The Politics & Poetics of the Body : Praise It, Reclaim It, Complicate it

I’m thinking through the two poems by Fatima Asghar. Two political poems. 

When Tip Drill Comes on at the Frat Party Or, When Refusing to Twerk is a radical form of Self Love

Explores the body, and presents it, as a political project of reclaiming the body. It arguably would be considered feminist (of some wave or another). 

We all use different concepts to speak about the body, often drawing on things that our readers would relate to or understand. Symbols, preconceived notions, common or mundane experiences, etc. So, we are placed at a frat party and this feminine body of color has a visceral reaction to white boy fuckery and resists it through standing still. This is something I think I can relate to. 

Except, Asghar uses blackness as a reference point (Tip Drill and twerking). It feels like a reliance on a specific body in order to form and shape a message on what can be done to reclaim the body, and an uncreative one at that. It sucks, but blackness is constantly used as a metaphor (within our lives, on the page, etc). I think of the poem on Mingus and how this was done effectively, in my opinion, and held a light to the ways black experiences can shape and inform nonblack POC experiences. 

I’m more so speaking about poetry than politics here: the way we craft it and the way we rely on social norms, concepts and notions to get our message across. Which ones do we rely on? Are we conscious of the multifaceted meanings to using these things when we do? Do we control the reigns by researching more than the side/opionion we enter the poem with?

The body is contextualized by white AND nonblack POC relations to black culture (assuming her narrator is a nonblack POC). Tip Drill playing at a white frat house and a science analogy to dissection hold the two things disempowering her body within the scene provided to us. Not twerking, for the narrator, is a radical form of self-love. While, participating in twerking may be a radical form of self-love and reclamation of the body for many others. The poet doesn’t discriminate agains the two, but morally creates a tension by taking an action (or inaction) of being still. 

I have complicated reactions to this poem. But I appreciate poetry even more when I read poems like this. Poets can take political stances that stir up conversations and evoke a memorable emotional reaction without it being rooted in a reader that agrees with the outcome or message of their poem. 

Unemployment

Explores what body praise (from the opposite stance of body praise for our beautiful features). 

Again, this poem landed differently for me. Whatever way Asghar is riding feminist wise is difficult for me to sit with. I sometimes hate when my politics and poetics differ, haha. Here, the body’s negative features are praised as a form of body intelligence that is preventing “you” from entering certain forms of employment (sex work) due to unemployment. “You” could be the narrator speaking to their self in the mirror or any of those the narrator is referring/relating to from the description of the body.

It didn’t sit well with me politically. Perhaps because I know so many sex workers (from strippers to sugar-babies to street work) with body scars, hairy legs, who aren’t thin, who have big noses, from all kinds of backgrounds, etc. 

It made me feel weird, to say the least, to unpack a message saying that the body is saving “you” from doing work that is pretty legitimate work despite it being “illegal” (mind you, it is like the oldest job that exists outside of working the land to get resources, food, warmth, shelter…).  And beyond that, I just don’t understand why these physical attributes are characterized as unfit to do sex work. Seems very old wave, white feminism to me. 

Nothing is wrong with sex work (rather socialization around how we treat sex workers as the general public and as clients, esp men). Nothing is wrong with these physical attributes in relation to our desirability.

But again, it’s not what I think (though we all will have amazing personal thoughts on it). It’s that this poem makes me think at all. I, again, appreciate feeling moved enough to think about the body in these contexts. To remind myself exactly how people form their politicized bodies based off of preconceived notions of other people’s bodies. When I do my writing, I want to keep that in mind and narrativize my politics in line with that while still doing so to make my readers/comrades think and examine and dissect and challenge themselves.