities become "1,000 spiraling waists" that beckon brown hand and replace a time when "seduction looked like...tresses fingers eased through."

The final stanza is set on the innermost margin, a fourth, and speaks to the reader of this knowledge going deeper than the discrimination and the pain of the past. A true reclamation of self, routing out all the fallacies that once held her down. I reprint it here because I like it so much. It does that last-line bam-dam thing.

"As a plaited girl
I was stung by the word 'Medusa'
As a woman
I am unafraid to turn men to stone."

So I guess you could put the words down and say that they don't need a form, but I feel like that is only writing half the book and calling it finished. If you don't take enough time to give your poem a body, why am I taking the time to read it?

2009-10-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

So...group 2......As I read through the poems Bobby Miller's "My Life As I Remember It" is utterly amazing. A simplistic yet melodic description of his life in the most straightforward sense and demeanor possible. And I absolutely love it. One thing that I did notice was miller's reference to numbers. I noticed all but one time did miller reference even number to things that were more positive than other subjects that were associated with odd numbers.

AT TWO YEARS OLD I WHISTLED AT THE MAILMAN
AND SET A PATTERN FOR YEARS TO COME.
AT FOUR I DANCED IN THE SUNSHINE OF OUR FRONT YARD,
AN INTERPRETIVE DANCE TO THE GODS...
AT SIX I TOLD MY CLASSMATES THAT I WAS FROM ANOTHER GALAXY
LIGHT YEARS AWAY...
I'VE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK AT LEAST TEN TIMES AND I'M
READY
TO GO AGAIN UNTIL THESE FEET WON'T CARRY ME
ANYMORE...

MY NINTH GRADE REPORT CARD WAS ALL D'S AND F'S EXCEPT
FOR ART AND MUSIC CLASS...
AND I FEEL BETTER NOW AT FORTY THAN I DID AT
TWENTY-FIVE.

The one line where I feel it changes is on the top of page 450
I'VE LOST EIGHT THOUSAND IN CASH GAMBLING AND WON
FIVE HUNDRED
ON A BET IN LESS THAN A MINUTE

But still even in this line it ends in "less than a minute" which could be considered 59 and that is an odd number; the negative subject in reference to that odd number is losing more than he had gained. So in the form of this poem I see much form in relation to number's and their positive or negative significance and/or representation. The FEELINGS I got from this poem was triumph, warmth, cold, bitter, wise, sweet, high-intellect, experienced, confusion, sorrow, pain, guilt, and last but not least freedom. This poem took me through some highs and lows and carried me through his story with such imagery that spiritually placed me in his shoes as the story went on. As far as the form enhancing the message I would say yes. The capitalization with the letters and punctuation Miller uses is eye catching and has much depth to it. I also noticed that when he lists things out on page 448-49, when Miller speaks of the diseases there are 9 (negative), and when he goes on explaining his religious affiliations and for the lack of better words occupations, those two listings are 14 and 26 (positive).
The form of the poem draws you into the life and context of the poem while leaving you with the safety and comfort of your surroundings and personal beliefs. I personally would be very much interested to meet Bobby Miller because he seems like a very interesting person. lol. People who have been to hell and back making heaven on earth are the most intriguing people alive. They have seen the unseen and to me are a portal between here and beyond. Most people would classify that as crazy or insane, but aren't most geniuses mentally unstable anyways??????

-Dorothy

Form & Alsadir

2009-10-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

My housemate, who is a visual artist, told me the other day she was going to separate form and content in her process. Once she decided what her content would be, and entered into creating the form, she found herself questioning her original vision to the point of distraction and reconsidering her content. (Her current project involves stitching lines of prose into a canvas...) This got me to thinking about whether form and content can be divided in the creation of poetry—do we come up with an idea, or a collection of words and see how they tumble onto the page? Or is form integral in the planning/creation of a poem?

When I was working in letterpress last fall, I found myself constantly adjusting my text to fit within the boundaries of handset type. This line won’t fit into the typestick, or there aren’t any more g’s in 12 pt Garamond, etc. There was something very powerful about these limitations. Choices had to be final because there was so much tedious work to undo them (breaking down lines, letter by letter, into their appropriate cubbies). It made me consider how valuable each word was, and what it was doing (as a prose writer, I tend to overuse them). So, in this case, form dictated content. The poems I printed were not the ones I had originally typed up on my laptop or typewriter, or scribbled in my journal—but this was the only way these poems could be expressed in the form. And one could run your fingers over the page and feel the debossed letters—an experience far more intimate than reading a longer, or more explicit, line on an offset page.

So, that is my tangent, now to the texts at hand. I’ve been considering Nuar Alsadir’s use of couplets in all three of her poems. The first thing couplets make me think of is that each line needs to be paired with another, needs a partner. This is a consideration for a poet who is crafting the poem—everything that wants to be said must fit within the decided structure. I noticed in “Bats,” (which was so special to me, because I am seduced by the lives and secrets of bats, and feel they are such ill-treated, underappreciated beings!) that each set of lines served a dual purpose that could not be replicated had the lines been shuffled.

In “Bats,” each couplet offers a physical description or visual element (of the bat) and also a reflection, or connection to the outside world (often, the human’s world).

ONE:
description – wings, not like rodents
reflection – “—not like you” (the m-dash pointing to those words is stern and intentional, a warning about the tone of the poem.)

TWO:
d – clicking of fangs
r – “they are not ashamed”

By the end of the poem, the descriptive and reflective elements have merged; they are no longer easy to separate, their meanings overlap and enhance one another.

FIVE:
d – “swim the air”
r – rising from dreams to belief

SIX:
d – clap/applause, changing direction
r – not needing applause, changing direction

Another thing that came up for me with the couplets was a feeling of authority and calm in the voice. The information is supplied steadily, uniformly (in terms of space on the page). Reading the couplets makes the pace of the poem slower and puts me at ease with the poet. The lines are almost aphoristic in this manner, particularly in “The Riddle of the Shrink.” There is so much continued white space between the lines that we are invited to read between them, to add our own impressions within the poet’s observations and reflections.

Primarily the language and form, but also the content, made me trust Alsadir—I feel entranced by her words, and I want her knowing, poetic voice to guide me & accompany me from this point onwards!

2009-10-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

Beirut Survivors Anonymous by Haas H. Mroue

We are experiencing post - traumatic stress
somewhere in Massachusetts, Colorado.
We don't attend Beirut Survivors Anonymous.

As a direct address to the Beirut civil war "Beirut Survivors Anonymous" by Haas H. Mroue presents the conflicts concerning the aftermath of the war and how the civilians escaped, particularly as this conflict relates to how the narrator's "culture that has no name" find refuge in material goods and ecstasy pills yet they truly find refuge in the "rhythm of the Mediterranean." From rooftops the speaker looks at rockets fly over head: "until my eyes hurt." The speaker notes that he is in contact with the outside world through radio:

I listen for names of the dead
on the radio, putting faces to names,
scars to bodies, burns to flesh.

The narrator’s tone is melancholy with tinges of irony and contempt. The narrator’s contempt is for the fact that his generation drives BMW’s, yet they wish for:

a flying roadblock,
Howitzers, sniper, anything
to replace the monotony of oceans.

A howitzer is a type of artillery piece that is characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent.

The narrator uses “eyes” as symbolism to carry the poem back and forth from Beirut to the States. The eyes contribute to the poem’s theme by being in the beginning, middle and end of the poem.

Although there is not a resolution in the poem, the eyes play with the notion that the eyes are windows to one’s soul. Eyes witness, eyes cry, eyes can go blind, eyes close and sleep, eyes see and reveal truth and lies. The narrator reveals that he has “always been alone. But now I sink and it’s not the Mediterranean.”

The comparison and contrast of the oceans represents the miles and miles that the narrator is from home. The narrator’s deep connection with Beirut is revealed in the first line “on good nights I watch rockets fly.”
The narrator is then flying in an airplane:

I fly coach cross- continent
searching for someone
to recreate my childhood with.

Post-traumatic stress is also known as "fight" or "flight" when someone is afraid. The fact that the narrator says "searching for someone to recreate my childhood with" emphasizes his inability to cope with death and that he witnessed all that death.

The narrator points to specific “I” moments but then quickly changes to “we” to describe the impact of the war on a community. “You” is only time mentioned once towards the end of the poem:

You can look into our eyes
and see we’ve been to Beirut.

“You” may suggest Americans, youth from the current generation, elders, family, or strangers.

There are many end-paused lines good, fly, dead, candlelight, now, sink, someone, no name, young.

I found it interesting that the second to last stanza's first line
"You can look in our eyes" can be on its own with the last line of the poem:
"after a car bomb."

Post - traumatic stress is experienced collectively even though all the survivors are in Colorado, Los Angeles, Long Island, Burbank, Fort Lauderdale, on the corner of College and 13th, Massachusetts, Colorado. As a side note, there has been a recent study that taking ecstasy pills radically improves PTSD survivors. Interestingly, Mroue mentions "popping ecstasy pills hoping to be artistic." Ecstasy releases the narrator's generation from the war and is a way to be emotionally detached from reality. I believe that the narrator is being elusive after he lists the ways his generation escapes but its not as real as:

"wishing for a roadblock,
Howitzers, snipers, anything
to replace the monotony of the oceans
for the rhythm of the Mediterranean."

~Melissa

The Riddle of the Shrink

2009-10-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

I wondered about the use of couplets in Nuar Alsadir’s “The Riddle of the Shrink.” The couplets in this poem are open-ended, and the words in the lines continue into the next couplet, but the structure forces a pause between each one. The white space breaks up the reading of the poem and, as it creates a disjointedness between the lines, it also magnifies the tension described in the poem.

The language of the poem talks about “distress,” “disconnects,” “fear,” and “strain,” and the form of the poem parallels and reinforces the language. The overriding feeling I got from the poem, even trying to read it without the breaks between lines, was anxiety. It starts in the first line, “It is the distress of losing a ticket/or any other document granting passage.” What is “it” that’s causing the distress? We sense that we won’t get where we’re going. The unease builds when “the phone disconnects” and increases because we expect “to be let in” and gain access, but we miss “a secret.” By leaving us hanging, and then taking us someplace we didn’t expect to be, the split between couplets emphasizes the separation. The poem continues but without the continuity we were anticipating; this adds to the discomfort we are experiencing.

