Though the syllabus says that the concentration for the week is to be "Placement historically and culturally, dominance and subordination, center and edge" I found myself more often coming upon themes of journeying, both far away from home and attempting to return to home. Perhaps that is because, right now, home is a theme that has been resonating with me in my personal life of late. In Khaled Mattawa's poem, "Echo & Elixir 3," the imagery of travel is the concept on which the poem is hinged. Odyssey, boarding pass, you've been away: all phrases that evoke travel. And why not, since the scene begins in the airport? But the poem is about more than travel. It is about stasis as well. The narrator is "reading Plato looking for a word" but the thought is incomplete, leaving me to believe he never finds what he is seeking. Gilgamesh is still waiting on his boat and the beaches are full of people also waiting. The narrator brings nothing with him from all of his travels. He affirms instead, "Being away is all you bring." The longing for home in this poem, for a relocating of oneself in a familiar setting, not merely a birthplace, but a place where one can actually feel at home, is woven through each stanza. In the first stanza of "Echo & Elixir 3" The narrator is presumably arriving home from a journey, but it seems that what actually locates the poem at home is the nature the speaker beholds, moreso than any of the physical or intellectual landmarks: "The poetry in sand more than the poetry in poetry," and the blade of grass in which "you are a citizen of its taste." These elements, the natural world that surrounds us are well known by the traveler. I know sand, I know grass, I know water and the sea. It is in the elements, the land that changes less swiftly than human emotion or human surroundings, that one can begin to feel at home.
There is also a journey in Echo & Elixir I, in which the first references to the poem are those of natural origin: clouds and rain, pink blossoms. Here, through the word usage, we have a feeling of the long journey, "the roads are long and long," and that the speaker is disembodied and uncertain,"these clothes are not my clothes./These bones are not my bones." There is also the insistence that the manmade thing, the ships, which float in the harbor are the same as the sea and that the sea represents the journey. Why does Mattawa say that the journey "awakens a light inside my chest?" I think it is because, like the fundamental message in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, home is where we were, but cannot be recognized as such until we have moved beyond sight of it. It is precisely the journey away that awakens us to our need to return. Unlike "Echo & Elixir 3" which offers nature as a way to feel at home,at least in part, "Echo & Elixir I" does not offer any solution. The man who is "on the phone calling, hanging up, calling again," presumably gets no answer. The poet's use of phrases like "No help" and "no use" leaves us with a general feeling of unresolved travel, of undestined journey. Even though nature is a sort of home in "Echo & Elixir 3" the home is not a concrete one. We are not endowed with a feeling of resolved "homeness." Even when he was home, and writing about home, one gets the feeling that Mattawa longed for something else, or at least expected something else. "Growing Up with a Sears Catalog in Benghazi, Libya" is a poignant look at how the infiltration of American capitalism may have colored the author's idea of "home." Instead of admiring what was there for him to behold, he viewed the pictures in the catalog as the things he wanted to possess. The fact that he traveled so far, to America, to view them, gave me a sense of dislocation for the rest of his work. The author's views of New Orleans aren't very flattering, and the image of nature at the end, after he'd achieved all he really wanted to possess, is one of disappointment and death, "What kind of flower/you want planted/next to your grave?" seems like an acknowledgement and sadness for a way of life that was departing. Though Mattawa's selections never ground us in a home while we read, it is still evident that he carried a piece of his home in his heart. In a world where globalization and opportunity are abundant, what more can we expect?
Showing posts with label Week 4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Week 4. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Inclined to Speak on War
I’m interested in the poem written by Lawrence Joseph which the anthology takes it’s name after, Inclined to Speak. The lines that grab my attention the most is rhetorical,
“...what kinds of times are these
when a poem is a crime because it includes
what must be made explicit.”
In this stanza there is urgency and a flare of social justice that emanates from the Lebanese/Syrian American writer’s voice. Joseph alludes to the importance of freedom of speech; the dangers of political censorship raised to question when social inequalities extreme. He challenges the poet who writes solely on beauty and “pleasure” when there is suffering apparent in society. In “Inclined to Speak” Joseph holds the writer responsible, including himself, to tell the stories that are difficult or unpleasant, but are held as “truth.” This philosophical and ethical challenge for writers to be socially responsible is intriguing. Of course most artists do not want anyone to impose influence in one’s artistic process or choices for content, but one cannot ignore the validity of Joseph’s concern for poets opting to take the less controversial path.
