The Educated Mind...

Wow, the work that we looked at this week was great! It’s amazing how much I was feeling Ishmael Reed’s introduction also. It felt like someone was just explaining the entire history of my life. Particularly with the story of the Latina student who felt like her white friends couldn't appreciate her work. How many times have I heard in a workshop “This seems like a performance piece or spoken word rather then something that can be read on the page. “ with this sort of ton as if to say, “This isn’t poetry. This is that stuff that the black people do in nightclubs on Monday nights.” Ugh. Really? Can't you just appreciate the work for what it is? Despite subject matter? Or rather looking at the subject matter but with out labeling it something that your over. Obviously if someone is writing about it, we’re not all over it.

Anyways, I think that’s why I became so hung up on the Giles Johnson, PH.D by Frank Marshall Davis. Yeah I’m having a moment with my privileged identity as a grad student. Giles Johnson was short but it felt like there was so much packed in. The last two lines especially: “because he wouldn’t teach/ and he couldn’t porter.” There is so much in that! It’s wouldn’t and couldn’t that are so intentional in these lines. If it had been switched the other way, he couldn’t teach and wouldn’t porter, it would have indicated a certain snobbishness on Giles part. He couldn’t teach, presumably because he didn’t know how or wasn’t very good at it and he refused to porter because he was too educated to do it. I think this is generally what people think happens with People of color. The perception is that POC’s get these big degrees and yet they can’t teach cause they’re terrible and then they think they’re too good to do any other work their just throwing their PH.D around and acting like having it will pay the bills. What I love so much about this poem is that it’s not that way. It’s he wouldn’t teach, maybe because he thought he was too good for it or maybe because he has a problem with the institution, whatever the case maybe but he couldn’t porter. Maybe because their wasn’t any work or maybe because he didn’t know how. For all of his degrees the thing that would seem to be easy for him to do was in accessible to him. He couldn’t do it; he wasn’t able to work as a porter. Something about that just spoke so much to the situation that most people in academia find themselves. You can make the choice to teach or not but what will you do if you don’t? What can you do if you don’t? What are all of these degrees making us capable of doing? Giles can speak Latin and Greek and can probably analyze text like nobodies business but he can’t actually work. As I read the poems following that one I just kept thinking about the wouldn’t/couldn’t aspect. Maybe that’s not going deep enough but you can tell it hit me.

I was also really intrigued by the Thylias Moss’s Video Poams. They’re not something I have any experience with. They reminded me of the kinds of videos that play in the movies when they want you to know that the character is wacked out. They usually say, “Look at what this kid made.” and then they show you a video that looks like these. What makes them so interesting though is that they really bring into question this whole idea of, is a poem only a poem if it’s on the page. Take the first video Bubbling. It came with an attachment of one of the poems that is included in the video. We can see in the printed page that there is a lot of intention in the words and look of the poem that, it seems to me, gets lost in the video. We also realize that the video is essentially a few poems sewn together to create one poem and a poem that is seen and heard rather than simply read. I was struggling really hard to see what the words actually said in the video (though it was rather small and I’m rather blind) and it forces you to listen really closely to the voice that’s reading them. I’ve listened to the video several times now and I’m still not sure I picked up on every line. It makes you wonder what the intention of putting all these poams together is. Obviously there is something about bubbles and roundness that is important but why put them together in this way when they have been put in the print form already. It really pushes your perception of what poetry really is and also at the intention of poetry in general is. Is poetry words written on a page, or is it about what can be read or heard, or is it about being visual? And why can’t it be all those things and more like it is in these videos? Watching these videos really brought up the question of my own work because as I watched them I could accept that someone somewhere thought of them as poetry but I myself had trouble viewing them that way which bothered me. How often do people try and put my work in to a box say it’s not this, it’s that and then move on? I didn't want to do that with this work and I think what helps is this deliberate spelling of Poam. Now what that necessarily means I don’t know and maybe I’m reading too much into it but the label does make it easier to accept (how ridiculous is that!). The one thing I can say about these poams is that they really allow the writer a lot of control over the viewer (I don’t feel comfortable saying reader here). The Meditation on Dada for instance is really deliberate about when the lines come out, which column they are in and on which line they should be read. The viewer sees the poam the way the writer truly intended unlike with a print poem where the reader may understand what your going for but may get tripped up by having read something further down or something. With the video, you only see what the author wants you too. The only distractions are distractions that they themselves have created and when meditated upon can probably be seen as adding to the work.

Its seems like most of what we read this week was about cultural navigation and I think it’s interesting that when we read the work of POC’s that becomes the link between them. We are all always trying to figure out how to get through the day, what we have to give up or share in order to do that (ref. June Jordan’s Love Song about Choosing Your Booze) and also what get’s taken from us or given to us by other cultures (ref. Michael Harper’s To Mammy and James Welch’s Harlem, Montana. Just Off the Reservation). I hope we get to talk about this in class some. I’d cover more here but I have to go to work. See you all Tuesday!