Post 10

The final poem in "Poetry and Protest", "Blues for Malcolm X" by Al Young is a reminder that the particular and the universal ebb and flow.  They can intertwine with one another and complement or contradict, but the particular and the universal seem to always be in tandem. 

Al Young flows between vagueness and specificity in his journey to see Malcolm X.  The specific details are concrete, "Oakland", "Blue tooth tech", "Booker T", "Malcolm X" those are all important nouns (211).  It makes the audience understand that Young is talking only about Malcolm X.  The anecdote about his lonely bus ride there, his friends who wouldn't go with him makes the speaker solitary in his analysis. 

The view of History here is retrospective.  That's why the universal, phrases like "younger than rain", help to contextualize this as something audience members can relate to.  Most people have felt the rain or seen a stamp.  Truthfully, I've always struggled with the phrase "universal" because I wonder if we take for granted that we as humans feel the same feelings or have the same experiences as other humans virtually by the fact that we share humanity.  On one hand, I think that is true because being a human entails certain experiences.  But our perceptions of those experiences maybe don't have to be universal.  I just think it's strange that we can, for instance, describe happiness to one another and assume that we have the same feelings surrounding happiness.  However, we might never feel each others feelings in a literal sense.   Yet, on good faith, we go on believing that we all have the same basic emotions and feelings- that has sort of always freaked me out. 

In this poem about the speaker's very specific take on meeting Malcolm X, I think the beauty lies in the specificity and the particularities in that this person's story is unique because his ode to Malcolm X affected by his own experiences at the Cafe and on the bus.  Yes, there are themes considered universal like loneliness, finding solace and power and belonging and mourning a great historical figure.  However, without the specificity, the poem would run the risk of being generic.  I think that the power of poetry and other forms of storytelling and the wondrous thing about being human is that a single event might happen and a million people will tell the story a different way.  When those stories intertwine with power dynamics and racism, you get master narratives- which are often said to be universal.  Counter narratives, such as "Blues for Malcolm X" gain power from their being read, spoken or talked about.  It was truly an honor to read "Of Poetry and Protest."  It is a book I will read for years to come and that I want to share with people- precisely because it recognizes that universality might actually come from a pluralism found in specificity.