Matuk layers space in "San Martincito" by setting up the scene of many little worlds layered upon each other: Greenpoint is a small part of Brooklyn, part of NYC, etc. Within Greenpoint, the sheets surround the narrator and create a "line around" (or a shape) the narrator. There are bugs in their swamp.
If there aren't scenes all down our street
at a simple throb in someone's
car music
This was a beautiful stanza to me while I was thinking about spaces and how they mean something to people - like, people driving in their car, which is a confined part of their own world where they play music loud and maybe forget for a while that the people outside of the car can hear the music. My best interpretation of the first line is that they're driving in their car, contained with the music, and maybe don't see the people in their "scenes" as they go down the street. So, it feels like another instance of space layering.
What stood out about this poem is that it does live up to that complexity because there's sweetness in both the places that Matuk mentions, San Martin & Greenpoint. As a reader, I'm left with the feeling that, for the narrator, these two places aren't being held at odds with each other. But the two places are actually separated by this stanza:
I'll give you the republic
a story of land treaties
and the shapes they made
So Matuk's fondness for both places is different than the cold republic making lines on a map and borders. This is much more political and feeling especially important this week. The imagery in our poems this week reveals deep roots in places and the complexities of relationships to space (space that is stolen, occupied, limited/expansive, conditional/home).
If there aren't scenes all down our street
at a simple throb in someone's
car music
This was a beautiful stanza to me while I was thinking about spaces and how they mean something to people - like, people driving in their car, which is a confined part of their own world where they play music loud and maybe forget for a while that the people outside of the car can hear the music. My best interpretation of the first line is that they're driving in their car, contained with the music, and maybe don't see the people in their "scenes" as they go down the street. So, it feels like another instance of space layering.
What stood out about this poem is that it does live up to that complexity because there's sweetness in both the places that Matuk mentions, San Martin & Greenpoint. As a reader, I'm left with the feeling that, for the narrator, these two places aren't being held at odds with each other. But the two places are actually separated by this stanza:
I'll give you the republic
a story of land treaties
and the shapes they made
So Matuk's fondness for both places is different than the cold republic making lines on a map and borders. This is much more political and feeling especially important this week. The imagery in our poems this week reveals deep roots in places and the complexities of relationships to space (space that is stolen, occupied, limited/expansive, conditional/home).
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing first of all! I really love your view on connecting what we gathered from last week's reading and applying it to this week's. It's definitely something I want to continue to keep in mind as we dive further into our readings. I love that you looked at the layers within the poems and that within itself, was an added complexity you referred to. I almost feel like your take on the car scene/line makes it a visual scene I could see happening and creates that sense of layer as well. I felt akin to your last line and I agree that imagery of these poems definitely provide a portrayal of deep roots in places and how those places are much more complex. To one person - seeing a tree or a street may seem like something to graze over, but the place itself has layers of history made by so many others who have crossed that same path/space/location.
Thanks again for sharing!
Tien Dang
Molly,
ReplyDeleteI love this because i was trying to find a way to describe how space is space and then meta...but layering is the concept and show how not only in Matuk but in many colonized people, the land, space acquires histories from the pin hole spot (like greenpoint) to the layered place that we have to accept or reject. Fight or flee. i really appreciate your observations and how closely you looked.
e
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this it really helped put the poems and the idea of space into perspective. I like your idea of spaces being layered upon each other creating a scene. And how space ends up being different for different people when for example in a car, it becomes an individual space.
Also I enjoyed reading how space can become political and the specific examples you referred to in your last paragraph, when regarding to stolen land.
Thanks!
Daisy
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this it really helped put the poems and the idea of space into perspective. I like your idea of spaces being layered upon each other creating a scene. And how space ends up being different for different people when for example in a car, it becomes an individual space.
Also I enjoyed reading how space can become political and the specific examples you referred to in your last paragraph, when regarding to stolen land.
Thanks!
Daisy