The form of the poem interrupts the flow of the reading, but there is flow in the language. If the poem were written in stanzas with complete thoughts grouped together, it would still create the unease, but perhaps without as much “strain.” Because most of the poem is written in the present tense, we feel like the action is either taking place right now or it happens on a regular basis. We go from one state of being to another; we "become the letter/that never receives a response;” we become “the ball/that rolls under the neighbor’s fence and stays.” The metaphors shift, but we are in the moment, and, at the same time, becoming something else. There’s a state of constant transition. It is the form of the poem that adds the hesitation and gives us pause.

Midway through the poem we are told, “The image of the future is the memory of the dream...” It’s a vivid image of living both in the future and in the memory of the past, but we’ve “forgotten [the] code,” so where do we go from here – forwards, backwards, or in-between? It feels like we ourselves are “suspended between this world/and the next.” This is consistent with being a letter that doesn’t receive a response – do we belong to the writer or the recipient? The ball stays in the neighbor’s yard, but it’s still our ball. Later, when we “strain/to hear another’s conversation while feigning/involvement in [our] own,” the conversations continue, but we belong to neither. The content of the poem is reinforced by its design. The words are arranged so that the language exists in more than one couplet.

The placement of the page break also felt like a significant transition. We start out on page 47 “rush[ing] to take a seat” on the subway, but continue on page 48 with changing lanes on the freeway. The division of these passages on two separate pages makes us feel like we’ve missed the train altogether (after all, we’ve lost our ticket), or that we’ve literally been “cut-off” in our lane, and life is moving too fast to ever be where we’re supposed to. The detail is “trying to get over to the right lane/in fast traffic” and the feeling is that our exit is coming up, but we might not make it in time. Again, we won’t get to where we are going.

The dream imagery works well when the last line mentions “dreaming that the alarm is about to go off.” The poem does feel like a dream where things happen but the transitions don’t always make sense. We feel like we are on the verge of something that is going to happen, but there are frustrations and white spaces that get in the way. The language expresses this tension, and the form of the poem in couplets heightens it.

Sheila Joseph

2009-10-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

Rather than answering “yes” or “no” to the question, “Is form necessary in poetry?” I would argue that “Form is inescapable in poetry.” Whether we like it or not, once a poem is placed on the page, it is given form even if that form is formlessness. In order for a poem to be effective, it must be supported and enhanced by its form, inseparable from it, forever bound in a communal conversation with it. Before we can understand, perceive and evaluate form in a poem, we must first ascertain the poem’s purpose: we must corner it, interrogate it, determine whether it accepts or rejects us, whether or not it wants to befriend us. A poem demands our attention. We examine its physical characteristics: how it looks on the page, the length of the lines, the tone of the words, the attributes of the fonts, the presence/absence of punctuation, the sense of urgency. When we read the words, we evaluate them through any number of available decoding systems, attempting to approach the poem in its own voice in order to render the most truthful interpretation. We ask it to move us; we either agree or refuse to be moved.

Jesús Papoleto Meléndez’s “¡Hey Yo / Yo Soy!” is an excellent example of how a poem is inseperable from its form. The poem moves about the page, imitating the swaying of the body, a swaying that is also reinforced by its choice of words. One can hear the punctuating rhythms of the Yo!’s while the ellipses signal the desire for audience response. The word Yo! stomps upon the ground, a hand in the air, and the ellipses call back, Yo! The audience response is not on the page as the ellipses indicate, and we are therefore allowed to imagine what the audience response might be during each different reading event. It will likely be different every time. We recognize now that the poem is not only occurring on, but also off, the page.

Upon visual appraisal, the poem is stretched out across the page, yearning to encompass a whole world of multicolored individuals and views. It begs for solidarity, for unity, and thus, the form in the first stanza behaves like an umbrella, calling all words to congregate beneath it. After the first stanza, the words fall more in line, hiding under the shelter of

Hey!
Yo!. . .
Yo! . . . Yo! . . .

The poem’s title, ¡Hey Yo / Yo Soy!, functions like a mirror, the slash being the actual mirror and the words on either side reflections of one another. The title, and indeed the poem, is dependent on the Spanish/English double entendre of the word “Yo!” The word asks for our attention and is called out like a greeting, but it is also a word meaning “I.” The poet is calling all of the "I"s in the world to gather:

Hey-ey! . . . Yo! / Yo! . . .

We see in this line again the slash as mirror, alternative readings of the line being Hey You! / I! or Hey You! / Me! Then, the poet says, “I am Puerto Rican, Bro!” followed by the ellipsis, asking the reader/listener to answer back with what he or she is.

In his “The Politics of Noise: Unmasking the ‘face of the voice as speech,’” Craig Dworkin explains the current difficulty “critics” have of explaining and understanding the visual components of a poem’s form. He states that:

In part, this may well be due to the difficulty of talking about visual prosody; we lack a sophisticated critical tradition and ready vocabulary. In fact, when such matters are considered at all, any radical deviation from a printing norm is generally taken to be a more important classificatory element for poetry than the underlying theoretical conceptions of representation, performance, or the relationships between text, space, sound, and so on.

Melendez does radically disrupt the “printing norm” (a left aligned, relatively patterned line breaks, similar line lengths) in his poem; however he is not attempting to radically unsettle “the grid of the page,” as Dworkin argues poets like Susan Howe might do. Rather, the form of Melendez’s poem is dependent on the accepted, physical grid of the page: a right to left, up and down reading. It does not seek to subvert this paradigm because it relies on the paradigm to get its message across: we must uproot the norm by pushing against it, by undoing its violence against us and its encouragement of violence against ourselves. The “radically disrupted page” (in Dworkin’s words) has the effect of “situat[ing] its readers in a position from which they might more empathetically respond to the issues of power addressed by their thematic treatment of personal and cultural violence.” How does this work? When we normally read in English, we expect the left to right format and the patterned line breaks, etc. We read patriarchally; that is, we expect a certain parataxis in our reading, a certain syntax, an understanding of symbols by their oppositions (i.e. light vs. dark, cold vs. hot, me vs. you). When we read something that is against these norms, we are displaced, we are both experiencing and participating in the feeling from which the poem’s message stems. Melendez thwarts the patriarchal power structure by refusing to “properly” align words with one another, by using one word to embody a paradox (as in Yo! referring simultaneously to both “You” and “Me”) and by using both English and Spanish to deliver a message that might not be wholly understood by those who are not bilingual. The reader is now in a place to understand a communication that emerges from the margins.

Form, according to M. H. Abrams, is not a “fixed container, like a bottle, into which the ‘content’ or ‘subject matter’ of a work is poured,” but rather, is elastic, shapeshifting to fit the purpose of the poem or the viewpoint of the person writing/evaluating it (Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 101). In this case, Melendez uses form to relay the message that both love and racism run deep:

Because of Love
of A Love so deep
deep
that still it seeps
seeps
within Us deep
deep,
yet still
it seeps. . .

The words themselves are like a pouring, trickling down into the soil of language. They are deeply rooted and seemingly impossible to excise. The same form is repeated later in the stanza on racism:

This, Thing,
RACiSM!!!
is an Unnatural schism
that makes You
part of a SyStem

Here, you can see in the way the words are arranged on the page the similarities with the seepage of deep love in the previously examined stanza. Also, the way Melendez separates “SyStem” with capital letters calls our attention to the word “Stem” that lies within the root of the word “system” and corresponds with the aforementioned stanza: the unspoken metaphor of roots. Here, also, the small “i” in “RACiSM” is mirrored in other words containing the “I” such as “KiLLing” and “prisoN.” The alignment of the three capital letters on the page (yoU, prisoN, and NO) form the word “UNO” also referring to “one” along with the “I” and the “Me.” Eventually, the lower case “i” in “KiLL” gives way to small capitals in “KILLKILL!!!” indicating the rise of the “I” to do violence, an especially heinous violence: the destruction of one’s own kind. Similarly, Melendez has separated the word “Violado” (rape) from other words in a previous stanza, effectively illustrating a rape’s ability (both literal and metaphorical) to separate and isolate.

Finally, the discerning reader cannot overlook the use of punctuation in Melendez’s poem. He uses both Spanish and English punctuation, but in focusing solely on the English punctuation, one can see a certain conscientiousness evident in his choice of symbols. Melendez has almost run the gamut of available punctuation (and some almost to excess): the exclamation point, ellipsis, comma, dash, period, quotes, colons, parentheses, the slash, and even the elision mark (as in “’Tis” for “It’s”). However, this overabundance of punctuation draws my attention not so much to what is there (for the excess of it is a message in itself) but to what is not there: the semicolon. In thinking of the earmarks of the semicolon, I am drawn to two particular characteristics: its visual element of appearing like a hybrid between the colon and the comma, and its use as a punctuation mark that separates two sentences of equal weight. What does this mean to the form of the poem? In order to understand the semicolon’s function as a hybrid between the comma and the colon, we must first identify the uses of both commas and colons. The comma is a pause, a simple breath. It is a way to step back from a sentence, a way to evaluate from a very short distance. It is a politeness. The colon, however, serves as a signal that more information is about to be given. What follows the colon enhances and explains what has come before. It is complimentary. The semicolon thus indicates a type of compromise. Therefore, the absence of the semicolon, this hybrid, reinforces poem’s message of solidarity: there can be no compromise. Without a semicolon, the poet is stating that if we are to overcome the seepage of racism with the depth of love, we must come together wholly and finally, without compromising our values. In the poem, two sentences of equal weight cannot be separated, they must be fused: the I must be the You and the You must be the Me. One can neither perform nor promote an act of violence on his own kind.

ComprendeMI!!! he finishes.

Do you understand?

H.K.

2009-10-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

What struck me immediately in the form of Mroue's Beirut Survivors Anonymous is the way in which he uses the the minimal white space to provide shifts in focus, narrative and voice.

Initially we are in the midst of an attack, present to the flying of rockets and living in the dark of war so as not to provide any more targets. In this process the narrator talks about,

on the radio, putting faces to names,
scars to bodies, burns to flesh.

