What is the body and what does it mean? What story does it tell on its every cracks and crevices? What scars do they hold? How much history resonates on it? The skin, the eyes, the uniformity or lack of.
"x marks the spot" - what part of the body told you?
Is it the skin color? The eye shape? Existence?
Alliteration scattered to draw out an x, showing the body, unified but not. The alliteration creates the unity that it belongs as a group, a whole, like the body. But these words - definitions of this person by appearance. X marks the spot, is the place seen but not found.
In reality, how much does the body tell you by appearance alone? When you find the X, then what?
Like Elvie Shockley writes, writing and reading is made to "address some void."
Do you think that it's the same for people and image and why people watching is so appealing and enticing?
The guy with the glasses, the girl with the glasses,
the guy with the long hair, the girl with the long hair - what are their stories?
I can hide things that are shunned, like maybe I have a necklace in the shape of a cross or with the Virgin Mother Mary emblem and I hide it because of negative ramifications behind religion these days. But what if I wear it? And what if people pass judgements? What if they're misogynistic judgements that are rooted from so much historical wrong?
It's assumptions, it's judgement, it's misogyny and racism and stereotypes. It can go so wrong and has and will.
The body is a small part of a larger body, yet it is the icon of resilience, pain, past, history, and so much more. It's a trickling effect. One image might be relatable to another and then that "idea" or "theory" is somehow translatable to be made okay. But it's not. It all isn't. It's cyclical. The particular makes the universal but the universal affects the particular.
As Ronaldo V. Wilson writes, "For the Sky, In Which/ You Will One Day, Belong," (207), the body is a part of something so much bigger and more. The words "snatched" and "caught up" remind me of how impermanent the body is. It's moveable, changeable, snatchable, humilated-able, deformed-able, dehumanized-able. It's horrible, grotesque and indescribable. But the idea of impermanence led me to remember death and mourning and this poem, so I'll end my post with this:
Image from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/39/cb/0d/39cb0d0ab9ff1df0c20f2636e4d774eb.jpg
I appreciate this Tien, I had been wondering how to approach this poem and make sense of it. I hadn't once considered that it might be "x marks the spot" in the sense of identifying marks. Now I can go back and do a rereading of it.
ReplyDeletewhoa! I really liked your approach to this post! I'll admit I was kind of confused at first, but I think it was my own assumptions of what I thought the poem was trying to do that made it so hard for me to think of it any other way. The poem itself in the shape of an X using alliterations was overwhelming for me to begin. I tried reading the phrases from all four angles, then starting in the middle and spreading out... it was a challenge for sure. I definitely thought about identity and how we perceive ourselves and others and also how we think others perceive us. I liked how the words repeated and got jumbled, or mix matched towards the center, I pictured white and black crossing paths even though I got a little lost there in that thought.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post, it definitely opened up another angle I hadn't approached yet and will definitely be taking a closer look.
Echoing some of the above sentiments! Your approach is refreshing and pushes me out of the safety of my own interpretation! Each time I read the poem, I walked away with a different interpretation. Your post feels like orienting questions and principles to guide us when we re-reading the poem next. Looking at the poem from a different position changes/deepens/enlarges the meaning for me.
ReplyDeleteAh! And your last sentiments are once I'll sit with a think about as I read this poem again. "The words "snatched" and "caught up" remind me of how impermanent the body is. It's moveable, changeable, snatchable, humilated-able, deformed-able, dehumanized-able. It's horrible, grotesque and indescribable"
You coiled in and wound and intersected and jumped down I see where you're going and how you were approaching a multilayered interpretation. Nice job
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