Assignment 2-Tyrice Deane

-Noah Eli Gordon’s introduction to Farid Matuk’s work inspired me to move between the space of negative capability and unconditional love while reading these works. John Keats is documented to have coined the term negative capability to describe great authors who had the capacity to pursue artistic beauty even when it led to intellectual madness that could not be philosophically certain.  That place of negative capability which allows the writer, and I would say the reader, the chance to chase after the words in a poem that may lead to more questions than answers, is how I responded to these poems. I drew no conclusions other than inquisitions that asked questions, some questions were directed at the craft/function of political poetry/political engagement of poets, other questions were in relation to  myself, the writer, their place, my place, and our shared space as writers, readers, poets, and above all humans dealing with desolation and love all in one breath.

-The authors took the “complexity of our political lives and created poetry equally complex”-Gordon –

-These poets are experiential experts who traverse the reader from the page, to coordinates imagined, envisioned, and remembered. Some of the work directed me to provenances that I was not born of, but through the words I connected my current state of indignation to the transferable emotions left on the page. 

- Below I highlighted a few authors for specific talking points.

-Rosal begins his poem An Instance of any Island by starting at the end of the islands invention. He is watching what I would call tourist (by way of existing there for luxury and for a fixed time) enjoy the imagined space. Before this island was a destination for delight, Josefa and Filomena, two lepers missing alternative appendages were exiled to this piece of floating land. If these untouchable pariahs were denied entry: “if the monks refuse the ships freight, the skipper was to dump the whole cargo far from any shore. Two bodies documented as cargo, the lading and dumping of the two more important than their humanity, a human existence that they held onto, together, by the strings of an old guitar that “plucked  fat harmonics  from the old nun’s grunts, six taut strands of gut whose chords skimmed the water like night locusts in bursts of low clouds.” Now the island of exile is renamed and reclaimed, a NEW place where the water that once heard the deaf sounds of those  isolated is a destination where “two pink lovers” take a sluice in the salty waters of the erased island sounds of an old grapefruit guitar played by two of the first forgotten. *WHERE DO WE GO TO GET AWAY, DO WE LAND ON AN ISLAND WHERE SONGS WE WILL WE NEVER SING NOR HEAR, NOR CARE ABOUT STRUM UNKNOWNINGLY THROUGH US. ARE THE TRUE SOUNDs STILL THERE ONCE WE COME LOUDLY MUTING SOFT MELODIES> ALOCHOL IN HAND WE LEAVE OUR HOMES TO BE COMFORTABLE IN “OTHERS”UNCOMFROTABILITY NEVER ASKING WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE…

-Matuk’s poems Long Before and Shortly After, and Anamorphosis sent me vibrations from a throb near and far. In Anamorphosis Matuk bounces from places through visual imagery, you are global in his work, though the setting may be California, that’s how inclusive the dialogue in this poem is. The reader is traveling by way of feelings presented in images. Feelings of pollution from the mistresses Marlboro cigarette butt, to the plastic bag, and planes steam above. The same feeling of pollution that can be smelt through the page by his description of “garbage air lightly honeyed in methane”.  Pollution is death, and as Matuk writes “we learn to look at anything and recognize death. The cognition is what reminds us that life is not expected, we are allowed to grow old, we are allowed to see planes, his use of the word “allowed” when referring to things such as vision and old age reminded me of how relentless death is when it is everywhere- a visible pollution like a plastic bag blown by the wind into a tree.

- Youssef is asking for an exchange of gifts. Give we back what we gave you, he is saying give back our village and what we are made of. Gifts that were given from one humanitarian to the lost who came seeking, those explores took what they lacked and like bandits, stole, and created a place(America). No fair trade, no exceptions made. The parlance in this poem provokes strong emotions that are laid out by the craft of the poem. The craft of italicizing God Save America, My home sweet home, to the relentless list of gifts to exchange. The poem read like a body of people moving in masses headed for parliament to demand that the government “takes Hussein, gives us Lincoln… or no one”. This poem read to me like documented notice of cease and desist.