The war is personalized, taken out of the realm of the abstract and distant, faces receive names, scars are bodies, burns are flesh, it presents these victims as whole people not disconnected dead bodies as western media often portrays them. From the immediacy of that stanza the white space leaps us ahead a number of years. It now presents us with a remembered incidents, we are not in the war but in memories of war, a very different perspective. This stanza also contains the last instance of a singular voice for this narrative.

The lines,

I fly coach cross-continent
searching for someone
to recreate my childhood with.
We are walking to school. It is May.

with this moment of communal we is then disrupted by a return to I for the rest of the stanza; however it is a foreshadowing of the rest of the poem. The next white space involves the shifting of the voice from a singular personal experience to a shared one. The someone the narrator is searching for is found and merges into a seamless voice that nevertheless positions itself as multiple with We being the voices of many raised to say the same thing. Through the remaining stanzas the We is deepened and processed into a more clear identity for the reader.

The positionality continues to shift in the white space between the stanzas. In the third stanza we are back in America, wrapped in memories of war that are preferable to the place they find themselves now. Isn't this a function of memory, a yearning for times/places that the passage of years has rendered into a soft focus that erases the more negative aspects of the experience? I think so, and while I do see some of that there's also a fierce honesty in regards to the realities of war, evident in the fourth stanza.

We jump back in time, in memory, back to the war but the shelling is only the framing:

It is for nights of unrelenting shelling
we long, for the calm of corridors and neighbors
boiling coffee until dawn, for gunpowder seeping
through shut windows and the wails
of a single ambulance.

While the first and last lines of the stanza enclose it in the acts of war and the results the placement of the words we long puts it in an inbetween position. Is it longing for the shelling or for the things that follow, the community that forms through survival of war? When we keep in mind the We voice and the title of the piece it becomes an obvious call for connection. It is not actually the war that is missed but the personal connections and support that formed in opposition to it.

The next white space provides another switch back to the States, it also builds on the the search for community. The We tries to return to the memories of Beirut by links to arak, belly-dancers and hummous but the connection is false, in the end the last two lines of the stanza

longing for green plums and salt,
the ecstasy of Howitzers on a school night.

show us a longing for the reality of home not the falseness of American narratives of Arab culture that focus on the exotification of watered down pieces of the society taken completely out of context. It is a longing for the truth of home set against the facade of home that America presents for consumption.

The white space after that stanza gives another huge shift, this time from concrete to abstract. The focus on physical interactions of things, places and people is replaced by the psychic space and scars of those who've lived through the war and been transplanted into America. As opposed to previous stanzas when the communal we is connected to actions such as "lived", "long", "drink", "watch", "vomit" while in the final two stanzas the wes "are", "don't", "still", "can" positioning them in a space of being as opposed to doing.

The exploration of the identity of a Beirut Survivor happens in the white space where changes of voice, place and position happen silently and without fanfare.

spoken word contrapuntals?

2009-10-24T18:24:00.001-07:00

The question of content v. form is one that never gets old for me. Is form reacting to content, is content built around form? Does it switch halfway through the writing of the poem? I’m interested, sign me up.

I just about peed my pants when I saw “A Blue Black Pearl” in BumRush today. Seriously. How many contrapuntal poems do you find in a book of spoken word poems? Um, NONE. Bam, so stoked, especially after reading what a jaw-dropping four-footer this one by Clairesa Clay is.

I decided to look up what contrapuntal actually means (when not applied to poems), and the definition is unsurprising: of, relating to, or marked by counterpoint. This makes great sense, considering the latin root of the word, contra punctum, expands to very literally mean “point against point.” I think the term is originally a musical word, but I’ll leave the expansion of that to HK Rainey, since I’m almost positive she knows much more about it than me (and can probably explain it better, too).

My understanding of the contrapuntal (a poem that is multidirectional in its reading) is that, like in music, the two directions represent two distinct sounds or voices. Often, I think, contrapuntal poems tell two versions of a story within one. They are not necessarily opposing views, but definitely different vantage points. Often, one is much more poetic than the other, by fault of tricky punctuation (or none, as the case may be) or missing articles or pronouns.

In “A Blue Black Pearl,” the voices take hold right away. There is a history being told, a reparation for the past being carved out. We read down the columns for a cold, hard story. She is frank with us, tells it straight, and lets us breathe during the looping of “forty years.” There is a moment of transformation that happens at the end, but one that definitely isn’t complete without the additional reading.

The second reading, across all four “feet” of the poem, let’s the narration drop into a trance-like reflection. Instead of seeing the narrator straight on as she speaks to us, we are pushed to zoom in past her and focus on what’s happening behind the words. Whereas “forty years” was a place holder in the previous reading, it has become the drumbeat that keeps us steady with our eyes closed. Because the “forty years” lines appear in somewhat of a predictable pattern (two or three grouped closely and then a long break, in which the language becomes intense both topically and phonetically), we can pace ourselves through what might otherwise be an unusual reading. Instead, the poem seems like an incantation from this direction, a stretched mantra of healing for this blue black pearl.

By the time we reach the ending of the poem (in the second, horizontal reading), the speaker doesn’t sound any more relieved and yet we must know that she is. Like the relief after a good cry or the breaking of the sky over your eyelids after heavy meditation, we are pulled from the poem abruptly, but with a sense of self. We have a body, we know where we stand. There is some kind of intuitive hope that slips in during this hypnotizing read that couldn’t have happened within the plain narrative.

So when I return to the question of content v. form, I’m not necessarily concerned with which happened first, but with the fact that they both happened, finally. This poem would have been really long and hard to follow had it been written sporadically across the page or, pete forbid, in one tiny column against the left hand margin. Then again, not just any poem works in the contrapuntal form. Technically they do, but not intuitively or emotionally.

I guess my question, then, is how do we know which form to choose? Is it like trying on clothes, you pop the words into different forms until you find one that’s occasion-appropriate (and cross your fingers that it fits)?

And then also -- how would you read this aloud?

Poetry and Form: Mroue and Powell

2009-10-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

In Beirut on good

nights I watch rockets fly

over rooftops until my eyes hurt.

I listen for names of the dead

on the radio, putting faces to names,

scars to bodies, burns to flesh.

I remove my contacts by candlelight

and flush my eyes with Detrol.

In Haas H. Mroue’s poem “Beirut Survivors Anonymous” (Inclined to Speak, p 240) there is not much white space. There is little room for rest or peacefulness in a history of haunting violence that Mroue in title and the poem’s beginning, locates as Beirut. “I” turns to “We” in the second stanza and the poem does not lose it’s intimacy. It is consistent in form and content and does not stray from heavily holding on to the left sided margin, like a weight that keeps Mroue from falling into an abyss of despair and loneliness. The trauma from surviving war, is steadily piercing but in a numbed ritual, an everyday pattern of remembering.

The poem “Civil War” is similar in theme, but the form is slightly different. The lines are shorter in some areas, more white space. Mroue uses less words, but the impact is more intense with a volatile imagery. Here are a few lines that were particularly jarring (Inclined to Speak, p 246),

Give me back my testicles

my sister’s nipples...

On a balcony of a bombed out skyscraper

I dangle my soul out for you.

Snipers where are you?

Don’t ignore me now...

I scrape my eyes out with the cross,

collect my gushing blood

on the pages of the Koran...

In reading Kevin Powell’s “What the deal son?” from Bum Rush The Page it reminded me immediately of Mroue’s first poem in form, leaning to the left but in this case with no line breaks at all. Ideas and images intersect, conflict, overlap and flow together like a chaotic dream-in the form of a question that loops. “Will I? We hear again and again in an almost defeated repetition like falling in a dream. There is an ominous intensity that builds quickly in the beginning lines of this poem, especially with the imagery of falling into “a pit of purple rats,” “apocalypse,” “welts”, “darkness,” “gunshot residue”and “mother’s two failed abortions.” His poem takes a surprising turn as it becomes specific, a story within a church of a feared reverend. Here Powell is a boy never quite the same (Bum Rush The Page, p 168)

bow-legged black boy

who became an insomniac

as a man so terrified of sleeping

The form of this poem is a fast pace tempo and with no breaks we are thrown into this feeling of a child not being safe who has become an adult. At the end of the piece Powell questions religion, declares his own belief in God. All of these poems mentioned use form effectively because the line’s tempo speeds up giving immediacy to the words, or in some instances, slows down for contrast and breath between images. The block form on the left gives the content a sense of importance and weight. This is why form in poetry is so important to express ourselves in various ways, whether it is elusive or declarative, singular or plural, etc.

There She Go, There She Goes-A Hip Hop Ballad Battle

2009-10-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

For this week’s readings the poems that resonated with me the most were in the section: It Was the Music That Made Us from Bum Rush the Page. This section began and stayed relatively strong with a womanist, or feminist take on hip hop. Thank you to the editors Tony Medina and Louis Reyes Rivera for not just including a token splice, but allowing us to breathe a layered representation of critical thought and savvy poetic flow. From Jessica Care Moore’s poem “I’m a Hip Hop Cheerleader” to Nzinga Regtuinah Chavis’s “enter(f*#@ckin)tained” I was delighted to engage with readings that demonstrated both a love for hip hop in form and yet were critical of content reflected in the mainstream.

In “I’m a Hip Hop Cheerleader” Jessica Care Moore is not afraid to express her gender and bravely shows us a feminine strength in raising serious issues with humor and pom poms. I first came across Moore’s work through a circle of girlfriends who sent one of her poems, “I’m in Love With Potential,” around through email. With a recent breakup having just passed at the time, her poem hit me in a nurturing, strong way and made me laugh. I enjoyed it so much I posted it on one of my blogs! Here it is,

I'm in love with potential

I keep falling in love with potential

But it never seems to work out

He was full of a lot of it

And he was TALL

But potential had a way of becoming diluted with insecurities

And just cause you can see the beauty of someone

Doesn't mean they can see it for themselves

Still I believed potential would eventually love me

As much I loved him

Then begin to love himself

The way I loved myself

But there was someone else

There always is

Potential had an influential way

Of showing me what my potential was

And he celebrated all I could do without him

Potential reminded me of how he loved my commitment

To doing whatever I had to do to exercise my own potential

Even if that meant potentially leaving him behind

Still I unconditionally loved potential

And held on to the potential future we could have

If only he would see our potential

Without being intimidated by my own potential

If he would just stop loving me with conditions

Especially when I loved him

Simply for the possibility of how great

He could become and already was

But didn't know it

Cause he was caught up in my potential,

Instead of seeing my life

As a reflection of what he already had or

What we could potentially have together

And that meant loving you when you hadn't yet

Reached your full potential

But helping you get there as quickly as possible

Isn't it just a bit too easy to fall in love

With someone after the glory and

Not along the slow, goal setting, potential way?

