Prompt:  Family is a different idea than we know. The childhood, the place.

            All of the poems listed to read from  Language to Coiled Serpent wrote of childhood, place , and heritage in the space of direction, movement, and topography. There is no sense of a set place of where the childhood can be found, no fixed symbol or spot to pay homage to the growth of the child into adult hood. All the poems seem to assume, us, the reader is not from there and needs explanation. In most of these works we are on trip/ in transit, following directions or a recipe, down high way 8, through the tourist streets of the Philippines, in and leaving Detroit, creating the elements of a tat, walking down the streets of South Central… Childhood and place is never fixed for these writers, and often outside influences such as, tourism, economics, social, and more, take control of their child hood spaces and are always reshaping their reflections.

Carbo: Directions to My Imaginary Childhood was written with little tension/ raveling leading up to the last stanza. Carbo used punctuation to illicit the feeling of reading directions and the rhythm of the poem. The names of streets such as Mabini( named after Filipino revolutionary) and Legazpi( red light district) in the second line, (all reinvented tourist spots),and the  assumed French, by their “je ne se pas!” response, playing abecedarian dominoes on the street , gave me informational references to an area that had been taken over by XPATs(?). The last stanza references Juan Tamad, a fictional Filipino character  based on a lazy boy who sits under a tree and lets the fruit fall into his mouth instead of picking it.

Title: Carbo uses  the title to place us in the location of childhood which alludes to the past, while also placing the narrative in a contemporary space where the reader is to use directions to get to this imaginary childhood. The use of the word imaginary also tips the reader to look for something not real in the journey.

The last stanza held the tension and core of the poem. After all the tourist spots, we the reader turn back around and look for the “me” under the index/ acknowledgements section. After the story has been read and told through the lens who are not of the narrative we can find the real “me” in the pages where the author gives credit to  “ those who made this all possible”.

 

Hyan Chara: Thinking American for Dioniso D. Martinez,

Title: Thinking American- makes you question how does one think American ? isn’t one American by birth. For also makes me think of an intended audience.

Location: the author seems to be an outsider looking into this males life in DT. The narrator is writing about the “you” which is indicated in the  for Dioniso D. Martinez

The position is one of looking back, but also a current position acknowledging that “Detroit is a shit hole”

Voice: the opening line of “Take Detroit” reminds me of someone giving a presentation/ example on a topic. This also reads like Carbo’s directional poem.

The emotional tone : everyone is a suspect=fearful mistrust, a emotional state the sytem has manufactured.

Pace: the poem begins raveling immediately, using the idea that you “learn to think American” and aren’t born into the theoretical lens of Americanism. The final line is the “drop mic line”- BY THINKING AMERICAN I MEAN MADE- being made implies it is not authentic, tampered with by man, constructed with purpose.  

Marylyn Chin: Tonight While the Stars are Shimmering ( New world Duet)

Title: Tonight while the Stars are Shimmering makes you think love poem , A new Duet makes the reader say, “hmmmm, maybe  new love poem?” Duet also indicated that two people are composing one product together ,each individuals input helps create the final product.

Location: Highway 8. The story is in transit. We are again on a trip, a road trip, but this time we have an active character with us. A lover

Position: the writer shifts , from ancient Feudal society , to outdated dowry systems( that still exist but not as socially accepted), and to the now of the Del mar and Highway 8

Voice: emotional voice to me seems confused. In a purgatory between tradition, self morals, unapproved love, and the motives of the other in the duet. In love and “anointed on the prayer mat of your love” invokes  a sense of love, but the use of the word anointed makes me think of the construct of religion that often depowers the devotee as one who praises, and the anointer as the one with the power. “Oi, you can’t describe the ocean to the well frog” is a reference to a Chinese tale of the well frog who won’t leave the well to go to the ocean because it thinks it has all it needs in the well, the moral of the story is “ being unaffected by such disaster is the joy of living”( referring to actual droughts and increased rainfall that never effects the ocean but does the well) , similar to the  American used adage “ignorance is bliss.”The implication of the “I” directing this at the “you”, made me think of a power dynamic that has placed the “you’ in a social place of ignorance, one where the “you” does not desire to crawl out of.  The last line also made me think the “You”may be a white male, and  the “I ” an immigrant , or they are an Indian/Chinese couple ( “ you would have been drowned at birth” no more than 2 kids was a rule , but they also drowned girls based on this law), or they were a biracial lesbian couple… that I couldn’t figure out,  but I know the “ I “ feels guilt for loss of ancestors, culture,  and survivors guilt for being spared( “How was I saved on the boat of freedom”), and then instead of upholding cultural values falls for the “other”.