The specific

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.