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?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Adela Najarro’s poem, “My Mother’s High Heel Shoes” illustrates the feminine heroines the speaker’s mother was influenced by when she was seventeen. These heroines are elegant white actresses that opened a door of fantasy for the narrator’s mother: Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Esther Williams. This poem dramatizes the conflict between truth, escape and fantasy, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker’s mother seems to paint and what the speaker must gather from a "8x10 glossy."
Beginning in the very first line, the punctuation is terse and the lines do not develop a coherent picture, even though they appear to describe a setting. The sounds of the words contribute to the meaning of the poem. There are two speakers: mother and daughter. The tone of the poem in the very first lines suggests that the speaker is interviewing her mother. Thus, there is a tension between the lines: “A fat man in white. A polished stone floor. Marble or granite” (1). The first line posits the speaker and the mother as interviewer and interviewee.
The speaker addresses her mother in the past where the sun is vibrant and in the present where they head to the beach as a family “on an overcast day” (29). The speaker’s state of mind is nestled between her mother’s youth, to the present moment, as she asks, “How close can I get to the first bikini on Ponoloya?” (15). The tone shifts: to the speaker longing for her mother’s innocence and rites of passage. Here, the reader is able to connect with the speaker, as though the reader has discovered the 8x10 glossy. The fact that the speaker states that she lost the 8x10 glossy implies that the image of her mother is still ingrained in her psyche. Also, the line is positioned inside and stresses the intimate secret she is sharing with the reader.
The sun drapes freckles across my mother’s shoulders.
Ponoloya, a beach in Nicaragua. She is seventeen and pretty.
I lost the 8x10 glossy.
Each eyelash curved. An ivory cheek. Joan Crawford lips.
I think I took it to school for a class
project on family history and autobiography. In the second drawer of her dresser, a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook (8-14).
As the speaker unearths her mother’s personality:
My mother spots a picture in a Paris magazine or one
de los Estados Unidos and asks the seamstress to make her one just
like it (22-24).
Again, the position of the word “like it” illuminates the intimacy of her mother’s body in relationship to European women. Even though the title is “My Mother’s High Heel Shoes,” there is not a reference to her mother’s high heel shoes. But there is mention of a shoebox. A shoebox is usually re-used to place objects that someone wants to hold onto. A shoebox, thus, turns into a vessel that holds secrets and when found; it can be among a : “a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook” (14). The fact that the speaker compares the satin slip to something related to school relates to the speaker’s need to disassociate with her mother’s sexuality. And the fact that the mother’s high heel shoes are not mentioned implies that the speaker entered her mother’s room without permission. Even though the speaker reveals that she took it to class for a project on family history, the reader feels as if she should not trust the speaker. Interestingly, “stuck in a castle turret” emphasizes her mother’s role of being protected and sheltered and living in a fantasy world. In the end:
"My father, my brother and I are added to a shoebox" (33).
~Melissa Lozano
Beginning in the very first line, the punctuation is terse and the lines do not develop a coherent picture, even though they appear to describe a setting. The sounds of the words contribute to the meaning of the poem. There are two speakers: mother and daughter. The tone of the poem in the very first lines suggests that the speaker is interviewing her mother. Thus, there is a tension between the lines: “A fat man in white. A polished stone floor. Marble or granite” (1). The first line posits the speaker and the mother as interviewer and interviewee.
The speaker addresses her mother in the past where the sun is vibrant and in the present where they head to the beach as a family “on an overcast day” (29). The speaker’s state of mind is nestled between her mother’s youth, to the present moment, as she asks, “How close can I get to the first bikini on Ponoloya?” (15). The tone shifts: to the speaker longing for her mother’s innocence and rites of passage. Here, the reader is able to connect with the speaker, as though the reader has discovered the 8x10 glossy. The fact that the speaker states that she lost the 8x10 glossy implies that the image of her mother is still ingrained in her psyche. Also, the line is positioned inside and stresses the intimate secret she is sharing with the reader.
The sun drapes freckles across my mother’s shoulders.
Ponoloya, a beach in Nicaragua. She is seventeen and pretty.
I lost the 8x10 glossy.
Each eyelash curved. An ivory cheek. Joan Crawford lips.
I think I took it to school for a class
project on family history and autobiography. In the second drawer of her dresser, a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook (8-14).
As the speaker unearths her mother’s personality:
My mother spots a picture in a Paris magazine or one
de los Estados Unidos and asks the seamstress to make her one just
like it (22-24).
