Moments

Poem from studies: "Between Two Languages" by Adela Najarro
Personal poem: Under the California Sun
Artist Bio: I write the sudden moments.

--Casey V

Historicizing the Echoes

Mattawa’s conceptualization of the zodiac is fantastic; he describes how “since the whole zodiac is in constant motion, and as this sun constantly spins about its orbit, some prayers become detached. Unable to resume their original ascent to the highest tier, the prayers spin about the zodiac filling it with their echoes. It is the mingled sounds of these unanswered prayers that give this zodiac its name.” In Diversity, Mattawa writes of a woman caught in daily life amid chaos, “her face dreamless, unhistoricized.” It seems that Mattawa’s entire work encompasses the undocumented aspects of life, personalizing these histories by people and their unnoticed echoes.

The personal level of his work is transcendent, for even well-historicized lands seem new by his poetry, documented by moments of heroism, love and difficulty. He describes not only political battlefields but also intimacy, where “the lover tells the beloved ‘I loved you first,’” pain like “a glow, an abandoned fire,” all the while wondering “how will I console the world?” Each poem seems to encompass at least one scene, a glimpse of emotion that describes places and events in a way that is impossible to technicality-driven history books.

This brings to question—what is history? Mattawa makes history his own term, defining it as anything past that can be captured or created. His work has a profound sadness, describing how “a woman picked and offered me/ a delectable sorrow, intractable: /our bittersweet insistence." His work depicts personal emotions and he allows these snapshots to stand for the places he describes, the struggles that inhabit every land and create unification. Mattawa describes a woman in turmoil by saying “she is not dead. she cannot stop dying.” It creates a sense of purgatory, caught between life and death. It seems this relates to emotional and locational division, for Mattawa describes a nationalistic sense of “ritualized terror” and the perpetual fear it inflicts.  

One of the first things I noticed about Zodiac of Echoes was that I have no idea how to pronounce a large part of the content. Upon closer inspection a lot of these unidentifiables are Mattawa’s references to countries and places that are entirely foreign to me and yet speak to his feeling of identification with other lands. Mattawa’s work is not only a depiction of spirit, love and pain amid the chaos of life, but also an unanswered question. He asks how to solve the world, an enquiry that feels almost rhetorical in its impossibility; however, his first step is clear: create unity. Mattawa’s work speaks to collective emotions and thus reveals the universal neglected echoes of the zodiac. 

Fear as Unity

It would be impossible to analyze in this small space the many themes Clifton incorporates into Mercy: body, loss, time, color, memory, self-image, economic status, family, nationality, belonging, etc. Her poems are brief but the content speaks with enough clarity that Clifton’s world is conveyed unmistakably.

Clifton speaks of division, of what she perceives to create difference. In The Phantom she observes a man of different skin color and asks “what is the color of/ his country/ what is the color/ of mine.” She speaks of America as multiple countries, divided not by physical space but rather by color, economics, and all dividing factors that create difference even within a unified border. But just as her poem Last Words transcends time by identifying the deceased mother as younger than the daughter, Clifton transcends the boundaries of normative society to embrace difference while recognizing the evident limitations of societal standards.

While Clifton recognizes societal division, she rejects this separation on the grounds that it is logically false. In her poem Tuesday 9/11/01, she writes:

God has blessed America

To learn that no one is exempt

The world is one               all fear

Is one    all life    all death

All one

Clifton incorporates fear, life and death to demonstrate that all people share common and inevitable experiences; just as one must die, fear is equally inescapable. Clifton’s work reads profoundly personal through the mentions of her mother, her nationality, color and conceptualization of self. However, she also manages to use these identifying features to suggest that each person has a relationship with their own self based on similar factors and thus all people carry common ground. There is nothing more unifying than basic instinct, the fear of death or merely the fear itself. I admire Clifton's ability to recognize society and its standards in terms of the human instinct and still engage the reader in her own story in a way that is emotionally compelling. 

--Casey V

Knight's Skeleton

Reading Etheridge Knight feels like reading a journal, his most personal emotions spelled out in the form of poetry. It’s so charged with emotion that it reads almost as a stream of consciousness, an uncensored version of personal poetry rather than something expected in a poetry anthology. His poem Feeling Fucked Up is relatable in the sense that it feels like something I could see myself writing in a poetry journal, a typical lost love poem that becomes unique under his linguistic choice. Knight’s imagery is stark as the “bright white bone” and “crystal sand” he uses to contrast his lovers “softness and midnight sighs.” Though his poetry reads as pure emotion, it comes charged with literary techniques that convey the emotion with enough power to make the poems memorable in their relatability.   

