Blog #4: Use of Color by Tien Dang

Prompt:  The color complex.  How do the poets use color, their own and others?

Reading about the poets in "Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin," I felt like each poet had a very inspirational story as to how they were inspired by the word and inspired to create and use words for themselves and the people around them.  Each expression of poetry became a personalized act and performance.  They used their own personal emotions, sentiments, and thoughts and evoked meaning.  Each poet's experience is summed up in their style and how they soaked up reading, thus each writing is a personal expression. All is personal - from the color of the skin to the maturation of childhood into adulthood.  As a result, poetry is an action to provoke thoughts of the poet's color and their experiences of witnessing and being surrounded by color.  For Kelly Normal Ellis, it was letting stories linger whereas Terrance Hayes, it was similar to building a house.  As for Douglas Kearney, poetry was like music that sung to him and for him.  For whatever these poems did and or does for the poets, it used the poet's experience with color.

As Duriel E. Harris says, "Poetry first captivated [him] through sound.  The power of the performed word saturated the air with color and vitality, opening the worlds and visions of worlds" (80).  All personal experiences including experiences of color personally or surrounding the poets was effected and affected.

Like in his poem reads, "Peckerwood Creek, Alabama (no blacks no jews no gays)" (82), the typography helped depict the separation of people of different color/religion/sexual orientation.  It separates these groups from the geographical location.

In Abed Ismael's "The Poem - The Mirage," he writes "This white won't accept another whisper.  Let it sleep safely in tis whiteness, without nonsense or language" (163).  There's a contradiction of how language and nonsense are considered equivalent in this sense, thus depiction how nonsensical fear of color other than white is nonsensical.

As C. Dale Young's "Proximity" reads, "What syndrome describes this?  Not the sense of touch but of being touched" (271), there's a difference of sense of touch versus being touched.  An individual cannot choose what color he or she appears.  Similarly, he or she cannot separate him or herself from the color he or she appears.  Just like the blood in your veins, your color is what your color is.  It's not a sense of choice, but the need to understand it or learn what it means for yourself is a desire.