Madison Middleton
February 17, 2019
Reading Response #3: Persimmons
Li-Young Lee begins his poem “Persimmons” with his teacher, Mrs. Walker, literally pummeling English into him. His difficulty distinguishing the words persimmon and precision from one another angers her. However his struggle with English does not reflect his internal knowledge: he knows precisely how to prepare and consume a persimmon. His insight is ancient, but Mrs. Walker judges him only for the mistakes he makes in English class. When he instructs how to eat a persimmon, he breaks the original meter and begins a ferocious, internal rhyme scheme. This shift in language and pattern suggests that this is a routine he is familiar with, a rhyme he was taught as a child. His description is also surprisingly sensual and helps the poem move into a love scene with a woman named “Donna.” This is when the symbolism begins.
The first creatures he mentions are crickets, an animal that brings longevity in the Chinese culture. The next comes at the end of the stanza when he tells Donna that “she is beautiful as the moon.” Similar to the crickets, the moon represents prosperity and peace. Just as we begin to make sense of his references, the poem suddenly shifts back to the English words he struggles with: fight and fright, and wren and yarn. Even though his heritage is rich, it means nothing if he fails to Westernize. Yet his way of understanding English is streamlined and elegant:
“Fight was what I did when I was frightened, / Fright was what I felt when I was fighting. / Wrens are small, plain birds, / yarn is what one knits with. / Wrens are soft as yarn. / My mother made birds out of yarn. / I loved to watch her tie the stuff; / a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.” (32-59)
As he illustrates his stream of consciousness, we see that everything is connected, and eventually, his mind makes its way back to his mother and her crafts, a reminder of tradition. His previous rhyme scheme returns when he describes an incident when Mrs. Walker brings a clearly unripe persimmon, what she calls a “Chinese apple,” to share with her class. He contrasts his teacher’s ignorance of the fruit with his mother’s profound statement that “every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face” (46-48).
Symbolism then returns in full swing. Lee dictates a scene from the end of his father’s life. First, he references a cardinal, which represents the incarnation of the soul of the sun. Such a specific emblem could go unnoticed except that the next line says the “cardinal sang, ‘The sun, the sun.’” In the world of homonyms, the cardinal might also be singing ‘the son,’ as to say that Lee is the metaphorical incarnation of his father, an upholder of tradition. Later, Lee speculates that his father sits up at night awaiting a ghost. We learn that Lee’s father is a painter. One of his compositions shows two cats, creatures known in China to ward off ghosts. He also paints a Hibiscus leaf, a symbol of the fleeting and beautiful, and a white flower, also a reference to death and spirits. Is his father expressing grief for a lost culture? Or a loved one, maybe his wife? Finally, he paints two persimmons. The last stanza of the poem is in the words of Lee’s father. He dictates in detail the precision (word choice not unnoticed) it takes to paint such a piece, but because he is so well practiced, he could create it even in blindness:
“Some things never leave a person: / scent of the hair of one you love, / the texture of persimmons, / in your palm, the ripe weight.”
This fruit becomes Lee’s personal symbol for his life, family, and culture. It is heavy in his hands, a weight he must carry, but it is ripe and rich and important. As his father’s life comes to a close, he continues the traditions he’s learnt and the persimmon justify this, for it is the symbol of transformation and the wisdom that comes thereafter.
1. GLOSS:
“A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.”
The news says another weak Palestinian is the victim of violence
“Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root”
The symbol of Palestine has no place to call home, sadly it tried to live in the wrong place
“is too big for us. What flag can we wave?”
which is too difficult for the small Palestinian to struggle with. Where can we call home?
“I wave the flag of stone and seed,”
My home is not a place at all,
“table mat stitched in blue”
rather where I can am, with my identity whole.
2. DICTION: The word “true” is the most important word in Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood”, as it is repeated four times, almost once in each stanza, and is crucial to the core of the poem: what it means to be a “true Arab” and Nye’s struggle with that trueness in her identity as a Palestinian immigrant that considers the United States home. The first cognate with “true” is the Old Fresian “triūwe”, meaning “faithful, reliable, trustworthy, secure” (Oxford English Dictionary). Other cognates include the Old Icelandic “tryggr”, which among other things translates to “safe” and the German/Old English “trēow”, meaning “truth, faith, loyalty, pledge, covenant”. The etymology of the word “true” is helpful in finding more significance to Nye’s repeated use of the word. Someone who is true is someone reliable you can trust, someone safe, someone loyal with whom you have a covenant. In “Blood”, Nye is questioning what it means to be a “true Arab” through the knowledge of her father. Because he is a Palestinian refugee, he sees a “true Arab” as a trustworthy, safe, loyal person with whom he is in agreement with, whether it be about Palestinians’ place in Israel or the healing properties of watermelon.