What Joseph is doing is sparking a fire to ignite social change in oneself as writer and/or reader to affect change. The end of this poem is provocative in nature, challenging us to speak up and become participants in larger society who oppose genocide, war, rape, and other atrocities. Similarly in the poem “Intifada” Samuel Hazo addresses issues of war, criticizing militia for killing children and spoofing a general’s claim that “...leaders and parents use these children as human shields” with his response,
“After all, who could deny that boys with all their lives
ahead of them would happily
seek execution, that mothers loved
to see their sons in open
coffins, that choosing a brave
death instead of a life long one
was an opinion for fools?”
Hazo is airing controversial and prevalent sentiments that many conservative Americans hold on to as part of their will to push what many falsely call “the war on terrorism.” His use of dialogue from militia in battle is something we do not usually see in poetry and Hazo poignantly shapes the devastating loss of humanity in war.
Also in his poem “For Which it Stands” Hazo uses the American flag as a precarious symbol and metaphor for political viewpoints which criticize the U.S. government. He exemplifies with the U.S. government’s use of the Christian religion to justify war and it’s support funded by capitalism embedded in our culture, and the dehumanization, little value placed on the lives of people of Arab descent who continue to be casualties of war in Iraq. The poem ends dramatic and unjust in that the U.S. media only tells one side of the story and it is not from that of an Arab perspective. He writes strikingly about the casualties,
“Two boys,
their mother and both grandparents,
No names for them...
Just Arabs”
It’s interesting that two September 11th poems showed up in this week’s reading; interesting but not surprising considering the theme of placement historically and culturally, proposed for this week’s discussion. I started with Sam Hazo’s, “September 11, 2001,” and came to Suheir Hammad’s “First Writing Since” closer to the end of my readings.
Hazo’s piece begins with the serene loops of the hawk far below the approaching airplanes. At first I was unclear about this juxtaposition, what made the poet connect these images as we enter the poem. Both hawk and airplanes have a planned course, and exactness of execution. But the hawk looks like he is sleeping; his eyes are hungry; this is his circle of survival. I don’t fear for the creatures beneath, about to panic; it feels more like we are observing something natural and profound. Meanwhile, the airplane’s aim is “dead / ahead” (a chilling break). The plane’s eyes don’t seek out individual victims; it is in fact the opposite. It wants to see no victims, no panic, just surge forward and complete its course.
Right away, the poet/narrator begins to hint at the idea that the impact of this horrific event will be different for some. Immediately all New Yorkers are not in this together, as it may have seemed that morning when we were all running from the ash, up the island and out to the boroughs. “Inch by inch / the interruption overrules both worlds,” right here, right away, we are introduced to the idea of two worlds. What are they—New York and everyplace else? The U.S. and the countries (who may have harbored, may have birthed the tiny fistful of those responsible) that will soon come under attack? Or are both worlds within NY itself—the world of those who will weep as victims, and those who barely have the breath to wail as victims for they must soon defend themselves as the falsely accused?
Next: “We head / home as if to be assured / that home is where we left it.” Again, nobody felt safe anywhere in New York that day. We could not be assured that our building, no matter how small, was not a target. That is the meaning for most New Yorkers. For this narrator, there is the second meaning: people will want someone to blame, they will look for blame the easiest way they know how, in the faces of those around them. The police are still raiding homes of Arabs & Arab Americans in the outer boroughs this month, this September 2009, eight years after. How long will it be before one can be assured that home is safe, that it is where he or she left it? This makes we want to scream with rage!
I can’t go deeply into the next stanza because those images returned me to the continual, haunted nightmares of my New York years. I wanted to analyze this but choked sorrow keeps me staring into the screen and into the page and I see that in some ways poetry’s function is to send us to a place of visceral, uninhibited emotion. Sometimes it is not to be broken apart, sometimes it just has to remind us how to feel, how to mourn, remind us of the events we cannot forget, and that these feelings—be they personal sorrow or empathy—sprout from mirrored hearts, our hearts. Hazo’s words, “Nightmares of impact crushed us / We slept like the doomed or drowned,” reverberate through my head; these lines binds me to the poet, the poem, because I too have endured that sleep. And they remind me that this sleep is not unique to those who survived that Tuesday; No. These lines are set apart because they could be laced into so, so many other poems. And that is the emotional seal, what we must not forget.
