The context of who

When I thought about the task about having to think about the "who" in a broader context prior to looking at the text, I decided to put it off for as long as I could. It seemed so daunting! It was one of those ~meta~ subjects that I try to avoid for as long as time permits because it's something I've yet to be able to fully address within myself.

The "who"' is something that is derived from one's own regional, spiritual, physical, blahblahblah, etc. existence. In this respect, I have had personal difficulty and trouble trying to create my own work to tell of my "who," especially in terms of regional aspects. Jerry Quickly's Calcium Rings is a perfect example of why I haven't been able to bring myself to write about my regional influences and I continue to find difficulty with it.

Calcium Rings is a poem that I identify with in one of the most detached, third party ways because although it is (for the majority) an experience I haven't dealt with myself, it is still something that I can find pieces of myself in in terms of the images, places and feelings Quickly describes. Growing up in Los Angeles, I've been surrounded by and accustomed to the customs and lifestyles of "animals." Animals are seen as both predator and prey, but aren't often seen as beings that can shift between those two given roles. Here, Quickly gives us insight into the two roles and how they can travel between each other.

A relationship as poignant to me as this "predator versus prey" prey one was this relationship between being lost versus being found/in the process of finding yourself. Immediately after the first mention of something 'lost,' Quickly interrupts the telling and description things lost in old and new worlds with the phrase "I will find myself."

This phrase struck a hard chord in me because of how definite its connotations are. The word "will" not only acts as a verb of the future tense, but placed here also acts as something concrete in a world of things so lost, so forgotten, so uncertain. Later, the word transforms itself into something more active and present, something the speaker can ground themselves in. The word "will" then acts not only as something the speaker can base their hopes off of, but something they can base their anticipated actions off of (in their attempts to find themselves in "the/these hills" at the end of the poem).

My attempts at starting to depict my personal "who" become lost and discouraged whenever I come across works like this. It's like, if someone else was able to retell an experience based (almost solely) off of where they were born, raised, taught, etc., then what additional insight could I provide, what dent could I make in this category of regional work? Looking back on the task of thinking of the "who" in a broader context before addressing the assigned work helps me to begin to understand how I could provide greater insight, how I could make another dent in this region. Because like Quickly, I, too, am someone who can (at least aspire!) to write things that someone else (at first) cannot wholly identify with, but still strongly relates to.