6: Language & Difference

Looking at how language, text, and speech shows difference in this week's poems. This is accomplished by making delineations between us/we/I and them/you etc. Most often, the perspective that creates the 'Other' is the dominant discourse/aligns with power: Like, the "us" of a text is usually what could be identified as a center that creates a margin, but these poems flip that and become the "we" of the 'Other'. "We" becomes a declaration in many of the poems from this week. 

For example, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs tells the reader of her 'Other'ness by disarming their expectations. Her phrase "erode di pentameter" (from "damn right it's better than yours") comes to mind when I think about how this works in her pieces. I read this for more on how Diggs uses language. Specifically, in "who you callin' a jynx (after mista pope)", by "blending" languages/sounds/cultures/references, Diggs requires vigilance from the audience. I don't think that "blending" is quite the right word for what I'm noticing in her work. But the Japanese words work really specifically for a poem in English. Maybe others in the class speak or read Japanese, but for me as a reader who doesn't, I had to rely on google for my information/translation. Forget about cultural context or any number of mistranslations, but the way Diggs uses the Japanese to show negative stereotypes/controlling images makes me think that although this 'Other'ness occurs everywhere you look on the page, she's still bringing it to the reader on her own terms.

I think this is happening again with "gamin gabby". I accidentally read the third Syralestine Saint-Savin first and then went back to Syraniqua D'Voidoffunk. But Diggs is still playing with expectations of language all the way through that and coming to new meaning through it. Any more thoughts on why it ended up at Pig Latin? I found it really interesting to see the forms of each of the four poems on each page, they seem to give way to more and more blank space up until the really rhythmic appearance of Pig Latin.

Carreno's "Snake Tongue: Lengua de Culebra" also uses language as a way to talk about difference, although I find it really curious how this poem talks about being bilingual and the only Spanish is in the title. To me, this speaks to bilingual (the forked tongue) being almost bigger than just language. It's two different languages, yes, but it's also the speaker's identity. The progression through the poem of freedom to speak is beautiful. It starts off by asking, permission to speak? & leaves off by making a demand for dignity and peace. In the middle, we get the pieces of "you" and "I", but I have trouble making out who "you" is in this poem. I think it shifts. But still, there's a declaration of "I" that sets "you" aside.

Similarly, Danez Smith's "Dear White America" is addressed to "you" (plural) which marks the space between us/we and they/you. The narrative block of text seems to speak to this idea, too. The text is insular, how it carries down the page with a clear margin and no space between the words until the very end, when it expands into "This, if only this one, is ours". I read this as a centering of Blackness against White America, no longer included in the literal space that Smith sets up.

And last Douglas Kearny's "Quantum Spit" also sets up space and collision of text to make lines of difference. The letters signed 'LOVE, AMERICA" (oftentimes to: MC) are addressed from the whole and projected onto the voice in the poem that frequently gives way into an "I" (I come/I come/I come and "America loves me"...) Kearny plays with language and the physical form of text in its structure, direction, break, flow, shape, width, size, sound, etc. I noticed that the text/voice of America also works to create difference in showing how commodification becomes 'Othering'. Especially page 123 "Amusement for paying/consumers! now you/can go platinum, get a whip!/ghetto-whipped?/Yes! America,/Love" Paying attention to what each different style of text does to the voice and how that creates texture, contrast, and becomes an instrument of creating difference.