Tania Price

Poets of Color

Blog #3

9/23/09

Response to: Lawrence Joseph’s “Before our Eyes”

In Lawrence Joseph’s, “Before Our Eyes” the narrator presents a slue of declarative statements sustained with the thoughtful integrity of vividly illustrative images. The vivid imagery is able to materialize through the sentences in a magnificent array of colors both interposed and singularly woven into the phrases. As the narrator states “saturated manganese blue.”(2), the reader can feel the heaviness of this color of twilight impose itself upon the page. The expansiveness of the word “saturated” allows blue to take on a new and more dynamic meaning, a coating more luxuriously brilliant and deep of a hue.

Joseph continues his interlacing of color with conjunction, mixing independent clause with independent clause creating a stew of nouns and subordinates, such as, “A yellow line besides a black line,”(3). While the clause “A yellow line”(3) could definitely exist on its own, the limitless possibilities added to the imagination when one envisions what “A yellow line besides a black line”(3) could mean, adds a truly subjective and speculative consideration to the statement. It is within these strings of clauses where the narrator truly begins to sparkle. Within one stanza (so to speak) Joseph mentions eight different colors and closes out his enumeration of the different aspect of these colors by slyly suggesting ”sweet sleep of colors.”(15)

And though the narrator quickly moves from his grand visions of colorful anecdote into the realm of political commentary, one tactic that is never lost is the narrator’s ability to string clauses together. As the narrator says “Waiting rooms, shopping centers, after all, empty moods and emotions.”(40-1), there is no shortage of proper nouns however predicates are another matter. Describing contemporary issues without verbs is a rather tricky issue that the narrator tackles rather well and though the narrator, at times, employs an arsenal of verbs, the verbs the narrator chooses to use are usually verbs being used to describe physical activity, “written”(14), “seeing”(17), “sit”(19), “crack”(22), and “undulating”(34) just to name a few.

As the narrator moves back and forth between vivid imagery and poignant political declarations the poetic voice in never lost on the reader. As the poem starts to wind down the narrator continuous his assertion with strong verbs such as, “resisting”(57), "charred"(57), and "smell"(57) but returns to his ever prevalent use of the injection of metamorphic colors personified.