Again, the position of the word “like it” illuminates the intimacy of her mother’s body in relationship to European women. Even though the title is “My Mother’s High Heel Shoes,” there is not a reference to her mother’s high heel shoes. But there is mention of a shoebox. A shoebox is usually re-used to place objects that someone wants to hold onto. A shoebox, thus, turns into a vessel that holds secrets and when found; it can be among a : “a satin slip the size of a Mead college-ruled notebook” (14). The fact that the speaker compares the satin slip to something related to school relates to the speaker’s need to disassociate with her mother’s sexuality. And the fact that the mother’s high heel shoes are not mentioned implies that the speaker entered her mother’s room without permission. Even though the speaker reveals that she took it to class for a project on family history, the reader feels as if she should not trust the speaker. Interestingly, “stuck in a castle turret” emphasizes her mother’s role of being protected and sheltered and living in a fantasy world. In the end:
"My father, my brother and I are added to a shoebox" (33).
~Melissa Lozano
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”
Response to Naomi Ayala's Within Me
When one thinks of war the first thing that may come to mind is the violent battle between two different countries that are in conflict (for example-Iraq and U.S). However, war can be used to describe various emotions, particularly one’s internal struggle. Naomi Ayala’s poem, “Within Me” totally blew me away for that reason. In her poem she reveals how war can exist in one’s personal environment, and how it can be an internal or external battle.
When I first read this poem I wasn’t too sure about the meaning, but as I kept re-reading it I realized there can be multiple interpretations of it. In my opinion I think the poet is writing about her surroundings and the ugliness of the world. She starts off the poem by saying, “War begins right here on my street. / It begins with me.” Here, we can see that the poem is going to be a story about her internal struggle given that she states war “begins with [her].” She states:
War begins with me.
It is with me that war begins
Right here on the street
In the small showers of bullets
In an empty garbage can
In what I say and do not say.
Here, the poet is clearly commenting on the war on the streets (gang violence) particularly when she states “in the small showers of bullets.” For the speaker of the poem this is her war struggling to survive in an area where “showers of bullets” are flying, where the homeless has to scurry around for food in “empty garbage cans.” And I assume, for the speaker it’s hard for her because she cannot or feels like she has to stay silent. It is a clear indication when she says “in what I say or do not say.”
I also thought that the speaker of the poem of is struggling with accepting her own homosexuality (I hope this is not out of context) but throughout the poem she personifies war as a women, “I see her weapons in the eyes of a child, / her face in window panes/ there are times I want war. / I lie down with her.” Here, she is saying that she sees war everywhere and that she wants to “lie” down with her. The fact that she says that reminds me of somebody battling with their own sexuality. As the poem progresses there are more hints that the poem may refer to the speaker’s sexuality.
“ She is in my fingers
In the shadow of my eyes
In my lover’s hair
I sing to her so that she may leave
So that the war leaves me
Today I sing to her
And she lets me sing
The fact that she does not want the presence of war anymore can indicate that she is tired of feeling as if her homosexuality is a bad thing. In the end, however the speaker finally comes to terms with her sexuality given that she states that war lets her sing to her so that war can leave. I could be wrong with my overall interpretation of the poem, but that is how I read it and those were the thoughts that came to mind.
I really liked this poet, you guys should listen to her read it in Spanish it is amazing!
-Lizzie Chaidez
When I first read this poem I wasn’t too sure about the meaning, but as I kept re-reading it I realized there can be multiple interpretations of it. In my opinion I think the poet is writing about her surroundings and the ugliness of the world. She starts off the poem by saying, “War begins right here on my street. / It begins with me.” Here, we can see that the poem is going to be a story about her internal struggle given that she states war “begins with [her].” She states:
War begins with me.
It is with me that war begins
Right here on the street
In the small showers of bullets
In an empty garbage can
In what I say and do not say.
Here, the poet is clearly commenting on the war on the streets (gang violence) particularly when she states “in the small showers of bullets.” For the speaker of the poem this is her war struggling to survive in an area where “showers of bullets” are flying, where the homeless has to scurry around for food in “empty garbage cans.” And I assume, for the speaker it’s hard for her because she cannot or feels like she has to stay silent. It is a clear indication when she says “in what I say or do not say.”
I also thought that the speaker of the poem of is struggling with accepting her own homosexuality (I hope this is not out of context) but throughout the poem she personifies war as a women, “I see her weapons in the eyes of a child, / her face in window panes/ there are times I want war. / I lie down with her.” Here, she is saying that she sees war everywhere and that she wants to “lie” down with her. The fact that she says that reminds me of somebody battling with their own sexuality. As the poem progresses there are more hints that the poem may refer to the speaker’s sexuality.
“ She is in my fingers
In the shadow of my eyes
In my lover’s hair
I sing to her so that she may leave
So that the war leaves me
Today I sing to her
And she lets me sing
The fact that she does not want the presence of war anymore can indicate that she is tired of feeling as if her homosexuality is a bad thing. In the end, however the speaker finally comes to terms with her sexuality given that she states that war lets her sing to her so that war can leave. I could be wrong with my overall interpretation of the poem, but that is how I read it and those were the thoughts that came to mind.