Suheir Hammad’s poem stretched out many of the same concepts that floated through Hazo’s. But her poem moves beyond bearing witness, beyond subtly referencing the horrific profiling that crashed up against the horrific events of that day. “no poetry in the ashes south of canal street,” exemplifies the silencing that thuds down after a shock, a tragedy. The poets know they must speak, but, more importantly, they must allow silence. Later, the familiar progression of pleas, an attempt to make sense of the events: “let it be a mistake . . . let it be a nightmare . . . don’t let it be anyone who looks like my brothers.” I remember thinking let it be a mistake, I remember thinking let it be a nightmare . . . but, oh lord . . . I can’t imagine my heart being tugged so fiercely from both sides, breaking and breaking upon itself to the point of begging those final words: “don’t let it be anyone who looks like my brothers.” This is a fear we cannot allow; this is a fear that has no place in an already jarred, trauma-ridden heart.
Images that stayed with me later in the poem: the woman the narrator reaches to assist, who then swears to burn her aider’s homeland; the woman who offered the hug, at a point when mere understanding, simple camaraderie was the only thing the narrator was seeking. Also in 4, the owning of this land, the narrator’s home, in the face of the (well-meaning?) emails that the U.S. had it coming: “hold up with that, cause I live here, these are my friends, my fam, and it could have been me in those buildings . . . can I just have a half second to feel bad?” Word, Suheir. We are not our governments, though we must never stop questioning/confronting our governments. No one should be a victim. The mourning we need to take cannot be lost in the political upheaval we are about to face.
Alright, I’m going to leave it there, leave the rest up for discussion or response. I remember wondering if it was okay for me to mourn, feel victimized after 9/11, because the atrocities the attack came in response to were so clear to me. But, hold up, no excuses. Just like there are no excuses for the bombs that fell the bombs that are falling or the doors that keep getting pounded, pounded down. We’ve gotta mourn, we’ve gotta find each other to hold onto. Like Suheir says, “if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to / mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.”
I left these poems reminded of days I often want to forget. But, more critically, I left these poems seeing a glimpse of those days through the eyes of my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who had more to mourn than I.
Hazo’s piece begins with the serene loops of the hawk far below the approaching airplanes. At first I was unclear about this juxtaposition, what made the poet connect these images as we enter the poem. Both hawk and airplanes have a planned course, and exactness of execution. But the hawk looks like he is sleeping; his eyes are hungry; this is his circle of survival. I don’t fear for the creatures beneath, about to panic; it feels more like we are observing something natural and profound. Meanwhile, the airplane’s aim is “dead / ahead” (a chilling break). The plane’s eyes don’t seek out individual victims; it is in fact the opposite. It wants to see no victims, no panic, just surge forward and complete its course.
Right away, the poet/narrator begins to hint at the idea that the impact of this horrific event will be different for some. Immediately all New Yorkers are not in this together, as it may have seemed that morning when we were all running from the ash, up the island and out to the boroughs. “Inch by inch / the interruption overrules both worlds,” right here, right away, we are introduced to the idea of two worlds. What are they—New York and everyplace else? The U.S. and the countries (who may have harbored, may have birthed the tiny fistful of those responsible) that will soon come under attack? Or are both worlds within NY itself—the world of those who will weep as victims, and those who barely have the breath to wail as victims for they must soon defend themselves as the falsely accused?
Next: “We head / home as if to be assured / that home is where we left it.” Again, nobody felt safe anywhere in New York that day. We could not be assured that our building, no matter how small, was not a target. That is the meaning for most New Yorkers. For this narrator, there is the second meaning: people will want someone to blame, they will look for blame the easiest way they know how, in the faces of those around them. The police are still raiding homes of Arabs & Arab Americans in the outer boroughs this month, this September 2009, eight years after. How long will it be before one can be assured that home is safe, that it is where he or she left it? This makes we want to scream with rage!
I can’t go deeply into the next stanza because those images returned me to the continual, haunted nightmares of my New York years. I wanted to analyze this but choked sorrow keeps me staring into the screen and into the page and I see that in some ways poetry’s function is to send us to a place of visceral, uninhibited emotion. Sometimes it is not to be broken apart, sometimes it just has to remind us how to feel, how to mourn, remind us of the events we cannot forget, and that these feelings—be they personal sorrow or empathy—sprout from mirrored hearts, our hearts. Hazo’s words, “Nightmares of impact crushed us / We slept like the doomed or drowned,” reverberate through my head; these lines binds me to the poet, the poem, because I too have endured that sleep. And they remind me that this sleep is not unique to those who survived that Tuesday; No. These lines are set apart because they could be laced into so, so many other poems. And that is the emotional seal, what we must not forget.
