Like the structure of Quraysh Ali Lansana's "the killing of patrick dorismond", the color complex becomes a layer in our poems from this week that stands out like a moment in parenthesis. I'm asking if the things we put in parentheses are made to stand out or be skipped over?
Last week Avren responded to my post: "physical space and internal space...contrast with each other as living organisms. The change colonialism brings also changes the internal structures of the heart and family" -- this is thought provoking for me also with this week's prompt! How does the external (physical?) alter the internal (psychic?) over time?
"the killing of patrick dorismond" holds up these realities/dialogues/untruths to examination all at once, which makes it feel really immediate. In the non-parenthetical words, racial profiling is being masked and is the justification all at once. The words are "doubletalk", their meaning appears to be one thing but is really another. The inside words are in protest, almost like trying to pull the truth from the inside out to the open.
"commissioner (bounty hunter) referred to suspect
(coon) as a lowlife (african) though his (aryan)
comments were later proven false (white lies).
the shooting (genocide) is the third (pattern)
in thirteen months (institution) in which plain-
clothes
officers (gestapo) shot/killed an unarmed man"
This poem speaks with "New Rules of the Road" by Reginald Harris: "Do not say you/Do not fit The Profile/This is America: You are the profile". Harris' poem also moves from the internal to the external: directive do/do not statements like "Keep/Your hands visible at all times/Above your head In these/Brand new handcuffs/Speak/Only when spoken to..." in the beginning of the poem emerge into internal are/are not statements: "You are/Nothing/Do not/Resist/You are a/Thing/Do not/Run/You have/No rights".
Imbedded in the internal/external tension, there's also a presence of concealment or maybe "cushioning" realities that's associated with color. Like in Abed Ismael's "The Poem--The Mirage". It begins with "This white won't accept another whisper. Let it sleep safely in its whiteness, without nonsense or language" and I read that as insulated or contained. I'm struck by this stanza:
"O son of contradiction, son of the idea and its antithesis, son of difference at its most. O son of disappearing letters, images, and meanings. Son of concealment and disclosure."
Internal and external shows up as an association to color and colorism this week, but so also does associations with "light" and "dark" and what feels "shadowed" or "silhouetted" or "burned" or "blond", which I felt like, depending on the poem, could be internal associations or an external mockery of certain associations, but still pulling the associations out from within and making them apparent in a poem.
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post this week! I really love how you pointed out the conflicts within the poems this week. I also found the struggle and dynamic between internal and external and that they're sort of starting to all get jumbled together in a way that the poets artistically unify together so we sense it but cannot really pinpoint or describe. I wrote about how parts of the selves cannot be separated, and find because of the social events and problems, the selves feels like it needs to be separated but it cannot - thus the conflict. I feel like what is parenthetical is socially meant to be silenced or unsaid, yet the existence of it is right before our eyes and very much real and existent.
Thanks again and all the best,
Tien Dang
Great reflections! The poets carry this with such delicate balance. Particularly the way that these poets are able to mock the associations we have with these colors in order to create layered work. With Ismael, I had to ask myself how to read the poem. Ismael conceals layered meanings within a poem that is existential, melancholic and questions meaning itself. I felt similar to the person who mentioned "not getting poetry" although poetry is usually something I feel comfortable with. I went in a few circles wondering which interpretation I was closer to Ismael's intent (until realizing, duh, it's poetry, the wandering and wondering is the point).
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ReplyDeleteI'm glad that I was able to bring a different perspective to your reading. I'm interested in going back to the poems and looking to see when the complexities of light/darkness are used in relation to the physical world and psychic world. With Lansana's verbal reading of the poem ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo5AZXGmHz8 ) he was able to make the parenthetical words just as much a part of the conversation as the rest of the police statement, whereas with sight-reading making something parenthetical diminishes its importance. In the conversation of color complex, I am interested in rereading this poem with the color signifiers as at once hypervisible through the actual event and diminished by the cop's statement. This experience is flipped in how the poem actually presents the information--the hyperreal and visible truth is an aside, the statement is embellished by line breaks and made into an art form.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think Lansana making this statement into art is necessary and breathes life & truth into a cold document of violence
DeleteMolly, you started an excellent conversation here I appreciate how you asked questions as well as gave observations. It allowed your colleagues to come in and really discuss the poems. Everything in a poem is intentional, right? And what we know of parenthesis, that they emphasize or slant an aspic of the thing ahead of them. But the question for us as readers is, what do they do to the poem. I hear a whisper of these words to overlay the feeling of the original words. I think you're on to something bigger with the mention of internal/external tension. not just in Harris. NIce blog
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