Sarah Gord Blog 7

Quite a few poets this week in Of Poetry and Protest deal with the challenges associated with writing  about death sentences or obituaries. Devorah Major’s “on continuing to struggle” begins, “i don’t want to write a memorial poem” about Mumia Abu Jamal, a man accused of and sentenced to death for killing a white police officer. Throughout the poem, she points to a variety of kinds of poems about black death, and spends most of the time arguing that she doesn’t want to write any of those. The poem reads as fed up, resistant, but ultimately hopeful. Although most of the poem declares what she will not write, the final stanza links poetry and activism through repetition:

working on the free mumia poem

working on freeing mumia

working on seeing mumia free

In this poem, poetry and language is intertwined with history (and, by extension, the framing of history). By resisting to write a particular kind of poem, she insists on revising the narrative through language. In the second to last stanza, she writes, “i say i want to sing,” as though adding the declarative “i say” brings more power and makes her desires more feasible. She seeks to tell the story of not only Mumia Abu Jamal as an individual but all he represents as a black man, accused of killing a white police officer, sentenced to death, when too often white cops walk free.  

Quraysh Ali Lansana’s “statement on the killing of patrick dorismund” deconstructs so-called neutral language, digging into the real meanings behind words like “hoodlum,” “suspect,” “drug dealer,” etc., words used so often in the news. The language outside of the parentheses is cold and distant (“shot/killed” does not hold very much emotion or sympathy), while the language within the parentheses is much more direct about what the coded language means. The speaker makes links between modern events and slavery, connecting “mayor guiliani” to an “(overseer),” and points to the “pattern” of killing black men, referring to “the shooting (genocide).”  He is especially critical of Mayor Giuliani’s language itself, italicizing his words and highlighting hypocrisy and dehumanization inherent in supposedly neutral language:

…and allow (blind faith)

the facts (ethnic cleansing) to be analyzed (spin) and

investigated (puppets) without people (darkies) trying

to let their biases (racial profiling), their prejudices

(welfare queen), their emotions (fuck tha police),

their stereotypes (o.j.) dictate the results (status quo).

The parentheses in these final lines are so weighted with history and frustration, as well as a desire to tell another story that many white folks in power resist or deny through supposed neutrality.

“We are Not Responsible” deals with neutrality in language differently but in an equally chilling way. The poem reads as a waiver a person might sign before getting on an airplane (and, more and more throughout the poem, as a reading of a person’s rights). There is an explicit “we” and “you;” often, the pronoun “we” in a poem feels inclusive, but here it feels cold and distant, as though the “we” is a large corporation or entity. 

The first line packs a punch: “We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.” Immediately, there is a juxtaposition of the object and the human. The first parts of each line reads as relatively harmless, but the end of the lines are surprising and loaded with implications about who is and is not seen as “human.” The whole poem deals with the duality of language – words like “handle” and “case” take on new meaning, like when the speaker says, “we are unable to find your legal case.” On the one hand, this could refer to lost luggage, but on the other, it refers to centuries of legal discrimination. The callousness of “we are unable to find” takes the blame off of anyone in particular, referring to systemic forces for which no individual can take credit– and therefore for which no individual can be blamed. The language becomes more explicit as the poem progresses:

You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile.

You are not presumed to be innocent if the police

have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet.

It is not our fault you were born wearing a gang color.

It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights.

Ultimately, this poem is most chilling because the language itself is cold, distant, and therefore exceedingly cruel and dangerous. The “who” of the poem is no one in particular; the “who” is all cops, government officials, white folks who suspect danger, etc.