And if I didn't love your possibilities

Then I didn't love you

And if you didn't realize our possibilities

Because you were too wound up in my potential

Then you didn't really love me

I guess sometimes we give potential too much credit

And borrow interest from our own accounts

Without taking ourselves into account

How many times did I blow off your behavior

Relying on potential?

I can no longer count

Or wait around for you

To let me stand naked in front of you

So you can see yourself as worthy of my love

You loving me for me and not through me

Can really be potentially dangerous

Now again in Bum Rush The Page, Moore has poetically delivered a similar upbeat, feisty attack with “grown ass woman” tactics. An aspect I appreciate in both of these two poems by Moore is her ability to not let us “off the hook” as women. She challenges us to take responsibility for our choices and not settle for less than what we righteously deserve, whether it be our choice of partner in a relationship, or the music we listen to or create. In this “the personal is political” style Moore reminds me of our local Bay Area heroine poet, Aya de Leon who is best known for her work on these themes such as in her book Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop (which she later turned into a one-woman show) and her performance, act of self-love in “Deciding to Marry Myself.”

Jessica Care Moore’s “I’m a Hip Hop Cheerleader” carries as a hip hop ballad and battle for women, witnessing herself and other women who continue to represent. She masterfully repeats the music sample lines from “There I go, There I go” (from “Same Song” by Tupac and Digital Underground) in the middle and toward the end of the poem (p 191) and changes the lyrics to,

there she go

there she goes...

An ending that has no end and pushes us to come along with her in a wave of optimism and change for new voices to enter. Thank you, Jessica Care Moore!

Deforemed Finger

2009-10-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

Reading Hal Sirowitz “Deformed Finger” reminded me how parents, society and media perceive deformities as something unacceptable. The poem is a narrative about a child who constantly sticks his finger in a ketchup bottle and does not obey his mother’s rules. The mother of the poem tells her son that if his father finds a fingernail in the ketchup “He’ll yank [his finger] out so hard that for the rest of [his] life [he] won’t be able to wear a ring on that finger.” She goes on to tell him that when he gets a girlfriend she will not take him seriously because of his deformed finger and the fact that he did not obey his mother’s rules.

It is interesting because on the surface the poem is a cautionary tale in terms of not listening to one’s parents as well as a tale about a girlfriend not taking her partner seriously. Under the surface, or from my understanding the poem is about a fear of having a physical deformity. The fact that the mother tells the speaker of the poem that the girlfriend will leave him shows us the reality of how society or other folks perceive deformities. Here, deformity is not depicted as something monstrous or ugly, but is depicted as something that is unacceptable. The girl will like him because of his finger.

I know I usually relate this poem to my personal life, which can probably be annoying, but this piece reminded me of my childhood. Media tells us (women and men) that we should look a particular way—tall, skinny, light skinned, blue eyes, etc…as for me the ideal man is tall, dark and handsome. So when someone has a deformity or something that is not physically considered beautiful then we are quick to jump and judge someone based on his or her looks. My point is that we (hate to say we cause it isn’t everyone) tend to pick out the “ugly” characteristics of a person and sometimes fear that we may have those characteristics because of what other people may say or think about us. But the reality is that everyone is beautiful in his or her own way, regardless of looks. And sadly, looks are highly valued in American society

2009-10-18T22:24:00.001-07:00

The poem Ah Billie by Diana Hernandez-Correa does a beautiful job of portraying the late Billie Holiday's career and lasting musical impact. Much more than a simple biographical account, the poem employs its own lyrical and rhythmic elements that allow the poem to parallel the highly emotionally moving effect that Holiday was renowned for having on stage. So much is packed into just a few lines of the poem,

She was Empress
under the lights
as she'd begin to cause the steam
to rise
from bellies' core
in dip and turn
injecting
sound thru waves-the mere sounds of her
first notes could be enough
to shake your soul out of its mundane lane
delivering you to a place of fantasy
where she reigned- Queen

It is no accident that each of these lines forces the reader to progress through the poem at a slow, rhythmic pace. Its as if Holiday and the poet are simultaneously seducing you into a beautiful and inescapable trance. Vivid imagery is used to convey Holiday's impact on her listeners. The poet writes that Holiday is the Queen of "a place where gardenias grew wild in black velvet underground/ midnight blue and red blood hills as lime green rivers glowed/ in/ hollow caves that freely flowed from darkness into/light/ sending electric chili chills of buzz/ thru runaways". What imagery! One can't help but imagine the electric, tantalizing effect that Holiday must have bestowed; for if a poem that is merely hoping to capture her essence can be so powerful, then she must have been nothing short of a goddess. The referentials that the poet includes further add to the biographical insight of the poem. The word/line "injecting" is repeated multiple times in this poem, each time in a non-literal sense. This metaphorical usage of injecting alludes the Holiday's muddied past of drug abuse and self-medication. The poet dedicates an entire stanza to this sad reality, emphasizing Holiday's reliance on drugs and alcohol to remedy her reality. Hernandez-Correa writes,

she'd nurse away the nonsense of life's
(unreliability of love)
in the dark with last song sung
she'd cradle her inner bruises
close her eyes tight long
enough to will herself away
having tucked the pain
deep down inside herself past
that medicated voice

Without prior knowledge of Holiday's past, the reader could still pick up a general sense of her troubles. The line "she'd cradle her inner bruises" refers to the emotional, outwardly-invisible scars that the musician endured. From physical abuse in her relationships to a troubled childhood, Holiday experienced many of the dark sides of humanity. With singing and addiction as her main emotional outlets, it is no wonder that both endeavors were severely powerful.

Interestingly, I get a strong sense of identification between the poet and Holiday. Small inserts such as "(unreliability of love)" and the last stanza (which metaphorically relates listening to Holiday's music and hard drug usage), allude to the poet's own troubled history and perhaps the basis for her strong appreciation for Holiday's work.

With the inclusion of lines from some of Holiday's best known songs ("When you hear a song in bloom/ like a flower crying for the dew/ that was my heart serenading you.../ a prelude to a kiss" and "Hush now, don't explain") also add to the lyrical aspect of the poem. There is just so much to this poem, form its musical impact to its emotional content, and it does a superb job of capturing the essence of the beloved Billie Holiday.

- e. gutilla

2009-10-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Battle, by Gwendolyn Brooks is a look at some pretty intense domestic violence. In the poem, we see that the narrator is speaking from a third-person perspective of an event in her neighborhood. In fact, she hears it from her mother, who heard it from the landlady of Moe Belle Jackson, the woman who this violence is occurring. What startled me most was not the obvious descriptions of violence towards Moe Belle Jackson by her husband, but the accessibility of such private information throughout the the neighborhood.

Moe Belle Jackson's husband
Whipped her good last night.
Her landlady told my ma they had
A knock-down-drag-out fight.

Something that happens behinds closed doors, I suppose does not stay there long.
This poem seems to be divided by stanzas into three parts: 1.) What happened to Moe Belle, 2.) How the Narrator would deal with the situation, and 3.) How Moe Belle Deals with the situation; in which number two and number three are completely different things.
When the narrator puts herself into the situation, the outcome is violent. For some reason, I think that the narrator of this poem is still very young, because, of their immediate jump to use violence against Moe Bell's husband. She is speaking from an outside point of view, which is extremely different than if one is actually in the situation. It reminds me of the countless accounts of women who have said that they would never, ever let themselves become rape victims, they would fight and kill if they had to, and yet when the day came, they felt powerless. The narrator has all the potential, will power that Moe Belle does not for self preservation, because she is not in the immediate situation.

I like to think
Of how I'd of took a knife
And slashed all of the quickenin'
Out of his lowly life.

Putting herself in the situation, she is wishing in my mind, to be an active part in stopping domestic violence.
When we get to stanza three, we see the way that Moe Belle treats the situation:

But if I know Moe Belle,
Most like, she shed a tear,
And this mornin' it was probably,
"More grits, dear?"

This is a story which obviously has no happy ending, except in my mind, strengthening the narrators resolve to not be one of those victims.
The language in this poem has a pretty big indicator of it's place of origin. When I read it aloud, I could not help but give it an accent, and some of the words and phrases are just sort of place specific in their own way:

Ma.
Whipped her good.
I'd of.
Quickenin'.
Mornin'.
Grits.

All of these words sort of get a twang in your mouth that give you a sense of the south, or of some neighborhood that has that closeness between neighbors, but also that language that is spoke between them. What also interests me is the rhyming words within this poem:

Night, Fight
Knife, Life
Tear, Dear.
These are some pretty powerful words that are absolutely necessary for painting someone's perspective on a certain gruesome event such as this. It's a one sided fight that ends in defeat. The last stanza, although contains no violence, is probably the most hard-hitting of them all, because we see that Moe Belle is taking such a passive response to this egregious act, and that stirs us up even more than violence itself.

Bluey aka. Michaela C. Ellis

2009-10-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

Of the poems we read for this week, there are those that seem like rap written down and others that speak of music in content. I did not come across a poem displaying jazz through its form, or one written to represent a type of music (except rap, which I reject as the only musical/poetic choice for people of color). Rap, being 80% attitude, often loses something on the page; it is not alive until it is performed. Perhaps the constraints of rhyme lend the danger of the contrived line, and, as a result, many of the works are not very good as poems. I am positive I would have a more favorable reaction to Linda Cousins were I to see her perform the piece. (Even in terms of rap though - mo' power to the message - the shit is wack.)

I think that music is a goal in the writing of poetry. The search for melodic or discordant sounds to demonstrate meaning (or examine language) is a primary task. The choice to be a poet or musician is not an arbitrary one, though. Asking this is like asking why a person would choose to be a painter rather than a sculptor. The answer lies in how expression forms in the mind of an artist, and the physical form it calls for, the transformation of thought to being, and the path of interpretation. There are elements of both in each, and there are artists who express themselves in multiple media. But no one chooses to be a poet. Musicians too (not manufactured pop icons) are called.

