Poetry Broth & POC solidarity

*realizing blogs posts are this week too*

I don’t have the time to make bone broth with these poems, to let it sit and soak as deep as I want. Just poem soup until the summer, until the sunny days of writing in abundance and not in scarcity, not as if I am losing words before I write them. 

Of the MANY poems from this week that will be part of this summers poetry bone broth, two will be be key ingredients. 

Leticia Hernández-Linares’ Translating the Wash and Nikky Finney’s Left.

What is it about these words, this order of words, that sank me into a scene and had full control of my emotions? Yeah, I had to write damn-near essays intellectualizing the two regarding the disposability and expendability of laboring bodies. Never-mind that. Because truly these poems sparked more questions than intellectualizations. 

-What does it mean to lift up the narratives of Elders in both pieces? (Side: both poets extensively include Elders in their larger works)

-How do these poems juxtapose these Elders’ social usefulness (as aging post-laboring folks within capitalism) versus their cultural usefulness (to enrich and relentlessly deepen us)?

-What humanized the people/characters of these poems? Was it that their identities became complicated (as mothers and daughters)?

-What’s the effect of Letica’s use of choppy sentences and Nikky’s emphasis on the woman’s spelling “Pleas” as it relates to the politics of their bodies?

-What’s the significance of both poet’s referencing the 2nd Indochina War or of finding common ground with Vietnamese struggle?

And lastly:

Did we get to the point of class where we full-heartedly asked ourselves: can we define ourselves as people/poets of color or see poetry of color without seeing the other? what stakes do our poems or lives have in honoring “the other” stories?

It almost sounds silly to ask questions such as “can I be black or indigenous without really sitting with the histories and wars and struggles and poetry of other people of color?” It’s clear that our general isolation from one another means we can understand ourselves without knowing or knowing of the other, that we can do so through amnesia of history and through segregation. But can we know ourselves fully, can we know our own struggles fully, in today’s context, without some sense of collective liberation?

Around the world, workers in sweatshops have sewn messages in jeans and shirts, in broken English or native tongues. An act of defiance, of visibility. A plea, a testimony. Wouldn’t being a recipient implicate you? You may not hold the whip, you may not wield the power, you may not make the system, but where, in fact, do we all stand?

Almost everyday I am the customer somewhere, a stranger to someone, who is homesick, who is both in fear that Trump’s administration with send them away or prevent them from seeing their homelands and families. And most definitely every week, I sit in my favorite Vietnamese shop, to do my school work, and keep up the two-year conversation with the mom n pop that own it. We talk about hip hop, about family, about where we come from, about honor and sacrifice (these old, old terms that still drive many Poc communities). And quite similar to how I read Leticia and Nikky’s poems, there are vast similar themes, even when the focus or stories or directions are different. 

So, I stopped my essaying to write a few poems instead. And kept many-a-chant in mine that bridge the struggles from NOLA to Oakland to Ferguson to Palestine to Mexico to El Salvador to Vietnam…

Blog #11: "Define Door"

I want to trace the motif of "doors" in Mucha Muchacha: Too Much Girl, because I feel like this is one of the many threads in this work that winds around the core of this novel--the core being a merging of Salvadoran music, languages, communities, tragedies, and histories. Doors in this book conjure the motif of "death's door" and also the "door of opportunity" that remains closed to Central and South American immigrants trying to earn a living in this country. This motif works on many levels throughout the work, and I hope that in referencing a couple of these occurrences it may offer the class a fuller insight into Hernández-Linares' collection.

Doors are first introduced in connection with the dead in "Learning to Talk." In creating the backdrop for the speaker throughout the book, the speaker describes growing up code-switching between English, Spanish, and the inarticulable, "Hard knocks at the door / bring pieces of English / brother  dead  sorry" (16). Dream-catchers on the wall cannot protect the speaker from the muertos that her family's door lets inside. Hernández-Linares ushers in the concept of death and language simultaneously, the motif of the door allowing this company inside the book and into the speaker's life.

The next poem, "Too Much Girl," introduces the second function of doors, and is the place where this motif is expanded the most fully. Within this poem, the speaker is trying to exist within academic institutions that reduce her existence to stereotypes "The reporter from The Globe writes me / into a slum" (18) and exploits her body "I took a job building pantheons for those / who enter through the ivory / and don't return. My back bends / under the unscripted chronicle" (19). The academic discourse that makes up the atmosphere around her is represented as banal, reductive, and yet where the illusion of opportunity is upheld. Part two of this poem exists as one stanza, and demonstrates the diminishing effect of much of academic inquiry made by privileged intellects that live and have no connection to the communities that they study,

But is a door a door
define door,
unhinge it, pour microscopic lenses over the grain,
find the core, until there is no more door
                                                                           (19)

In examining a concrete experience or subject with a scientific gaze, this poem argues, the subject is lost. In being blocked out of this "ivory" world, the speaker is only able to enter when she falls ill. When in an institutional setting--what I'm assuming is a university hospital due to the mixture of "professor" imagery and medical imagery--the speaker observes, "I am present in a building / that I could not enter once. Doorknobs / taunt me" (20). In this setting she is further stripped of agency and made to be a "specimen."