Knight’s work is laden with imagery, and one of the most memorable images in his work is bone. Similar to Feeling Fucked Up’s “bright white bone”, For Malcom, A Year After describes “dead white and dry bone bare” and The Bones of My Father describes dreaming “of the dry bones of my father.” He also uses copious metaphors in reference to night and day, light and dark, and these—coupled with the bones imagery—create a common repeating image in the book that works like a skeleton to support the remainder of the work.

Knight’s poetry feels like an intimate experience in which he strips away his exterior to reveal normally guarded emotions. The idea of bone, stark white bone, suggests the body has been stripped away to reveal the inner skeleton. It is the ultimate form of revealing oneself, to reveal one’s very bones. Similarly his imagery of light and dark, “the night” and the “magic sun” create juxtaposing revelation and concealment. Thus Knight alludes to the universal struggle between revealing oneself fully and hiding within the prison cells and social structures that have become the norm—not to mention hiding one’s true self within the container of the body.

Diwata

Barbara Jane Reyes’ choice to title her book Diwata feels absolutely appropriate as Diwata is “muse” in the Tagalog language of the Philippines as well as the name of a mythical Philippine nymph. The mythical Diwata is a benevolent being who acts as guardian of nature, influencing the Filipino people just as Reyes herself is influenced by her peoples’ mythology. She writes of events that affect her in her life through the context of Filipino myths and the culture in which she has grown. She contrasts the biblical stories of the Book of Genesis with the creation myths of the Tagalog language, indicating a feeling of cross cultural identification. Her writing is laden with mythical references such as mermaids and talisman just as readily as it incorporates love, body and the implicit persona of the self.

I was mesmerized by the line describing “how the sky refuses to give light to you” because I feel this incorporates Reyes’ struggles and culture in one brief line—the sky, nature, is personified to have the ability to withhold just as Diwata has the potential to influence people through nature. It also serves as a metaphor, turmoil in nature reflecting the turmoil Reyes experiences in her personal life.

It does not feel as if Reyes’ culture has defined her, but rather that she has marked her culture as an aspect of her person that she uses to qualify the world. She assumes the cultural persona of her people yet remains true to her personal idea of her own identity. This allows for a rounded demonstration of the Filipino people, for Diwata as legend has the potential to remain static as mere cultural mythology, but when contextualized with Reyes’ vivid images and emotions it becomes demonstrable to what has shaped Reyes as a person and poet. 

Shape as Occupied Space

I originally intended to reflect on multiple authors but after reading this week’s poems the author that caught me most was Dempster. Incredibly, he painted an idea of his self with mostly omniscient narratives that exhibit scarce use of “I”. Dempster’s poem Measure introduces the concept of measuring a life, the uncle’s experience reduced to “48 weeks of radiation,” of “12 hours under the knife” or, essentially, numbers rather than the experience as a whole. The technicality of the numbers become mechanical and thus removes the narrator from the emotional experience of the story. They distract the reader while details such as “half the breath” and “no strategy” are interwoven to create underlying identification of the uncle and narrator. The numerical approach works in such a way that the emotional aspects are subtle, catching the reader at the end with the line that describes “a single pine cone falling,” evoking the loneliness of falling alone and thus the uncle’s plight.  

I think about what it means for a poet to shape themselves and it makes me wonder about what it means to possess ‘shape’. Shape generally refers to the physical form in which a space is occupied, just as the class earlier reflected on what it is to occupy space as a poet. The way the poet shapes themselves, it seems, is heavily dependent on the way they occupy space and thus the form they take in this space. I think Dempster occupies his space through form in both a literal and metaphorical sense—his poems take shape on the page in generally symmetrical stanzas that remove from more expressive techniques and add to the mechanical feel of each poem’s perspective.  