For people of color, there is the issue of visibility. By asking us to consider the choice to be a poet or a musician of color, is the group suggesting that would-be poets choose hip hop as a platform to be seen and heard and paid? This week, a lot of would-be rappers chose poetry as a venue and, in my opinion, fell flat on both accounts. (Dead Prez was the only rap-worthy AND poetry-worthy piece I read.)

Rap is largely clever wordplay, unexpected rhyme. A piece of Dead Prez (who are just dope anyway, and got together in Tallahassee):

"Organize the hood under I Ching banners
Red, Black, and Green instead of gang bandanas
F.B.I. spyin on us through the radio antennas
And them hidden cameras in the streetlight watchin society"

The rhyme is bent, hints at accent - "banners" to "bandanas," and bent again with an unexpected match in "antennas," then pushed to the limit and buried in the middle of the next line with "cameras." The space in front of the rhyme is packed with syllables, quick steps to the riff climax, the hot finish move. Rhymed word choice shows the flexibility of sound, the adaptation that the ear works on language. The change in placement displays wizardry in an essential skill of rap: unlikely rhyme stacked high enough to demonstrate deftness in use and contortion, but not enough to get tired; and then stretched as a segue into the next rhyme scheme; the rhythm maintains the line while the rhyme does a change up, seamlessly ending a thought and beginning a new rhyme scheme (next line ends "right to privacy). This level of complexity leaves Ms. Cousin's "start/part" "mystery/history" waiting on the school bus...

I appreciate the melody of a poem, how the letters interplay like instruments, notes ringing on multiple levels. I appreciate the interplay of instruments in a musical piece as well (unexpected notes bring delight), but music is a language that moves me beyond speech. I think of it as the most ancient of languages, where there was understanding before words. The multi-verse moves on vibration, so sound existed before words. Principles of the physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual understanding of vibrations carries over into the formation and selection of words, why one word might be a better choice than another (why an "s" feels soft, why a "k" feels abrupt).

There is music in this stanza of "Rapid Transit" that is distinct from the theme of the poem - a second line of content, complimentary to the topic of street music.

"someone lights a saxophone
and the marvelous
breath of God
sweeps the subway"

The s sounds set and maintain a soft jazz tone, while the x, v, and w's act as visual percussion. The single syllables of "breath" and "God" punctuate the set smoothness of the stanza like high or low notes breaking the continuum of melody. The line breaks insist on breath that molds the import, paces our intake.

But this poem is not a song. It uses principles of music inherent in language; but it is to be read, not played. I'm listening to Stevie Wonder as I write this, and it strikes me that a song, in terms of lyrics, must return to the chorus, the obvious thread of the song. Within this loop, the music is allowed to speak. A song is released from the frame of a story when the music takes over. Indeed, a great melody can save sorry lyrics (not found in Stevie's songs, of course). On the page, the words have to stand on their own, create their own music. Repetition does not do the same job without the intensity of the singer's interpretation. Lyrics are words packed into a train - they ride in the vehicle (of music). In a poem, the words have to walk; they have to carry themselves.

2009-10-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

A poem can be music and music can be a poem, I would present this assertion to a classroom of skeptic students about to write their first poem. So a rap can be a poem? Uh, yes and a poem can be a lyric on the page, yes, yes, yes. I feel its all about delivery, a rap can be read without a musical beat and a little toned down and can pass as a poem.

A memorized poem is more accessible then a poem in a book,
and more accessible than a song played on a friend's I-pod.
Yet, music is music and poetry is poetry. Each one has its own intimate qualities for the listener. The message can be in a song or in a poem. Bob Dylan is a poet and a musician. He says, " Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem." He is an example of a poet manipulating his voice and reciting a poem like a song. Then a hook and a call and a response comes in, it's a thin line and I truly love both art forms.

The poem "I'm a Hip Hop Cheerleader" by Jessica Care Moore ignites feminist hip hop heads and gives room for them to re-think what they are dancing to - it may just freeze up your spine. The narrator creates a space of freedom and restrictiveness in that too tight skirt. The narrator calls out the male dominated rap scene that does not nurture or heal, nor does it allow for women to shine and hold court with other men. If anything the narrator goes through a reincarnation or perhaps there are two narrators speaking: one who can "tolerate all your hoes" and the other who is wise and conscious of the hip hop game. The poem has tinges of sardonic humor, of being fed up. A hip hop cheerleader is definitely different from your everyday football cheerleader. Image is everything in this poem, the cheerleader still has on her short pleated skirt because "when you're a woman sometimes all you have is a minute", she got your attention and now she will flip it.

"I'm a hip hop cheerleader
carrying hand grenades and blood red pom poms
screaming from the sidelines of a stage I built
afraid to part down the middle
for feminine riddles
raining words of proverbs
of prophets who never get heard
because the microphone is just another phallic
symbol"

Juxtapose this poem/rap with Dead Prez's "Police State" and you get a different tone: there is more rhythm, occupied by a very male voice but a conscious male voice, albeit, a different sort of radical, here the narrator is flipping off the state, the state of being under surveillance while they list in their chorus: the world being controlled by the white male. In both poems there is an enemy, there is blame and there is education for the reader, there is knowledge there is another way to live in both poems and to open up your "third eye", another very late 90's 2000's term! There is something about these poems that demand an unveiling of the nausea and repetition of your same ole' song or poem, unveil , and dissect and refocus. The narrator seems young, militant, radical, mentored, alive and can battle somebody in some politics. This is a rap and Jessica Care Moore's piece is a poem.

2009-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

In his book What to Listen for in Music, Aaron Copland states the following:

There are two ways in which structure in music may be considered: (1) form in relation to a piece as a whole and (2) form in relation to the separate, shorter parts of a piece. The larger formal distinctions would have to do with entire movements of a symphony, a sonata, or suite. The smaller formal units would together make up one entire movement (99).

Copland then goes on to explain that there are similarities between the construction of a musical piece and the writing of a novel:

Paragraphs are composed of sentences. In music, the sentence would be analogous to the musical idea. And, of course, the word is analogous to the single musical tone.

The similarities between poetry (words) and music have long been known. Both have an audible component as well as a visual one: they are represented on the page as well as in the ear. Both have “tone.” For example, the difference in tone between a B Flat and an A Major is clear to the ear. When the single notes are struck, B Flat is minor, darker, more nuanced. A Major is ringingly clear, bright and optimistic. When the notes are played individually, the A Major sounds uncomplicated because nothing interesting is happening inside the soundboard. The note is clear and unadulterated. When the B Flat is played, the difference in tone emerges because inside the console, the note is being dampened, affected, changed in some way. We hear the different forces exerted on the note as tone. The tongue and the mouth similarly exert different levels of force on sounds. When we say “oo”, more involvment is required by the body. Conversely, sounds like “ah” and “a” as in “apple” require less involvement and produce a different tone.
When played together, B Flat and A Major are dissonant, giving a distinct impression of disorder and chaos. We can hear instinctively that the two do not belong together. If a composer desired to produce that effect, he would know exactly how to make it happen. By placing different notes together, the composer can make his listeners cringe with discomfort, feel soothed with euphony, or imprisoned in imposed silence, among other things. The poet is a composer also, with these same tools in her grasp.

Music also does something poetry does not intrinsically do: music provides direct access to the emotions. With words, we are required to listen to them, to know them, to dismantle them, then reassemble them, while running them through a filter of personal experience and knowledge. The presence of so many different levels of understanding often causes the words to be reassembled incorrectly in the receiver’s mind, often through the use of signs and symbols, some of which the listener may not understand or be able to correctly appropriate. The meaning of poetic words and phrases can therefore be lost or misinterpreted, thus producing a varied array of results. Music, however (apart from lyrics), does not pass through the same filter. Music is produced by the body and is received by the body. It is wordless, and the ear relies on tone and rhythm to convey a bodily emotion. We are more serious when we hear the sounds of the cello, more incited with the bold brass of the trumpet, and swayed to movement by drumbeats. We do not need words because music falls within the realm of the unspeakable and is understood without language. Poetry, however, seeks to become more like music in this way.
Steven Bonafide Rojas’ “The Creed of a Graffiti Writer” is an excellent example of how certain musical conceits can be used to get the point of a poem across intuitively, just as music does. Just as Duke Ellington’s “Blues To Be There” starts with a raucous brass interlude, strident and insistent, so does “The Creed of a Graffiti Writer” begin with long vowel sounds demanding time on the tongue and a higher pitch in the voice to produce. The poet’s choices of long i sounds (strike, night, hide), oo and ou sounds (New, our, moon, source), long o sounds (York, shadows, patrol, stroll), demand duration and are the equivalent of long brass notes. Like the trumpet or the trombone, these sounds draw attention to a theme that will be recurrring.
For the poet, the themes are repeated in the sentences beginning “We are”, and we can expect to find in them certain literary devices that provide some of the same effects as musical ones. Beginning with “We are The Addicts of Aerosol” of line 8, we find alliteration (both consonance and assonance), symmetry (provided through accent), prominence of hard consonant sounds and long vowel sounds (duration and tone), and similar line length. Word choice profoundly affects the way we perceive the tone of poems. For example, Rojas could have chosen a different word than “strike” and still have achieved the same literal meaning. Consider, “We attack at night,” or “We bomb at night.” But choosing the long i sound has implications greater than the literal meaning of strike: it compliments the duration of night and hide. The great “brass” intro to Rojas’s poem provides the whole work with the “in your face” manifesto quality the poem needs to achieve in order to be successful.

Ellington’s “Blues To Be There” would have an entirely different effect if it began with the percussive notes of the solitary piano or the long, low notes of the saxophone. First, however, Ellington has to give you a sense of the liveliness the “blues singer” is missing out on. The “there” of the “Blues To Be There” must first be established as a major theme. After this occurs, the saxophone takes over with its yearning drone. The blues singer (the beholder) is perhaps looking out over the river, to the lights of the city, yearning for a place he cannot be. The percussive instruments that mark the progress of time are relinquished to the background.