On page 37, in "Sweat," which gives detail to the lives of women sewing endlessly in garage sweat shops, "Their discarded countries are pieces of the past / that they throw out at the end of an endless day, / when the crooked door stops letting light through" (38). The speaker chronicles the lives and dreams of women who live within her community, who are shut inside stuffy coffin-like confines, unable to access daylight and freedom, working their fingers to nubs. The door of opportunity for these women, like in the previously mentioned poem, is shut.

What I appreciate about following this motif is how Hernández-Linares is able to complicate really common imagery. An image as simple as a door can open up into a complex, multi-layered motif, one that gets more complex as it reappears throughout the text.

Sarah Gord Blog 11

I have really been enjoying Mucha Muchacha’s playfulness with language, translation, and (re)definition. I feel like there’s a lot I’m missing because of my basic grasp of Spanish, and Google Translate can only give me so much. I’m always looking for ways to elevate multilingualism in my classroom, and I would love to teach some of these poems next year to privilege my students who speak Spanish as a native language and therefore have much better access to connotations of words than I do.  

The first line of the first poem holds so much: “to tell is to count” because “contar” means to count (and “contar un cuento” means “to tell a story”). This is both literal translation and a new way to think about the progression of events in a person’s life. I am also struck by the differences between “Te voy a contar un cuento” and the translated “I will tell you a story.” The Spanish in this case begins with “te” (you), opening the thought with the listener. There is a lot of playfulness with what comes first in the line, and who is doing the telling or being told. The story itself seems to take on an active role in the telling of itself. In the lines,  “Splotches on skin interpret and / keep time with the story she is going to tell you,” it seems as though the splotches have more agency and control than the “she” because they are earlier in the sentence and actively “interpret” the story. The speaker repeats the phrase “the story she is going to tell you,” which contrasts with the hypothetical “she will tell you the story,” which would lead with the “she” rather than “the story.” Instead, "the story" remains the subject and the focus of the sentence. 

The pronouns themselves also jump from “I” to “she” to “you,” and it is not fully clear who each of those pronouns represents. This leads to a feeling of interconnectedness, as well as the feeling that there is more than one story being told simultaneously (by “she” and the “I”) – or, perhaps, that there is one story being told in two ways. This is supported by the final lines of this poem: “The story that she tells you / good for swaying to sleep. / But mine makes you hum / until you lose your breath.” Humming seems like a positive word, but the final line is ominous and dangerous. 

I also really enjoyed the poem, “How to be Spiritual in Stilettos,” though I still am not sure what to take from it. Hernández-Linares seems to be reframing and reinterpreting gendered objects like stilettos and sewing machines throughout the collection. The first stanza emphasizes the pain of fitting into very uncomfortable shoes (“squeezes / ten swollen toes…too narrow…pointy”). The next stanza, however, explains the pain: “We want to see / from new levels.” “Hitting” and “marching” are both powerful words that assert agency. I’m not quite sure what the take-away from this poem is meant to be, though. There is a hopefulness of reaching new heights, but it still strikes me as artificial and material (words like “flouresent,” “size six little girl wishes” are throwing me off). Would love to hear how people interpreted this one.

WHAT DOES YOUR BLOOD SPEAK?4.18.17

 Mucha Muchacha, too much girl by Leticia Hernadez- Linares represents what it means to write into identity.  Linares' work creates poems  written for herself and her reflected  identity in ways that only someone who confidently embraces that identification can write. Her voice is Latina, clearly marked by the  narratives that were not translated and the insertion of Spanish with no hesitation for translation. She was not worried about the voice being translated because she was writing for those who identified with her language and words. Mucha Muchacha is firmly located in one specific identity, and the book is valuable for its "rooting" into the culture."To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul"- Simone Weil( From Langauge For a Century).
Not only does her use of non - canon dialect and language create an identity safe place, her references to memories created within  her Latina culture assisted in  securing a safe space that welcomes the love and critique of Latino/a social identity . " Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it holistic "- Nawal El Saadawi ( Language For A New Century). Linares' writes about the memory of a Sunday morning ritual in her poem Shuco. She utilizes the description of the breakfast contents to illustrate what is happening in her social context. The voice sounds like it is the recollection of a Sunday morning spent as child- the poem sounds like a memory recorded- a memory retrieved.  She writes, "Lucky to escape a civil war, we invent our own combat. unclassified, our fatalities become residual...looking for three black beans, bits of seed, Cracker Jack surprise, we scrape the dead from the bottom of the bowl." Her bowl of what I know as oatmeal is  illustrates more than a meal, it represents what she is consuming within her cultural boundaries, the gender norms, missing children, the dead and lost of her community, the porridge acts as "quicksand" to it all. The beauty of being an insider and writing from that perspective lies in the ability to affectively evaluate the contents of the cultural, when done with love even the broken pieces are cherished an therefore able to be healed.   "The imperfections are invaluable because they are markers of identity. He loves his cycle, whether lost or broken, as he does his life, for the simple reason that it is his own"- Bimal Nibha, Cycle. Like Nibha I feel Linares  is witnessing those imperfections within her identity, but not scraping the cycle of life as junk, but embracing it as a part of what it means to be her.