Suheir Hammad’s poem stretched out many of the same concepts that floated through Hazo’s. But her poem moves beyond bearing witness, beyond subtly referencing the horrific profiling that crashed up against the horrific events of that day. “no poetry in the ashes south of canal street,” exemplifies the silencing that thuds down after a shock, a tragedy. The poets know they must speak, but, more importantly, they must allow silence. Later, the familiar progression of pleas, an attempt to make sense of the events: “let it be a mistake . . . let it be a nightmare . . . don’t let it be anyone who looks like my brothers.” I remember thinking let it be a mistake, I remember thinking let it be a nightmare . . . but, oh lord . . . I can’t imagine my heart being tugged so fiercely from both sides, breaking and breaking upon itself to the point of begging those final words: “don’t let it be anyone who looks like my brothers.” This is a fear we cannot allow; this is a fear that has no place in an already jarred, trauma-ridden heart.
Images that stayed with me later in the poem: the woman the narrator reaches to assist, who then swears to burn her aider’s homeland; the woman who offered the hug, at a point when mere understanding, simple camaraderie was the only thing the narrator was seeking. Also in 4, the owning of this land, the narrator’s home, in the face of the (well-meaning?) emails that the U.S. had it coming: “hold up with that, cause I live here, these are my friends, my fam, and it could have been me in those buildings . . . can I just have a half second to feel bad?” Word, Suheir. We are not our governments, though we must never stop questioning/confronting our governments. No one should be a victim. The mourning we need to take cannot be lost in the political upheaval we are about to face.
Alright, I’m going to leave it there, leave the rest up for discussion or response. I remember wondering if it was okay for me to mourn, feel victimized after 9/11, because the atrocities the attack came in response to were so clear to me. But, hold up, no excuses. Just like there are no excuses for the bombs that fell the bombs that are falling or the doors that keep getting pounded, pounded down. We’ve gotta mourn, we’ve gotta find each other to hold onto. Like Suheir says, “if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to / mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.”
I left these poems reminded of days I often want to forget. But, more critically, I left these poems seeing a glimpse of those days through the eyes of my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who had more to mourn than I.
Switching
I really like the work for this week. I felt like we got such a range of experience in it. I really like the work for Khaled Mattawa and Naomi Shihab Nye. I felt like their images and narrative were so beautifully spun together and felt to me like it truly expressed an experience that I didn’t have access to. There was also something about David Dominguez and Sheryl Luna that intrigued me as well, particularly Luna’s poem Learning to Speak.
On the surface Luna talks about not being able to speak Spanish because she choose not to speak it and how embarrassing and humiliating it is to not be able to speak a language that you feel culturally obligated to know, “My brown skin a scandal on the hard streets of El Paso.” (165). Under the surface Luna shows the reader how language can orient a person outside of both the society they wish to be apart of and that which they wish to leave behind. The narrator has a connection to the memory of having a closer connection to the Spanish speaking community that she covered over with speaking English:
“Years of English rumbled something absent, forgotten.
The Tigua Indian Village, men at the corner bench eating
tamales. Indoors, tables with white Formica,
floor-tiles peeling. In the steam of cilantro and tomato
children sit cross-legged and sip caldo de res.
Men smoke afterward in faded jeans and t-shirts lightly rise
around their pecs in the wind. It is how home is all
that’s left in the end. The way we all return forever exiled.”
What really stands out for me obviously are the lines “Years of English rumbled something absent” and “The way we all return forever exiled.” After learning English, it seems as though the connection to the Spanish speaking society of Tigua Indian Village becomes covered over, possibly with the desire to completely integrate into the English speaking society. What is interesting to me about this is that the narrator cannot be completely removed from the original society she can only cover it over. Being placed in a situation in which she meets someone who requires the original societal information she does have some access to the memory but she cannot switch as easily as she might like as we see with the line “The way we all return forever exiled.” While the memory and some cultural understand of what is required on her part is available for her, her code switching skills are not as easily accessible because she never allowed herself to be completely integrated in the Spanish speaking community. The narrator says quite plainly “I spoke/ Spanish broken, tongue-heavy. I was once too proud/ to speak Spanish in the barrio.”