One can see in Rojas, this similar percussion in the background of his poem. The first nine lines have an accentual rhythm that is symmetrical. One can see the rhythm of accents per line being 2-2-1, 2-2-1, 2-2-1. The accented words are as follows:

Line 1: strike, night
Line 2: streets, York
Line 3: canvas

Line 4: hide, shadows
Line 5: pig, strolls
Line 6: moon

Line 7: only, source or light (depending on individual intonation. In my intonation, the stress could fall on one or the other, but not, as far as I could tell, on both.)
Line 8: Addicts, Aerosol
Line 9: Krylon

Individual variations could occur on line six, where “our” could technically be accented. However, if the line’s enjambment is followed, the stress falls most naturally on the first word in the next line, “only.”)

In music, duration and dynamics are very closely linked. Duke Ellington exploits the feeling we experience at the height of yearning by drawing the saxophone up to its highest pitch, holding it, then dropping it down into the depths, creating an upwelling of breath like an exhale. Suddenly, the reedy sound of the clarinet takes over, trilling through rapid notes, speeding up the listener’s response. Rojas mimics this pattern by using long vowels in opposition with short ones. He writes:

Our tags rag black books and cardboard
scratched on windows and train doors
stickers slapped over any motherfucker
you had beef with
only in self defense (BUM, 212)

In these lines, you can see the prevalence of short vowel sounds. They take less time on the tongue and their effect is to increase the speed of the lines as they are read/spoken. Where once, the words were drawn out and insistent, now they are fast, almost tripping over themselves, jubilant and free. Coming so soon after lengthy-sounding lines like “We are the Tye Dye Tone,” these short vowel sounds have the same effect on the reader that Ellington’s clarinet riffs produce in the listener.

Finally, at the end of “Blues To Be There,” Ellington repeats the refrain of the beginning, but in more muted tones. The sounds are long and low like voices drifting over the water. The blues singer has realized that he is not in the place he yearns to be. He is distinctly where he is and a sort of matter-of-factness of concrete reality takes over. For Rojas, this moment is the clarification of his intent: the restating of who he is and what he does.

We are the artistic poets
that perform magic with spray paint
and just call ourselves writers
Graffiti Writers (213).

There are in these lines no patterns of insistent long vowels, no subverting short ones. There is a distinct deficit of alliteration. Though alliteration does exist, it is not found here with the same prevalence and force as in previous sections of the poem. There are no double entendres, no hidden agendas. There are only the direct words; all the artifice of the previous lines relegated to the background like the accentual rhythm, which here is roughly 3-3-2-2. There is only now the artist, the blues singer, stating the crystal clear message: No apologies.

2009-10-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

What makes music, music and poetry, poetry? What is it exactly that differentiates the two? Those are the things I was thinking about while reading Xiong's "because I am it's a race thing trip" and began to think of the spaces between words and phrases less as pauses and more as beats, moments were perhaps a drumbeat or a certain note would repeat throughout a song. The repetitions in two particular places seem to take on the quality of choruses. First:

______________________geisha
I mean
______________________china doll
I mean
______________________lotus blossom
I mean
______________________passive submissive exotic slant-eyed slut

The number of syllables in the words on the right slowly grow from two to three to four while the repetition of the words I mean continue to string the phrases all together into a cohesive rhythm that lulls the reader right before the form breaks and explodes into a rapid flow of insults/expletives. The feel of the words is a slow build to a crescendo of sound, an explosion of emotion. What does this do for the reader? I think it has the effect of shocking someone from complacency. By using the specific pejoratives the author chose it serves to link the more aversive bigotry of the first few phrases, those termed "harmless" or "compliments" by people privileged enough not to see it or be affected by it, to the more explicitly insulting and problematic burst out line.

The second example of a chorus-like moment I found was :

america_______________________railroads
america_______________________ laundry
america's chinese
america_______________________ home of the brave
america_______________________ sugar canes
america_______________________ concentration camps
america's japanese
america_______________________ land of the free
america_______________________wonder bra and corsets
america_______________________plastic surgery and liposuction
america's______________________demonization of women
don't lecture me about the savage practice of footbinding

Even though the words are completely different than the example above there are quite a few parallels - the use of repetitive language on the left side while the right side words slowly grow larger and larger this time by an increase in lines rather than syllables and the same scheme is used an increase of 2->3->4 and again the rhythm is broken by a much larger explosion of words that serve to break the reader from a the steadiness experiences in the previous lines. The focus is different as well in this case it is less about exposing the stereotypes of American mono-culture and more about exposing the hypocrisy of the West. The refusal of America to ever accept it's Asian-American communities despite continual contributions to that society. It's foretold by the very first line of the poem:

I am asian________america

The divide between asian and america no matter of family history, contribution or pain or servitude at the hands of the government. None of these seem to make a bridge between asian and america, always outside of society.

The last phrase in that second chorus discussing the demonization of women in Western society which is consistently misrepresented as freedom and used as a way to other many different cultures. I'm reminded of a article that came out in Vogue magazine during the initial invasion of Afghanistan where they spoke of the horrible position of women there and that they would serves as liberators...by teaching the women cosmetology and how to open their own beauty salons. The article went on to say that they had learned many of the women could not read the instruction manuals they had brought and so instead of teaching the women how to read they were now providing manuals with diagrams so they would not have to read. What type of liberation is that?

Women are in a marginalized position throughout the West but the focus of any continued work in that direction is subverted outward in a spread of our "liberation" which is really no liberation at all. That's what Xiong is calling up here, critiquing the American's continual condemnation of footbinding while other forms of physical painful and debilitating are acceptable--plastic surgery, dieting at increasingly young ages, stiletto heels that cause immense back problems later in life, etc. It's not about supporting footbinding at all but pointing out that America has its own fair share of problems that it chooses to ignore while it continually demonizes other cultures.

The uses of the repeated slow build in these two "chorus" sections serves to punctuate the poem, to make these passages stand out and resonate like a song you just can't get out of your head.

Ms. Cousins' Rap

2009-10-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

The New York Times article I e-mailed to the class states, “[p]oetry is thriving – on the Internet, in slams and public readings – but for most of us, song lyrics now do the work of modern verse; they organize the truths that rattle around in our skulls.” Poetry does have a smaller audience than music; music is more accessible. There are countless radio stations playing music of every genre; people download tunes and burn CDs and go to concerts; they sing in choirs, at ball games, in elevators, and in the shower. Poetry is not nearly as pervasive in our culture, but I’m not sure I agree that song lyrics really “do the work of modern verse.”

Bob Holman, one of the original members of the Nuyorican Poets Café, is quoted in the article as saying that “poets are now happy to seek legitimacy in the vulgar swagger of rockers rather than the other way around. The alternative is the quiet cloister of the academy.” It’s an interesting point; what choices do poets make? If you’re a poet and you set your words to music, are you still a poet and how does it change your message? If I substitute “rappers” in this quote (instead of “rockers”), it adds another layer of complexity.

Is “Ms. Cousins’ Rap,” by Linda Cousins, a poem, or is it rap, and does that matter? It’s in a collection of poetry, and its title labels it as rap; I assume that rap is a style of music her students, to whom (and presumably for whom) the poem is written, are familiar with. My impression is that this is the title because it’s a form that’s accessible to her students, and maybe they’ll listen “better.” What strikes me about the message of her poem is that it’s a commentary on other rap. She’s criticizing the “too many rhymin’/how to hurt and to kill/let this drop/with the hip-hop.” She says, “the positive is the only/way to go.” I’m wondering how practical this message is.

I think about the music industry, and it’s all about the selling. Violence and sex, or rather misogyny, sell in popular culture. How are these (negative) words, these messages, chosen to be made accessible to the audience? Who is making these decisions? The speaker in Nzinga Regtuiah Chavis’s “enter(f*#@ckin)tained” says,

I disdain how you like hearing Niggro words for shock value
Like a poem with dope words but a whack beat won’t sell
But a whack rap with dope beats sells: real well.

I also think about the writers of the words. Writers are always told to write what they know; that way the writing is “genuine” or “authentic.” If the writers know gangs and violence and killing, then their subjects cannot be “positive.” The speaker in Fredrica Africa Payne’s “conjugation of the verb: to blow” seems to think that her audience could have made other choices and says, “wasn’t like/you couldn’t/if you wanted to/you woulda,” but “the life you had you blew!” Are these writers writing about their own private experience with violence in the world or are they making a statement about the world in general?

Our speaker in “enter(f*#@ckin)tained” goes on to say, “Da positive I caress/but gotta get this sh*t offa my chest.” Other poets we’ve read (Sapphire* and Reg E. Gaines come to mind immediately) write about violence, but clearly aren’t glorifying the violence. Would it be seen as gratuitous then if their poems were turned into rap and sold for popular consumption? Would this be seen as the industry exploiting these poets’ experiences to satisfy public demand or is it doing a service by making their stories more “accessible?”

I realize I’ve asked a lot questions in this post. Questions about accessibility to Art, in whatever form it takes – poetry, music, etc. – raise issues about the relationships among artists, their art, their integrity, and their audience(s), their intermediaries and “patrons.” Exploring these relationships leads me to even more questions. I’m looking forward to our discussion.

(*As a footnote: Sapphire’s book Push is currently on the New York Times Trade Fiction paperback bestseller list and is being made into “a major motion picture.”)

Sheila

music on the page?

2009-10-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve been sitting all week with this question of poetry being the baseline (or bassline, even) of music. Folks are always saying crap like “poetry is the music of the soul,” and I’m always left wondering, What the hell does that mean? I guess I’ve written it off for years, this connection between music and poetry. I’m a big radio addict & I often find myself reaffirming the thick distinction I’ve made between the two while listening to simple rhymes being fed over really tight beats or beautiful acoustics. The music is what makes it good, I think, the voices. Also the cheap lyrics, like any good guilty pleasure, mostly because our country is so perpetually stifled emotionally that hearing Miley Cyrus sing “it’s the climb” on the radio could actually make someone feel good & motivated. It’s fascinating; wonderful & totally bizarre.

As I’m reading Bum Rush & Aloud, I’m wondering how or why music matters to the page. I love music & I love poetry. I understand that they share many important characteristics (rhythm, expression, emotion), but I’m not entirely sure the value in trying to enforce one on the other. There are some really good lyrics that make terrible songs & really great musical analogies in poems that in turn just suck the life out of it.