3. IMAGERY: An image that stands out in Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood” is the “homeless fig” she refers to in the fourth stanza. Nye writes, “Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root // is too big for us.” A fig is a prominent fruit of Palestine, so the fig can be assumed to be a metaphor for Palestine, especially because of the fact that it is described as homeless: a condition Palestine finds itself in with its conflict with Israel over land to call home. This metaphor is furthered when Nye says the fig is a “tragedy with a terrible root”, comparing Palestine to a fig tree with a rotting root or a root in bad soil. This is to say that it is not grounded in the place it calls home. Furthermore, by referring to Palestine as a “fig”, Nye makes it seem helpless, without a consciousness or any means of helping itself, something that is furthered in her next line, “too big for us”. The tragedy of the tiny fig with the tragic and awful root is a particularly illuminating metaphor in interpreting how Nye views Palestine, her birth-country and the origin of the “true Arab”.
4. SYNTAX: In the third stanza of her poem “Blood”, Naomi Shihab Nye writes about her father’s real name, “‘Shihab’ — ‘shooting star’—”. This line is important in understanding her father’s identity and what it means to be a “true Arab”. A shooting star is a powerful metaphor, one that represent the people of Palestine: bright and beautiful, but always on the move, never stationary, gone before long. The syntax of this line is also unique in that it features two em dashes and only three words. This serves to break up the poem, provide a pause, as well as put emphasis on the Arabic word for shooting star and its meaning for the rest of the poem.
5. TITLE: Naomi Shihab Nye titles her poem “Blood” and goes on to describe and question what it means to be a “true Arab” through the context of struggle, beliefs, and behavior. The lines “I call my father, we talk about the news. // It is too much for him,” demonstrate how even when Arab Palestinians are living away from the conflict of their people, it still troubles them deeply. “True Arab” beliefs are illustrated in the line, “True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways” and an example of defining behavior is when Nye quotes her father as saying “‘A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,’ // my father would say. And he’d prove it, // cupping the buzzer instantly”. Through these actions, Nye makes it seem as though being a “true Arab” is defined as how you feel, think, and act as opposed to your ethnicity, where you were born, or what’s in your “Blood”. That said, one has to consider the line where the title appears in the poem, “Today the headlines clot in my blood.” This use of the title in the poem holds great significance and portrays the struggle of Palestine as an internal part of her, something in her blood. So although the line may make it seem like being a “true Arab” is more biological, what it is actually saying is that the struggles, along with the beliefs and behaviors, that face a “true Arab” is inside them and is what defines them.
6. SYNESTHESIA: If “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye was a color, it would be a greenish/tan, similar to the combination of colors featured in the landscape of both Palestine and San Antonio, Texas. Palestine is where Nye was born and where her father is from but she was brought up in Texas and when asked, calls it home. This struggle between place and identity is reflected in “Blood”, so the greenish/tan combination is fitting. If “Blood” was a song, it would be written for an acoustic guitar. I feel as though the guitar is capable of playing many different types of music and for varying moods, and this poem would be best served with that somewhat universal instrument to fit its tumultuous tone. At times, the guitar would simply be being strummed lightly, but during other lines, such as the ones at the end, it would be being played more aggressively and loudly.
7. CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP: I interpret “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye as an internal struggle between her Palestinian roots and American upbringing, complicated by her Palestinian father’s definitions of what it means to be a “true Arab”. Throughout the poem, she is questioning if she in fact is a true Arab: if she uses watermelon to heal, how she questions her father’s name, her reaction to the news reports on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The poem ends with her driving into the country, commonly used in real life and literature as a way of escaping one’s problems, and throwing questions to the wind: “Who calls anyone civilized? // Where can the crying heart graze? // What does a true Arab do now?” The whole poem is a struggle between who Nye is and who she is not and the form of the last three lines of the poem, framed as questions, make this debate concrete. Who defines her as a citizen? Where can she, with all this pain, call home? As a decidedly “true Arab”, or if she was a “true Arab” (this conclusion is up for debate), what is she to do now? These questions are the themes and content Nye writes about throughout all of “Blood”, and they come to a more literal fruition in the form of the last three lines.