I really liked this poet, you guys should listen to her read it in Spanish it is amazing!
-Lizzie Chaidez
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.
Somewhere in the world there are twins named Center and Edge
I was surprised to read of the large Arab communities in Michigan and Pennsylvania. A white child raised on canon-authorized history books thinks of these states as centers of (white) American industry - steel manufacturing and coal mining. How enlightening to find that, like Florida and California, relatively recent (and not so recent) immigrant populations are scratching out a living, maybe even thriving, in these bastions of "American" identity.
I was taken by Samuel Hazo's language and form. His lines breathe with calm intelligence, a worldly awareness, and make the infuriatingly overlooked logically undeniable. While I cannot recreate them here - my lack of blog formatting knowledge disallows it - his line breaks inform the poems' content. I speak specifically of those that begin in the blank space beneath the end of the preceding line. This deliberate spacing technique acknowledges division and connection, the edge and its center.
In "Intifada," the final four stanzas demonstrate this visual message. Each idea is separated from one above, marking division of thought, perhaps individual minds working (or not working) on the same befuddlement. And yet the next begins, separate, though standing in the echo of the one above, demonstrating connection, its logical follow, until we reach the end and he has walked us through the scattered links in the chain, and given the dense and disconnected an example they cannot deny: "Like someone buried / upright and alive, anyone / trapped there would stop at nothing."
The idea of center and edge is constantly shifting turf. In one way, the rebel movement achieves its prize and becomes the idea the next generation rebels against. For marginalized cultures fighting for swimming room in the mainstream, the anchor line cuts both ways. For to achieve livelihood, food for family, stability among pressures, to reach for the center of the dominant culture is to choose the edge of one's own. To remain entrenched (whether by choice or not) in the culture of one's ancestors, if these ancestors are not white, is to be sequestered on the edge, or pushed over it. To be the child of an immigrant and born in this country is to have no land to put your foot down, to have traded backbone for new language and lighter skin. (of course I'm only saying that it feels this way to the dispossessed, not that 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation Americans are weak by virtue of being born here.)
Jack Marshall speaks of all of these interpretations of center and edge in "The Home-Front," where he writes of watching his father's people subjugated by the adopted country, feeling both a part of the subjugators and dominators. "If eyes don't lie, / who will not see his own / child's face in theirs, stark / beauty of things in peril, more alarmingly / alive looking out of the ditch / than we looking in?" Safe here, with only racism to combat, not tanks and land mines, there is something bland about life, something less alive than being faced with the possibility of losing life every day. Here, they are the edge; for them, they are the center. Perspective shifts as location shifts, and sides are always changing.
Khaled Mattawa, in "Echo & Elixer 3," a lament on the hollow space between homes, between edge and center, creates an interesting observation on belonging, its transience and the essential elements of proximity and perspective. "You take a blade of grass / and for a second / you are a citizen of its taste." Referring perhaps to a dominance, a violence, in "taking" the grass and biting it, the aggressor turns to subject as the juice it provides makes one, for a moment, "of" the grass. But also perhaps, referring to the arbitrary nature of citizenship. Are we "from" only the place we are born (or the place our skin shouts)? And if this can change by leaving, how does it change upon return?
How the center one desires changes when faced with a culture his name says he belongs to, yet one he does not know. David Dominguez speaks of this shift, and the different kind of longing it brings, in "Framework." He writes, "I want to be the kind of man who changes / his oil and brakes in the driveway, / [...] a man who knows plumbing, electricity, concrete. / Instead skinny men from Mexico, / with fire and muscle in their forearms and fists / maintain my cars and build my house." Mainstreamed, able to afford cars (plural) and a house, but just barely, as poems listed earlier in his section of the anthology tell, he longs for manual skills and knowledge that only those who must do for themselves attain. The center here has become the edge, and he can only peer in longingly.
Sheryl Luna speaks of my personal edge to my family's center in "Learning to Speak." Language is not only a barrier for those trying to assimilate, but also for those trying to re-similate. It keeps outsiders on the edge, maintains the center. This is perhaps why the Spanish sought to destroy the languages of the Amerindians, burning the books of the tribes they found on islands and the interior of the "new" land, why the English beat Hawaiian children (and many others) into submission. "He waits for my voice. / His eyes generations." When one loses language, they lose the link to thousands of years of heritage. To compound this loss, their skins or their names say they should already know - they cannot speak to ask, and shame keeps them on the edge longing for a center.
This class should be required. Poets of Color should be a prerequisite for every major offered on this campus. World community, reveling in difference, communing in connection. To undo unknowing, how can education begin before this?
Here is my tribute to making a center on the edge:
All the pops on my street
are firecrackers.
Suns rise for honor,
arch on sacrifice.