So what about spoken word? Or rap? I think both take the best parts of musical elements and the best parts of accessible poetic language, turn each on their head, and explode. Jessica & Eboni are asking questions about access versus message & I think it’s really important that these two are tied. In music, I think the message often gets watered down in order to be overly-accessible. In poetry, I think the message gets downplayed (if there even is one) in favor of devices that may or may not prove inaccessible to a reader. In spoken word & rap (and no, I’m not necessarily saying either is “not music”), I think they prioritize the two to an extent where they become a single unit. Accessible message.

How does this happen? I think a lot of it has to do with the spoken voice & not the singing voice. There is authority in spoken language, a different level of seriousness. It’s easy to go to a show & talk over the musician. We all know what background music is like, especially in a coffee shop or at a small venue where the opener isn’t well-known. But when folks get on a mic and start talking, people listen. Isn’t that strange? Maybe it’s our upbringing in America, where we are taught to be quiet when the person with authority in the room is speaking. Loudspeakers, news television, radio, classrooms, speeches, dialogue on teevee programs. It’s easy to talk or think or work while someone is playing music, but the second a spoken word or rap album shuffles onto my ipod while I’m doing homework, I have to skip it because I can’t focus with someone else talking. I think this is really interesting & would love to hear what other folks’ experiences of this are.

Back to the poems themselves. I really love “Owed to Eminem” & love even more that I got to the end and found out it was written by June Jordan. Bam! I hope somebody writes about it because there’s so much to unpack there.

I want to talk about “Conversation with Duke Ellington & Louis (Pops) Armstrong” in BumRush. Lucca does a fantastic job here of invoking music on the page. It’s possible not because there are specific rhythmic elements at play, but because there is a reference in that first stanza that knocks the pendulum on the entire poem, making it sway back and forth through to the end. Lucca writes “the clarinet and who/ does mean a thing / ‘case she’s got that swing.” Plenty of folks know that song & what the poem is riffing off in that moment. The question of access is a small one here, simply because the song (Ella Fitzgerald’s “It Don’t Mean A Thing”) has been so mainstreamed in jazz and hiphop circles that it’s a little unavoidable to have that strike a chord. The placement of the “doo wops” and the fact that they are imbedded in the stanzas, also moves the poem in ways that others in the section can’t seem to manage (like “Bebop Trumpet”). The spacing of the rhyme also mimics that of a jazz song, pushing back and forth between artists with a feminist in the middle.

“Bebop Trumpet,” on the other hand, is a really tight list of musical allusions, but with no real musical affect. There isn’t a moment in this poem where I feel a hook, anything to latch onto. I don’t think this makes it a bad poem, but I wonder – as I did with many in this section – why it is included. Simply for the topic? Or is there more I’m missing than co-opted lyrics?

I had the same question when I got to “The Creed of a Graffiti Writer,” a totally badass poem that I hope Rojas has taken to many, many stages. This poem belongs on the mic. It needs to be heard aloud. And while it shares rhythmic qualities with particular kinds of music, I don’t consider this to be a musical poem. The rhythm & the rhyme, the accents and the metered motion definitely make this poem come alive (another point of access). Would I call it music? Nope.

Also, I’m really thankful to whomever sent out this link. Thanks!

2009-10-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

This is a very interesting blog posting that introduces what seems to be a new idea about patriarchy and dominance:

http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/accepting-kyriarchy-not-apologies.html

Thought you might want to see it.

H.K.

Washing My Father

2009-10-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

Something I have realized in this class is that one element that draws me into poetry is my ability to immediately connect it to my personal life. The first time I read "Washing My Father" by Hayan Charara, I started out feeling sad for the man who had to watch his father's demise and I was caught up in the similarities to my life.

I washed where
he could barely reach.

When he was ready,
I filled a jug with the bath water
he sat in, poured it over
the nape of his neck,
over his shoulders,

Then lines six and seven of the last stanza jolted me,

I was ten years old.
He was a young man.

These lines caused me to read the poem a second and a third time -- I would have anyway, but I did it immediately because I felt I had missed something. I wondered if the boy was being abused. My additional readings put me at ease regarding sexual abuse because it was clear that the father was not allowing the boy to see his penis. The first lines of the poem read,

His cupped hands hid the space
between his legs.

and later, Charara writes,

...Gently,
I locked the door behind me,
his back still turned away,

So even as the father drys himself, we know the ten year old boy is not in the room. We know he is not forced to watch or to see his father's genital area. And even after my logical mind tells me that this poem is not about sexual abuse, I am still unnerved. I wonder if the speaker in the poem is traumatized by this experience of having to bathe his father.

I did some research to see if maybe this is a cultural expectation or understanding that young boys bathe their fathers as a rite of passage, but I could not confirm (or deny) this, but after sitting with the poem, I was able to find lines that gave me a clearer understanding of their relationship.

In the first two lines of the last stanza,

This is not about pity.
I did not yet know that kind of love.

I found it interesting that Charara calls pity a kind of love, but I can relate to it. I've been there -- that place where you are so sorry for someone that your love for them bleeds into your pity for them. Charara uses the first two stanzas of his narrative to show us the setting and invite us to watch a son caring for his father. [I must interject here how the words "washing" and "watching" are so close in sound and in look that they could almost be interchangeable -- kinda creeps me out further.] Then, in those last lines, we are left just as confused by this interaction as the speaker,

Plain and simple,
my father made me.
It is what he did.
He never required a reason,
and nobody ever asked why.

We too want to know why, but have no way to ask or to know.

That last line does make me wonder who else knows of this bathing. Is the speaker the only child? Is he the only one able to bathe the father or the only one the father trusts to bathe him? Is it an honor like washing the feet of your guru?

One could argue that there is still an element of abuse here -- a ten-year old boy being forced to bathe is able bodied (as far as we know) father and not being told why could be seen as abusive. Again, knowing more about the culture and family obligations/expectations would be helpful here.

The form Charara selects is free verse with three stanzas 16 lines, 12 lines and 12 lines. His line breaks are extraordinary throughout, but in the first stanza, they are exquisite. He chooses short lines with powerful images. Starting with the father and his cupped hands. The description of the silence in the bathroom in relation to the father's breathing and the steam and the droplets from the faucet is provocative and powerful. I am there, watching this washing and, like the speaker, wondering.

peacelovelight
Kiala

Who is Pinero with NYC Hard Times Blues

2009-10-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Miguel Piñero’s poems stood out to me this week, particularly when considering first WHO is writing and then the work itself (except I kind of did it backwards). The piece that pulled me in most was “New York City Hard Times Blues.” When I first decided to write about it, I didn’t have a plan, just read it back through a couple of times to try to make sense of why it stuck with me, why it played out like a song, why I felt more present in New York and then L.A. and then New York than I have in reading many other poems (even though these are not always views of the cities I know from experience).

I pulled out lines that were

visceral: “the sun was vomiting itself up…”; “melt the icicles/from the tears in my eyes”; “…each cold day becomes like a brick wall/and you’re the bouncing ball”; “spreading spiritual bad breath”;

lyrical: “…stumble bum blues band”; “L.A./laid back/L.A./kick back/L.A.”; “as westwood camaro rides very slow very low”; “refugee from a leprosy colony hotel”

stark/political: “…my ashtray became/the cemetery of all my lost memories”; “I should know it’s very rare when/a prayer/gets the boiler fixed”; “12% alcoholic aluminum/recycled viet nam horror stories”; “welfare afro hairdos sprout out/of frye boots”

And there are more and more. Why did I feel I could read this poem over and over, always finding a different rhythm to its lines, new connections between its flashing scenes, another gut reaction to the “hard time/sad time/bad time” Sunday morning blues? It’s a blues song, so it is filled with sorrowful moments, the underbelly of the cold New York street scene and the hidden tragedy of the frenetic L.A. flashbacks—and yet it is so seductive, as the blues often ends up being.

The Om sequence against the bilingual prayers to J.C. show the speaker’s desperation but constant effort, through fitful energy, to get through the moment, dipping into one ideology and then the next. The short lines of the Oms, the hard/sad/bad times, the flashback to L.A. and the four punctuating yeahs give this poem breath. The tension, the visuals, the memories build and build until we need a breath, a scene change, or a break down. The “yeahs” rock the narrative back into introspection, back into focus on place, on the crucial NOW.

The ending lines made me really want to know who this poet was, as he inserts himself into the poem. We learn this is about him, or some version of him or experience he knows personally: “I wish I could cop a bottle of muscatel/stroll through the bowery with a pocket/full of wino dreams/but Sunday morning in New York City/for the junkie there ain’t no pity/we just walk the streets with loaded dice/and hear people say there goes miky/miky piñero/they call him the junkie christ…” The final image is so beautiful, tragic and hopeful—to trade loaded dice for wino dreams. New Yorkers know this man, the “junkie christ”—the image portrays him as a kind of phrophet.

The first thing I noticed when looking for information on Miguel Piñero was that he died tragically young, at age 41 (1947–1988). He wrote a dozen and a half plays, wrote for television, acted, wrote poems, co-founded the Nuyorican; his first play “Short Eyes” was nominated for several Tonys and won and Obie & other recognitions. His New York Times obit reported that he died of cirrhosis of the liver; other sites reported that he had a lifelong herione addiction. Hard to know what facts are facts when you are looking into a someone’s life twenty years after his death. But all the sources agreed that the man was a standout voice in poetry and drama. He also knew what it was to be a child in prison, a child hustler, a child gang member. Writing his breakout, award-winning play while he was in Sing Sing prison, he knew what it was to live & work in the glow of the literary community, but he also knew what it was to be “in New York City/crying the junkie blues.” When considering Piñero, I don’t want to slip into a stereotypical view of his life—the street kid/dealer turned poet/playwright who never could escape the shackles of his junkie past and died young because of it.

