The Plac(e)ing of Language

As I was doing this week's readings I was trying to think of place, to think of setting and home and belonging but for some reason the connection between the poetry and the idea just didn't deepen for me. I could see the connections between the poetry selected and place but didn't really feel them enough to write on them. Then I decided to really expand my idea of place beyond the physical. Putting this in the context of Poets of Color and colonialism made a lot of sense for me. I think that for those who are part of a diaspora home takes on such an amorphous and diffuse space. What does home mean when the place you are told is your home doesn't match the home in your head? I'm especially thinking of that cliched and still popular insult of "Go back where you came from!" How do other peoples ideas of our homes, our spaces relate to us when we might not speak the language of the place they consider our home? Or haven't been there since childhood? I can't help but think of so many people being deported back to homelands they never knew that house tongues they never spoke or only speak very few words in.

This thinking led me to the Najarro poem "Between Two Languages" and just looking at the form of the poem, the way that at first she translates the spanish words for the reader providing a bridge for readers who don't have the language. But then she stops, the spanish words cease being defined and become lines in and of themselves, their italics almost seem to separate the poem into segments. They become borders, perhaps barriers for some, but definitely some kind of divide within the poem itself and within the idea of the poem - existing between two languages. Language itself becomes a huge border in the idea of place, that lines can be drawn and barriers formed by arbitrary lines and the assumption that language--always moving and changing--falls within those lines. It feels as if Najarro is inviting us to explore that space for ourselves. She translates enough words that the reader can get a general meaning of the lines that follow without translation but it's not easy, it's not handed to the reader, you have to work for it and find the places for entrance yourself.

The poem talks about separation, the miseria of the narrator as compared to that of a random cry in the night. It resounds with the the idea of language acting as a bridge between peoples, an invitation into a poem, culture, a life but also the barrier it forms. The easy way it is to throw away other people simple because they speak a different language, or a different dialect. The way that the lack of a shared language/place can lead to an absence of any empathy within ourselves for others. Najarro talks about someone else's stifling cry--for me this felt like she was trying to represent a sound that can go beyond language, between languages, a cry of pain is a cry of pain, a yell of anger is a yell of anger. There are certain sounds/tones, just as there are certain facial expressions that tend to be recognizable across many peoples of the world regardless of language. Najarro ties this into compassion, that this "stifled cry" leads the narrator to feel compassion. So then is language the barrier that prevents true compassion? Is this what Najarro means by the title? Is that space between languages where true communication lies, in the act of compassion itself?

Reading this poem I thought about last week's discussion around english and the privileging of that language. So as I read I tried to see if I did that, was I glossing over the spanish just to get to the english sections of the poem? I deliberately forced myself to slow down over the spanish to absorb it more fully and try to access the poem as a whole, not just the english parts. I don't know if I succeeded but it's something I'm trying to be more aware of as we go forward.

-Naamen