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.
the visual form is more addressed here than anything interior and you have that on-- the two examples are quite good. now let's get inside!
ReplyDeletee
In both Mroue & Powell they represent violence and breath in overlapping and dissimilar ways. Mroue employs both past and present tense stanzas as if the violence is an every present constant. He also gives us breaths between the stanzas, like a swimmer coming up for air. His imagery focuses around bodies, names, collective memory and objects like strawberries that hold a delicate life nutrience. Mroue also positions himself quite deliberately in conversation with both the polish poet Milosz and Lebanese of a younger & American generation. Mroue portrays violence as a stark aloneness. As an insistent, pervasive and isolating bodily memory. On the other hand Powell portrays the speed & movement of a particular kind of violence. As you wrote in your post there is no breath in Powell's piece. It is the speed and sharpness of violence that he is drawing attention to. And in that trajectory there is an emphasis on a societal rather than personal focus. Even the section about the preacher I'm not entirely sure what's going on or how the poem would like me to feel about it. The poem is angry, with just cause and with limited room for other emotions. His references to slavery & little John & crack & ghettos while giving me an aerial view of a particular community does not bring me to an intimate physical level the way Mroue does. Two of many possible choices in how form impacts, compliments or avoids violent depictions.
ReplyDelete-Suzanne