To me this brings up the question of how a person is able to connect with community. By trying to use English only and separating herself from the Spanish community the narrator seems to be able to get by in the English speaking community. We do not have an indication that she is not able to traverse the English-speaking world but we can infer by the fact that she has brown skin that she still maintains a marginalized status as most minorities do, whether or not they speak the language. The narrator has not, however, learned the art of code switching, which is essentially the ability to change one’s language from community to community. Its code switching that allows us to move seamlessly from life at school if you’re a student to life at home where you may speak differently. Code switching to me is all about placement in society. If you are able to code switch you have access to numerous societies but mostly on the outskirts do to things like accents or miss use of words. However, in ability to code switch leaves the narrator outside one society and on the outskirts of another. It’s interesting how little value the U.S. as a society places on language (take for instance on the grammar that is changing simply because people have trouble remembering how it works) and yet it is one of the most important tools in how we determine who is accepted into society. Not only is there an expectation that people speak English but also that they speak a certain kind of English and with out any indication that you speak another language.
The other thing that I found interesting in this poem was the sense of longing that the narrator has looking at the man. “His eyes generations” of Spanish speaking identity and the privilege of belonging completely to one culture which the narrator cannot make the choice to do. “He smiles. Blue hills/in the distance sharpen in an old elegance; the wind/hushes itself after howling the silences.” We can see the desire to have a connection to one place, one cultural representation in this final moment. But there is also this longing in the fact that she whispers her desire to learn Spanish. This humiliation at being forced to say it but this longing to have the desire to respect the want as well. She wants to belong to one culture completely but knowing that she can’t, she will take on the task of learning to code switch instead.
On the surface Luna talks about not being able to speak Spanish because she choose not to speak it and how embarrassing and humiliating it is to not be able to speak a language that you feel culturally obligated to know, “My brown skin a scandal on the hard streets of El Paso.” (165). Under the surface Luna shows the reader how language can orient a person outside of both the society they wish to be apart of and that which they wish to leave behind. The narrator has a connection to the memory of having a closer connection to the Spanish speaking community that she covered over with speaking English:
“Years of English rumbled something absent, forgotten.
The Tigua Indian Village, men at the corner bench eating
tamales. Indoors, tables with white Formica,
floor-tiles peeling. In the steam of cilantro and tomato
children sit cross-legged and sip caldo de res.
Men smoke afterward in faded jeans and t-shirts lightly rise
around their pecs in the wind. It is how home is all
that’s left in the end. The way we all return forever exiled.”
What really stands out for me obviously are the lines “Years of English rumbled something absent” and “The way we all return forever exiled.” After learning English, it seems as though the connection to the Spanish speaking society of Tigua Indian Village becomes covered over, possibly with the desire to completely integrate into the English speaking society. What is interesting to me about this is that the narrator cannot be completely removed from the original society she can only cover it over. Being placed in a situation in which she meets someone who requires the original societal information she does have some access to the memory but she cannot switch as easily as she might like as we see with the line “The way we all return forever exiled.” While the memory and some cultural understand of what is required on her part is available for her, her code switching skills are not as easily accessible because she never allowed herself to be completely integrated in the Spanish speaking community. The narrator says quite plainly “I spoke/ Spanish broken, tongue-heavy. I was once too proud/ to speak Spanish in the barrio.”
To me this brings up the question of how a person is able to connect with community. By trying to use English only and separating herself from the Spanish community the narrator seems to be able to get by in the English speaking community. We do not have an indication that she is not able to traverse the English-speaking world but we can infer by the fact that she has brown skin that she still maintains a marginalized status as most minorities do, whether or not they speak the language. The narrator has not, however, learned the art of code switching, which is essentially the ability to change one’s language from community to community. Its code switching that allows us to move seamlessly from life at school if you’re a student to life at home where you may speak differently. Code switching to me is all about placement in society. If you are able to code switch you have access to numerous societies but mostly on the outskirts do to things like accents or miss use of words. However, in ability to code switch leaves the narrator outside one society and on the outskirts of another. It’s interesting how little value the U.S. as a society places on language (take for instance on the grammar that is changing simply because people have trouble remembering how it works) and yet it is one of the most important tools in how we determine who is accepted into society. Not only is there an expectation that people speak English but also that they speak a certain kind of English and with out any indication that you speak another language.
The other thing that I found interesting in this poem was the sense of longing that the narrator has looking at the man. “His eyes generations” of Spanish speaking identity and the privilege of belonging completely to one culture which the narrator cannot make the choice to do. “He smiles. Blue hills/in the distance sharpen in an old elegance; the wind/hushes itself after howling the silences.” We can see the desire to have a connection to one place, one cultural representation in this final moment. But there is also this longing in the fact that she whispers her desire to learn Spanish. This humiliation at being forced to say it but this longing to have the desire to respect the want as well. She wants to belong to one culture completely but knowing that she can’t, she will take on the task of learning to code switch instead.
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