Now the question remains, who are you? I found the poem from the Language text  titled  Two Voices by D.M. Thomas to be a instrument of evolving into identity( or out of). The use of the following questions and responses really resonated with me... "in what language do I pray ? Do I meditate in language? In what language am I trying to speak when I wake from dreams?... Do I think of myself as hyphenated? No. Most of the time even as you, I forget labels. Unless you cut me. Them I look at the blood. It speaks to Armenian." WHAT DOES YOUR BLOOD SPEAK? That is who you are ?

Body

The representation of the body in these poems can almost seem as third person referring to something abstract and not inner related to your mental and physicality. I think that mentioning the body as something abstract is able to serve its purpose when explaining how the body is not attributed to the person. The body is seen as the only thing people notice, consuming the notion that the body not being formed as part of the whole person, rather it is a mass that can be reduced for research purposes.

The poet Angel Nafiz is able to make the meaning of the body and form poems that explain how colored bodies are many times used for educational purposes many times without our own consent.  In Nafiz’s Poem Conspiracy: A Suite, What the Doctors say to the Black girl explains tremendously the common demeaning stereotypes that are evident in the medical community when treating people of color. Often times it is this idea that people of color are over sexually active, therefore prone to more diseases, whether this is fact based or not, and people of color are more prone to those diseases I think that Nafiz, takes on a different direction when writing her poem, she purposely ignores the patient (the black girl) and gives the doctor all authority of her body disregarding her as a person and just focusing on her body.

In addition the work of Fatima Ashgar,  brings back the body and creates the body to mean what you want it to mean. As the author and owner of your own body, it is a reflection of what you want it to be, not of what others see in you or take of you, it is you giving your body life. In her poem When Tip Drill Comes on at the Frat Party or When Refusing to Twerk is a Radical Form of Self Love, even the title is very prominent with the suggestive wording of fitting into certain roles in order to be classified as good or bad.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as a look from your best friend,

alive on the dance floor, the light of her own sweet sweat to realize the powerhouse in you, to realize the sum

of your body not its dissected parts but the whole

damn breathing thing.”….

…………….

…………….

“No.

Today, this body

Is mine.”

These words are very powerful, they fight the mind and our own insecurities, our own GIVEN insecurities, to let the body dance, to be free of all of the negative stereotypes and associations that are given to our bodies and allow ourselves to enjoy the moment.

The Universal and the Particular, moments of Protest.

Arriving at the end of the book Poetry and Protest, there is so much intention and purpose through out the whole book to open eyes and see the pain and the need to survive in a time of continuous systematic inequities. The universal manifestations through out the book explore the lives of the black body, both male and female questioning the unending inequalities they continuously face due to the color of their skin.

The universal places the needs of each poet at their fingerprints both in writing and in their interest as evolving poets. They’ve learned from each other, they’ve learned from poets who came before them, from the history books who portray reality but most of all they are learning from experience. This type of experiential knowledge gives these poets a particular understanding to life in the United States as expressed in each of their poems to reflect the deep meaning and connection to their words.

Currently the moments of protest are written with so much emotion, they may be hidden from the initial read, but if you continue to read, you can find the hidden/not so hidden message that these poets are trying to send out. Frank X Walker mentions in his description that when you have questions, books have answers (pg 196). Which is exactly what this book does, it gives you answers if you want them, if you’re willing to read the pain and the beauty of each of these poets.

The prevalence in the moments of protest that are extracted in the words by Walker is captivating. In the poem “Li’l Kings,” walker is protesting in a much different context the meaning of credibility. Why do we find credible the educated man, versus the perceived gangster? If both carry and deliver the same message, why should one be considered more important than the other? Or would it be? As he states would Dr. King still be a King, if his appearance negated credibility?

Another poet that I found his message to be very strong is Al Young. In his poem “Blues for Malcolm X” he raises awareness regarding what happens after the mind of the revolutionary is murdered?

“They didn’t know where to hide you, so they put you on a stamp”

This stanza is so powerful, it explains how the government can kill you and your cause and still try to recognize you when you are no longer living. Following this stanza we get the incredible ending of the poem “You, Malcolm X would fix the system with the ballot or the bullet.” This incredible work of protest in this poem pays tribute to the cause of Malcolm X, to the things he fought for that people to this day have to fight for. Which in some years may be reflected in a holiday in which the U.S will be forced to acknowledge it’s direct implications to the negative systematic oppression that continues to happen.

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.