Sisters aren't mamis
but healers, they
dress in discs of onyx and rosewood
Korean copper, Honduran gold
Here's what crusaders couldn't tell you:
Belief is a choice
Defiance a seed
of possibility
My mind and my heart sow
light laughter fervently
so we might reap
silence at night.
I was taken by Samuel Hazo's language and form. His lines breathe with calm intelligence, a worldly awareness, and make the infuriatingly overlooked logically undeniable. While I cannot recreate them here - my lack of blog formatting knowledge disallows it - his line breaks inform the poems' content. I speak specifically of those that begin in the blank space beneath the end of the preceding line. This deliberate spacing technique acknowledges division and connection, the edge and its center.
In "Intifada," the final four stanzas demonstrate this visual message. Each idea is separated from one above, marking division of thought, perhaps individual minds working (or not working) on the same befuddlement. And yet the next begins, separate, though standing in the echo of the one above, demonstrating connection, its logical follow, until we reach the end and he has walked us through the scattered links in the chain, and given the dense and disconnected an example they cannot deny: "Like someone buried / upright and alive, anyone / trapped there would stop at nothing."
The idea of center and edge is constantly shifting turf. In one way, the rebel movement achieves its prize and becomes the idea the next generation rebels against. For marginalized cultures fighting for swimming room in the mainstream, the anchor line cuts both ways. For to achieve livelihood, food for family, stability among pressures, to reach for the center of the dominant culture is to choose the edge of one's own. To remain entrenched (whether by choice or not) in the culture of one's ancestors, if these ancestors are not white, is to be sequestered on the edge, or pushed over it. To be the child of an immigrant and born in this country is to have no land to put your foot down, to have traded backbone for new language and lighter skin. (of course I'm only saying that it feels this way to the dispossessed, not that 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation Americans are weak by virtue of being born here.)
Jack Marshall speaks of all of these interpretations of center and edge in "The Home-Front," where he writes of watching his father's people subjugated by the adopted country, feeling both a part of the subjugators and dominators. "If eyes don't lie, / who will not see his own / child's face in theirs, stark / beauty of things in peril, more alarmingly / alive looking out of the ditch / than we looking in?" Safe here, with only racism to combat, not tanks and land mines, there is something bland about life, something less alive than being faced with the possibility of losing life every day. Here, they are the edge; for them, they are the center. Perspective shifts as location shifts, and sides are always changing.
Khaled Mattawa, in "Echo & Elixer 3," a lament on the hollow space between homes, between edge and center, creates an interesting observation on belonging, its transience and the essential elements of proximity and perspective. "You take a blade of grass / and for a second / you are a citizen of its taste." Referring perhaps to a dominance, a violence, in "taking" the grass and biting it, the aggressor turns to subject as the juice it provides makes one, for a moment, "of" the grass. But also perhaps, referring to the arbitrary nature of citizenship. Are we "from" only the place we are born (or the place our skin shouts)? And if this can change by leaving, how does it change upon return?
How the center one desires changes when faced with a culture his name says he belongs to, yet one he does not know. David Dominguez speaks of this shift, and the different kind of longing it brings, in "Framework." He writes, "I want to be the kind of man who changes / his oil and brakes in the driveway, / [...] a man who knows plumbing, electricity, concrete. / Instead skinny men from Mexico, / with fire and muscle in their forearms and fists / maintain my cars and build my house." Mainstreamed, able to afford cars (plural) and a house, but just barely, as poems listed earlier in his section of the anthology tell, he longs for manual skills and knowledge that only those who must do for themselves attain. The center here has become the edge, and he can only peer in longingly.
Sheryl Luna speaks of my personal edge to my family's center in "Learning to Speak." Language is not only a barrier for those trying to assimilate, but also for those trying to re-similate. It keeps outsiders on the edge, maintains the center. This is perhaps why the Spanish sought to destroy the languages of the Amerindians, burning the books of the tribes they found on islands and the interior of the "new" land, why the English beat Hawaiian children (and many others) into submission. "He waits for my voice. / His eyes generations." When one loses language, they lose the link to thousands of years of heritage. To compound this loss, their skins or their names say they should already know - they cannot speak to ask, and shame keeps them on the edge longing for a center.
This class should be required. Poets of Color should be a prerequisite for every major offered on this campus. World community, reveling in difference, communing in connection. To undo unknowing, how can education begin before this?
Here is my tribute to making a center on the edge:
All the pops on my street
are firecrackers.
Suns rise for honor,
arch on sacrifice.
Sisters aren't mamis
but healers, they
dress in discs of onyx and rosewood
Korean copper, Honduran gold
Here's what crusaders couldn't tell you:
Belief is a choice
Defiance a seed
of possibility
My mind and my heart sow
light laughter fervently
so we might reap
silence at night.
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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