The first thing that really struck me from this week's readings is the different ways a couple of these poets write INTO the body. And that's literally. Especially Brenda Cardenas from Wind Shifts and Mong Lan from AAP.
I read Mong Lan's Ravine first and was automatically caught all the way up in her language, especially starting in the second stanza.
The back of your neck
is a bird's shadow ascending
your spine a line
a ravine where things are lost:
marbles the sound of a cello
faded photos brittle letters
I lace your body with my hands
your legs loaves of bread
your feet slippery fish
broken fins
swimming through uncharted waters
under your right shoulder blade
I find something shiny black
a new revolver
as they come for you
I wipe sleep off your shoulders
put the gun in your hands
tell you to aim
you point
to your head
The entire body is used a receptacle for the gathering and finding of things. "A ravine where things are lost" Those things are memories and found (metaphorical?) objects, marbles, revolvers, etc. The body as a memory-holder and a memento collector. This poem feels like the unpacking of a suitcase, or better yet, a hope chest.
I'm also interested in the bible reference- loaves of bread & fish. I feel like this is an intentional trajectory ino the religious but I'm not quite sure why. The body and religion have quite the tangled romance between one another so I just have a strong feeling this reference is not to be taken lightly.
Brenda Cardenas' poems are so so beautiful and lyrical. I read them aloud and I loved the way her words roll off my tongue. Her poem "Our Language"....omg. LOVE! I will be reporting on this piece in class so I wont go into much detail here but Cardenas also heavily languishes on the body. Sound and the body, sounds emitting from the body, bodies containing and consuming one another. I love it.
Chanel,
ReplyDeleteGreat observation and love the metaphor of unpacking a hope chest! I too found this poem striking with references to religion...hmmm. Looking forward to unpacking this one some more in class. :o)
and the use of space and the pace and the music. waiting for a great discussion
ReplyDeletee
bodies containing and consuming one another. I'm super interested in the somatic process and arrival of these poems, because embodiment always tells us something about history and experience and trans-lation and subjectivity. The trend in somatic poetry, that is now a days, happens in a very white, experimental context. And I think it matters that the ways that embodiment is expressed and experience by writers of color has a really different tone and shape then the white writers who theorize on somatic engagement. If bodies are receptacles and resistances, the the poems echo bodies (hold bodies?) then the poems will also echo the ways bodies are affected by all the structures external, and differentiate themselves as bodies which become "othered."
ReplyDeletebrill
Delete^ Seconded
DeleteI'm really interested in this concept of a body as a receptacle. In reference to this point, all facets of the poem (religion, memory, relation to others, identity, etc) become innate in the speaker, suggesting that the body is a structure for the aspects of identity that provide individuality, rather than merely a distinction of appearance.
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