Dempster’s poetry generally examines the lives of others; for example, the mother, son, sister and children are each given a perspective in The Pink House in Four Variations. Here numbers appear again, as a house is divided into four lives, four perspectives from people that should be regarded as wholes but instead appear fractions under the divisive format of the poem. Though Dempster rarely uses “I” or narrates his experiences through more than brief flashes, each reminiscing is enough to provide context to the remainder of his work. The Burning is provides context of childhood trauma, Exposure of sexuality, Measure of loneliness and age, etc. Thus Dempster forges an identity through the collective actions of others and allows the space they occupy to portray his individuality rather than narrating it directly. The shape he assumes is mechanical and objective, but perhaps more identifying than his identity as told through direct language.   

-Casey V

Distinction

Each poet of focus this week depicts their lives in vastly different settings, from Padron’s “sagging alley clotheslines” to Quickly’s hills. What stood out to me was the raw bones of each perspective, statements or aspirations that could ring true to anyone such as Quickly’s declaration “I will find myself.” It occurred to me that as people we all work with the same emotions and thus can relate on some level to all desires, difficulties and internal workings of others. It made me wonder how it is possible to stand out as distinct in a world where every emotion has already been written or recited.

What proved compelling about these poets, however, was a strong visceral reaction to the compilations of words and the distinct feeling that each poem brought. Phrases such as “the soil finer painting” and “we forever stained a story” are unique and truly evocative, allowing Tolliver to speak in a way that transcends the specific emotion of love to become a memorable voice amid many. The troubled neighborhood of Quickly’s youth might be simply a neighborhood in which a boy is killed after a drug deal gone bad, but Quickly alludes to “the landslides he left behind” and “whiskey his father began to swallow to keep from breaking,” suggesting through metaphor that death can be destructive with lingering effects, and whiskey might keep a person from fracturing.

The subjects themselves are not what make difference distinct in these poems, but rather the way they convey their difference. A neighborhood could be simply a neighborhood and a lover just another being, but just as The Last Poets bring voices to spoken word, these poets weave their stories into more than words. Their emotions, delivered through each poet’s personal interpretation of their situation, become distinct even on the page.

-Casey V

Homage & Public vs Private

Pimone Triplett’s poetry is compelling in that it encompasses not only her personal story, but also those of people she encounters in her life. In To My Cousin in Bangkok, Age 16 she writes about the boy attempting to arrange the house the way his mother would have wanted. He acts out of regret after her death “because there is always behind him, you see, the one time he didn’t.” The simple act of rearranging a home alludes to the human emotions surrounding familial ties and the connection that lasts even after the loved one is gone.

Triplett herself mirrors this identification with her mother. The maternal bond is a repeating theme in her poetry, particularly the mother that is not present. In homage to her mother, Triplett describes a night in which she is “up again at 3 a.m., one year past the age you made me.” Similar to the boy’s subtle lamentations, Triplett considers her identity in how it relates to her mother.

Triplett caught my attention because she made me consider how homage carries connotations but it does not define us; rather, it merely identifies each person with a place in the world.  The places or people of homage, rather than becoming one’s identity, contribute to shaping identity through the significance of the subject of homage to the speaker.

In Comings and Goings, Triplett describes being “in a house I will inherit in a land I can’t explain.” This infers that we merely inherit the place of our past, and that we identify or disassociate with our homage based on the manner of homage rather than the subject.  Homage, rather than being a dangerous entity, is revealing of personal identity.

De la Paz emphasizes personal identity through difference and public versus private perception of difference. The first poem in the collection immediately alludes to public interpretation of appearance with its title Manong Jose, While Cleaning His Last Window before Coffee, Sees Fidelto and Is Pleased Though Wary. Though different situations, each poem reflects the way a person’s nonconformity is viewed.

As suggested by De la Paz’s work, difference can be viewed lovingly but can be regarded negatively by strangers. When understood, unique characteristics can be revealing or endearing; however, difference in the public eye is often given no context and can be basis for public ostracizing. Manong Jose describes the boy Fidelito’s unusual appearance and how he is misunderstood as a result, while Nine Secrets the Recto Family Can’t Tell the Boy describes how Maria Elena cannot wear sleeveless shirts due a large mole. Her husband calls the mole her “beautiful armpit,” yet the public is drawn to staring; as a result “she has two wardrobes labeled ‘Public’ and ‘Private.’” I was intrigued by this differentiation because it infers that each of us has a “public” self in addition to a “private” self that is not considered appropriate for public view. 

-Casey Vittimberga