There is so much power in his story—he left a physical legacy of work as well as a venue for others. But there is also a tragedy here. And it resounds from the poem “New York City Hard Time Blues.” He writes with seductive, impeccable lyricism and rhythm, offering an insider view of two seemingly opposed worlds sharing similar sorrows (NYC & LA). This is clearly someone who has studied and honed a craft. But the main character is alone on the freezing, early morning streets, looking from caffeine to meditation to Jesus Christ for a fix. I wonder when this was written, and if that matters. How can someone so talented, who has achieved such critical appeal, still find himself in the bowels of a cruel, forced-sober morning? It’s a foolish question. It’s so easy to live in two worlds, or carry one with you into another. Is Piñero’s poem a story of his past or a story of his present? And what is he hoping to teach us by singing it? Piñero calls himself the junkie christ but his colleagues, the editors, call him the Philosopher of the Criminal Mind.

2009-10-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

The poems for this week seemed to me to be mostly about ejaculations and explosions. In Hayan Charara's "Usage," I am thinking of the line, "Maybe then, metaphors-- not bodies, not hillsides, not hospitals, not schools-- will explode." Though I'm sure he meant the explosions literally, I couldn't help but think back to Langston Hughes' "Dream Deferred." In "Dream Deferred," the last line is a metaphor ("or does it explode?"), linking the dream to the bomb, and therefore the metaphor to the bomb. Charara follows the same linkage in calling attention to the explosion of the metaphors. The slashes present in the poem seem to represent the outward movement of shrapnel and debris following an explosion, and the interruption of the dashes between words signal an interruption, possibly even a seismic event. At the end of the poem, the explosion of words absent syntax serve the purpose of speeding up the dialogue and ending on an almost frantic note. The words that Charara has chosen to italicize throughout his poem call attention to their two-faced uses. Particularly brilliant and ironic is the choice of “altogether” compared to “all together.”

I am not altogether sure we can all together come (Inclined, 76).

When using the word altogether in the first part of the line, Charara is seeding doubt through the idea of coming together, thus creating a rift, a kind of lingual explosion. However, the word altogether is presented in the English language as one cohesive word. The words “all” and “together” in this phrase are so close to each other that it is like one word has begun to eat the other; or like the two are conjoined twins that cannot survive if separated. Ironically, the phrase “all together” becomes the inclusive term, yet it is separated by a space that reinforces the true differences between all of us that prevent us from actually coming together. Charara did not invent these words, obviously, nor is he using them out of context. However, he is pointing out within the confines of one small, brilliantly-crafted sentence, the derisive power of the terms and the huge problem of unity/disunity that they attempt to conceal. The words sound alike when spoken, but they have entirely different meanings, while the second term takes longer in the breath because one must allow the space between the words to exist in order to properly convey their intent.

Charara’s and Hughes’ poems deal with explosions metaphorically; however, the entire section, "When the definition of madness is love" in Bum Rush the Page, is about explosions, mostly sexual. In “8 ways of looking at pussy,” Letta Neely uses explosions to represent the orgasmic experience. Explosions become orgasms, become ejaculations. In this poem, we have passed the point of metaphor and wandered into the land of the real. Now, the pussy is the pussy; the cum is the cum. It is obscene and delightful to read the words outright, as if I am a teenager again, my dad discovering me beating off a boy. It's dirty, yeah. But exciting, too. It’s not the same type of liberation that Hughes was talking about when addressing the nature of his dream for people of color. It is, however, the liberation of humanity from the straightjacket of moral subject matter of what has been traditionally considered “allowed.” Is sexual liberation a stepping stone to other kinds of liberation?

There are some things that don't belong to me as a writer. I am obviously not a poet of color. I come from semi-privilege (comparatively speaking). But some subjects belong to everyone and become a place where we can come together. Sex, music, lust, passion, love. Here, the explosion becomes a unifying force, standing out in stark contrast to the explosions of Hughes and Charara. As the eruption of Mt. St. Helen's proved, though the explosion is a destructive force, it is also a deliverance. It releases an environment from the shape of its past, it allows a new terrain to be shaped. I do believe that at some point, Langston Hughes’ dream did explode, and with that explosion came a new landscape, a new aesthetic, and the ability to fashion a new dream, one in which we can all participate.

H.K.

2009-10-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

So amongst the many poems we had to read this week my strategy in finding a poem was simple. Find a poem that is direct yet indirect in making each subject spoken for distinctive in its own way. . . after reading through the poems, I stopped when I came across Fady Joudah's "Additional Notes on Tea" from Inclined. I did some background research on Joudah and found out that not only is Joudah a poet, but a DOCTOR and translator as well. He was born in Austin, Texas in a Palestinian refugee camp and has a thing for writing poems about tea. In this particular poem I find it interesting that he uses the history of tea as a key distinction across cultures. The unique differences and significance that tea has to a culture is something I have never looked at before. Joudah points out these distinctions and brings it to your front door with great big smile ;-)

In Cairo a boy's balcony higher than a man's deathbed.
The boy is sipping tea.
The view is angular like a fracture.

........

Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea

.......

On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die.
Tea while the anesthetic wears off,
While the blade is waiting, tea.

Joudah tells a story that takes you around the world using tea as your compass. I find it quite interesting that a doctor will drink tea as the anesthetic wears off, and also while waiting for a blade. I perceive this action as tea being a filter for something, or an emotion we choose not to show. Joudah goes on in including the Boston Tea Party and his preference of tea. I also research that Black tea in particular can lower risk of stroke. Now with Joudah being a doctor I'm pretty sure that may be a reason that might be his favorite. lol. This poem is informational and thought provoking yet light-hearted and free spirited. My favorite line is in the last stanza

Tea, like history, is a non sequitur

At first I had no idea what sequitur meant, but after I looked it up this line made perfect sense. Sequiter means a logical consequence, and history is just the opposite, or is it? I believe at times it makes sense of what is going on negatively in this world because of what we as human beings have put out. Though how can account for what has happened and still not have a logical conclusion for it? NON SEQUITUR......yea this poem is dope.

-Dorothy

Looking at the poet not myself

2009-10-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

Well self centernedness abound So , I will take a look at Miguel Pinero and what he is doing in The Book of Genesis According to St. Miguelito. Okay so I am a sick puppy because I think this is so dark and funny. Wait a minute I mean it is so dark and horrifying. Pinero' s god is one who creates slums and ghettos and when that isn't enough he creates rivers of garbage. And god is dope sick. So if We are made in his image then it would fit for god to create all of the evils that come with street drugs and eventually genocide. I think Pinero's God is the DEA and white gowrnment that control the sale of drugs at the highest, heavenly levels, and allows eevrything else trickle down into a massive war on people of color using the war on drugs as an excuse Or more importantly I think Pinero's use of the creation story points out the huge hole in the myth of creation and the racism and classism that is built into religion. I love all th elines of begats... and that it is Satan who plants trees of conciousness and that God need the media to keep up the lie and say be cool, and the poeple were cool.

This piece made me think about our conversation about authenticity and I don't think this poem could be written by someone with out direct knowledge of addiction and poverty and anger at the media and government. And God did not come down and say < Just say no to drugs and pass out free rides to the Betty Ford clinic

Hole Straight To The Heart

2009-10-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

I had such a visceral response to Nancy D. Tolson's Bullet Hole Man I knew I had to write about it. The subtitle labels it A Love Poem and while that is what the poem's about it also touches on so much at the same time. Tolson isn't just talking about a love story she's touching on social elitism, police harassment, racism, the pressure and truths about gang life that a lot of mainstream media likes to misrepresent. Right there in the beginning the emotion of it is set up in the third and fourth lines:

i caressed his body, and i wept from the soul

when my hand first touched my man's bullet holes

The starkness of those lines, the positioning of bullet holes as belonging to the man as opposed to something inflicted on him. They are part of him, he owns them. The weeping from the soul is understandable, we feel pain when those we love are hurt but there's more here. She, the voice in hasn't seen/felt these wounds before, she is just discovering them, this is their first time together and that makes the pain a different sort. She's not just mourning because a person she loves was hurt or even because he's trapped in this life but also because had those bullets in the chest found their target she would never have meet this love. Those bullet holes are signs of what was almost taken from her without her awareness. The love the narrator feels for this man is apparent in so much of the language in the poem and especially her recounts of the things she goes through for just being with this man.

i sneak now to see him, he lives underground
i love a street man though i'm college bound

Tolson touches on a lot of things in those two lines. The narrator has to sneak out to see him and underground has numerous meanings, it could be a metaphor for the "other side of the tracks" so to speak or it could mean he's in hiding from the authorities. The next line adds another reason though, a perceived social difference, a questioning of the validity of their relation ship because of their different paths. There's an idea in that line, that someone who is going to college would be too smart to be with someone involved in illegal activity. It's repeated when she talks about the harassment she gets from the authorities:

they think i will tell, 'cause i'm just too damn smart to love this Black man they believe has no heart

She's reiterating the expectations of intelligence that are part of the pressures on their relationship. It's something our media promotes all the time, that those involved in gangs are violent and stupid people and no one but someone equal in stupidity would date them which is a such a vast simplification of a problem that has ties with institutional racism, government funneling of drugs into ghettos and non-protection provided by authorities. This is not to say that every person involved in illegal activity is a saint pressured by circumstance but the situation is more complex than a simple - "Gang members are evil and violent" and the narrator knows this. She doesn't shy away from the things they have to live with, the things he does and the effects of those actions.

It's in this space of this complexity that the narrator opines her love. She knows that no one is all saint or all sinner and she tackles this two times in the text:

it boggles my mind this heaven and hell
that i'm living between, two worlds that collided

and the end of the poem which is plea and prayer as much as wish:

this man who is both my heaven and hell
may the bullets never make it to his heart

The narrator is aware of the position she's put in not just because of the things he does but because of the expectations that plague them both and the constraints their relationship. It is through exploring this complexity of identity where she's able to confront the racism of the police who harass her:

they've called me a ho and a stupid street maid

and the fear she exist in while she's with him:

some nights it's so easy, while some are so hard
to think that they could just bust through the door

This poem which at times feels like a explanation for or a defense of her love is a way for her to expose and explore her feeling for this man. In the end her statement that she would give up her degree and pick up a gun if it became necessary, for him, and she's able to really subject the reader to a shock because that's not something that's supposed to happen. Someone "smart" isn't supposed to be willing to give it all up and pick up a weapon. That's one of the reason's I love this poem so much Tolson gives us someone who breaks convention, who doesn't pick the "smart" move but is undeniably "smart" and in doing so she not only shows us love but truth.
No one is simple, no one is a stereotype.

-Naamen