Sarah Gord Blog 2

In “An Instance of an Island,” Rosal explores what it means to “erase” a place while simultaneously describing this otherwise unnoticed “island.” Throughout the poem, the reader is let into a world inhabited only by these two women, Filomena and Josefa, who have been overlooked by the rest of the world (and even have been intentionally banished for their differences or supposed deformities). They are, as the speaker describes them, “incurables” who have been “banished from other lands to live among these / lush slopes of mahogany, papaya, and weeds.” They have been erased from mainstream society but are still very much alive and well together. They find time to create music, even with “ten / full fingers between them.” It is noteworthy that instead of writing that the women are missing fingers, the speaker describes them this way: “each woman / with one hand still intact.” This is a much more asset-based way of describing them and shows the speaker’s respect for them.

The poem also explores a tension between intentionality and unknowability. The phrase “one way to erase an island” is definitive and instructional. Beginning this way makes the reader think that the speaker will have a straightforward understanding of “erasing” an island (and by extension, the natural world and people who live on it). However, immediately after his first declarative statement, the speaker says, “We don’t know / who concocted this one,” introducing some uncertainty into the his previous confidence. Later in the poem, the speaker says, “The emperor’s orders / to his captain were clear,” again introducing a confident clarity around how to get rid of the so-called “sick cargo” of people who do not fit into the mainstream. Later, the speaker adds, when talking about Josefa and Filomena’s jam sessions, “No one is sure / how it began.” Although the speaker is telling their story in the poem, their history is not recorded in the same way that an emperor’s would be. The final few lines also show some intentionality within the poem:

…joined by that third

body of wood, which made sure there was

nothing left in the unbroken world

to possibly make them whole.

The line, “made sure there was” suggests that the way that Josefa and Filomena have been banished was very intentional, not only by the emperor but by something broader: what seem to be the very island itself (“that third / body of wood”). I’m still not fully sure how to read this last stanza and would be curious about what other people think about to what “that third / body of wood” is referring.

“Anamorphosis” also made me think about power to tell stories and what we are (or are not) “allowed” to know or see. About halfway into the poem, the speaker says:

Usually there is a plane

traffic above me

but I am allowed to see it

intermittently

by steam trails.

I was really struck by this line “I am allowed to see it;” the speaker does not clearly state who or what is allowing him to see something as seemingly simple as a plane. The “steam trails” left behind are proof that the plane has gone by, just as writing about anything can be seen as proof of its existence or importance. Later, the speaker says, “My mother has been allowed to grow old,” which raises the stakes significantly. The speaker implies that someone or something (people? A greater force?) could have killed her but have chosen not to. He also spends only two lines intimating at pain in her life: “Today she talked about her rape / he took pictures of her at gunpoint.” Even as they do not tell us anything specific about his mother, they tell us a lot about at least one incredibly painful experience. The speaker ends the poem by repeating, “I want to;” again, there seems to be something preventing him from seeing things in particular ways, giving us a sense that the things he “wants” to do are not necessarily things that he can.

These poems also grapple with the basically impossible challenge of describing an entire country, culture, or people in a way that is understandable to outsiders. In “America, America,” Youseff also adds the challenge that people approach the world with particular frames of references. He says that, “Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions: / whatever rises is a fort, / whatever spreads is a battlefield.” Regardless of how poets would describe their own countries, outsiders too often come in with their own lenses, with little interest (at least implied in this line) of expanding their thinking.

The final line of Habib’s poem, “The Story of My Country,” also gets at this exasperation: “Where are the old storytellers / to tell the story of my country? / Where is one listener?” She wrestles throughout the poem to describe her country, piling descriptions onto each other to scratch the surface of the complicated task of illustrating a place and a people. The final line, however, is more of a call to the listener (or lack thereof). If her voice is not heard, then her descriptions are in vain. Poets typically do not write into a void; there is usually an implied reader or listener, just as there are readers of history and contemporary news. If places are painted as bleak or not highlighted at all (like in “A Story of an Island”), their stories remain untold to the greater world. On the flip side, however, the more we read poetry and amplify marginalized voices, the more power and volume they will have. Just as Rosal offers the reader a choice at the end of the poem to silence the voices on the island or “invent a song so big / it will hold the entire ocean,” we as readers have a choice about what to read and share.