Reflection #2: Sense of Place

Webster’s dictionary defines place in a variety of ways: physical location, position in a social scale, an appropriate moment in time etc. Mills College is a physical place, but feeling like campus is a safe place to express yourself is can bounce between social acceptance and appropriate moments to be expressive. With this week’s readings I found the poets interchanging what place meant to them in the bodies of the work, and the different ways that place is defined for each of them.

“One way to erase an island is to invent a second island absolved of all the sounds the first one ever made.”

When I first read this line, my mind went to the social state of Oakland and how much of the original culture has been lost due to gentrification. Oakland used to be known as “ghetto,” and listed as one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. but is now regarded as one of the best places for foodies, or to travel for leisure time because of the new culture that has developed due to transplants and start-ups. This “new” culture has been allowed to erase Oakland guilt-free in exchange for “improving urban communities.”  

This comparison and continued reading of the poem made me realize that place is as much about physical location as it is the memories that we associate with it. My definition of Oakland is based off of experiences here growing up and other poets have defined place in their work based off of their experiences with a location and not the location itself. Rosal doesn’t specify street corners, monuments, or landmarks but he talks about place as a sense of being and feeling connected. We learn more about this island through Filomena and Josepha than we do in descriptions of sandy beaches and clear blue oceans.

The Story of My Country is another example of place described as experiences. Habib doesn’t state which country is his but we learn about it through the hymns of Zarathustra and summer nights on the rooftop. He also reinforces this idea in the line “where are the old storytellers to tell the story of my country, where is one listener.” To me this implies that the validity of this country, this place, can only be told from the mouths of elders. Simply naming a mountain top or river isn’t enough.

Does place even exist? Who gets to decide what is place, who is in place, out of place, has ownership of it etc. if “place” is both a physical point and a state of mind? I ask this question in reference to myself and the poets this week, but specifically thinking about Farid Matuk’s Carols where he states “I only care that you love, she says to her American, hammocks, hillocks, porcelain ducks floating down the river,” and in Long Before and Shortly After, he states “I am among my whites whom I love very much.” This make me think of patriotism and how being “American” is generally defined by celebrating certain customs and having a white face. No one else is allowed to take ownership of this place if you have experiences that don’t fit this norm. Although Matuk is an immigrant, he can easily pass for a white American (as he says among his whites) and his works feels like you can have pride in this place if you’re part of the dominant class. That may not be his intentions but it’s hard to tell his position, which is explained in the intro by Noah Eli Gordon.  

On the flipside, in America, America by Saadi Youssef, he lists cultural customs that he likes “I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats,” but specifies that he is not American. The poem alludes to saving “my home sweet home,” but I wonder if Youssef truly feels at place here with his need to state that. Although he is an immigrant like Matuk, it doesn’t seem that he feels at love among whites.

I’d have to do some more digging to see if those comparisons have any truth to them, but my biggest take-away is that place is what you make it. Have fun with it.