constellations, interconnectedness, the global

i'm having a hard time figuring out how to talk about this collection, mainly where to begin and where to key in from. i can't think about them without thinking about how poets and writers in libya were imprisoned for writing, how this policing and criminalization affected content, and then what it means for mattawa's poems to exist as they do and take on what they do in the 2000s. and then i also can't not think of the libyan uprisings two years ago. i am thinking about all this, but again, not necessarily sure about how to connect the past (1970s/1980s) the present that this book takes up based on when it was published(2003) and then the future (2011, which is now the past, but WAS the future when thinking about when this book was published).

mattawa talks about how he cannot write from the moment itself, but has to write from a point of reflection and processing. i think this tactic of contemplation before responding to events instead of a direct reaction contribute to how this collection weaves together so many different experiences, voices, places, influences, etc. in his poems, you get a sense of cause and effect. how immediate decisions and structures contribute to building tensions, oppressions, and problems over time. how you cannot look at large governmental decisions and institutional actions as disconnected from racism, classism, issues of access, worker safety/health, and the proliferation of certain serious illnesses, birth issues, etc. in certain areas as affecting certain communities. and then all of this continues to echo through time and history, calls back to the origins, even predicts problems/reactions/consequences in the future.

i think this zodiac form that he uses to organize the collection and sequence the book makes a lot of sense in relation to what i can glean of his personal politics. he calls us to understand how national actions have global consequences, how globalization puts us all in a constellation of connectedness where policy, regimes of power, populations of people, capitalism/competition, grassroots efforts, etc all hold influence and create various consequences for how we either negatively or positively experience our world. he reminds us to recognize that worlds we refuse to think about or understand we are directly responsible for or influencing even if we are unaware (cairo with its daewoo stereos , jews rescued by ottoman boats) as a result of our globalized world.

i think this happens continually throughout the collection. and the fact that poems interrupt other poems and then pick up after other poems have finished speaks to the way time is non-linear and that consequences continue to echo and influence long after their initial occurrence.