8. CONTEXT: The author of “Blood”, Naomi Shihab Nye, was born in Palestine to a Palestinian refugee father and an American mother. Nye was born in 1952 and wrote “Blood” in 1995, so the Hundred Years’ War, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, is a great influencer to her work, this poem in particular. She spent most of her life in and considers San Antonio, Texas home but formative experiences also include spending part of her adolescence in Jerusalem and visiting family on the West Bank, a borderland between Israel and Palestine (Poetry Foundation). She is also quoted as saying “everywhere can be home the moment you unpack, make a tiny space that feels agreeable” (Wikipedia). This belief is reflected in her “Blood”, as she struggles with and identifies home more internally than a literal place, despite the geographical definition of home being at the root of Palestine’s struggles. Nye considers those struggles to be rooted in the fact that a great part of Palestine’s identity is rooted in land.
9. QUESTION: This poem is an exploration of Nye’s identity and what it means to her to be a “true Arab”. Does Nye settle on a conclusion on what this means? If so, what does she say the defining factor of a “true Arab” is? Finally, do you think Nye identifies with this: does she consider herself a “true Arab” or not?
1.
“I said to myself: three days I tried to convince myself that
and you’ll be seven years old. I wasn’t living in 1918. That I wasn’t my aunt.
I was saying it to stop I told myself this
The sensation of falling off For I was scared and thought I was falling
The round turning world.” Off the world into nothing with nothing to stop me.
2. Volcano—Among other images, Bishop describes a black volcano “full of ashes.” This directly relates to the title of the poem, In the Waiting Room. In a dormant state, it rests before billowing up in smoke and lava.
3. The speaker uses lots of dark imagery throughout the poem. The reader is told “it was winter. It got dark early.” This lack of light relates to the lack of hope that is felt especially when taken back to the time of the war.
4. “Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone?” The power of this unanswerable question resonates with me. The speaker is lost, the reader is lost, and in this place that seems to be between worlds and times he/she asks this question that borders on irrational.
5. The title of the poem is misleading. Although it seems that physically the speaker is in a dentist’s waiting room the entire time, his/her mind is doing everything but waiting. Jumping into the aunt’s mind and past life, a wild journey takes place.
6. The poem would be a deep red—chaotic and angry. Furthermore, only a piano score would be able to well represent the different energies expressed throughout.
7. It strikes me how long the first stanza is. After that, the form is jumpier and less of a narrative. This conveys the central idea that we are being ripped into and out of a room. By the end the poem gives only quick snapshots and alludes to content and images from earlier in the poem.
8. Bishop was born in 1911 which seems to suggest that she is the character in the poem as she would have been seven on February 8, 1918. The poem was written in 1976 but takes place during World War I. 1976 puts the poem in the era of postmodernism. She is known for not using precise accounts of her own life but instead weaving in details more carefully.
9. Why does Bishop frequently return to dark imagery if the waiting room itself is described as “bright and too hot?”
Gloss:
He was calling in the bulls from the street. He opened his mind up to allow (called to) his thoughts to enter.
They came like a dark river — a blur of chest and hoof — everything moving, under, splinter — His held-back thoughts poured into his mind, moving fast and moving him with them – consuming his mind
Hooked their horns through the walls. His thoughts attached with strength in his mind and came into the open/aloud.
Light hummed the holes like yellow jackets. Outside light from his sister went to mend the holes created by his thoughts – attempt to calm him down.
My mouth was a nest torn empty. I emptied myself of words for him – sister gave everything and all light to brother to be there for him.
Diction: Most important word in the poem: husk
The word husk is most commonly thought of as being the outer shell to corn or fruits. In this case, it stands out because that meaning does not fit within the context of the poem. In the OED, husk also can mean: “the shell of a chrysalis or a cocoon, the external part of anything; the mere rough or worthless exterior, as contrasted with the substantial inner part or essence, or applied to the human body or a person”. The husk in the poem could be talking about her brother’s body as a whole, and then using the lens of the husk being insignificant, it adds intensity to the way significance the poet assigns to her brother. Also using the lens of a cocoon, it aligns with the word “blooming” in the line before, which signifies growth of her brother and undeveloped.
Imagery: “Mars flew out and broke open or bloomed” (lines 13 and 14). The image of a planet flying out of someone alluding to the idea that someone has an entire world inside of them that is different from other’s worlds. The use of two verbs, either a planet exploding: reactive, destructive, and messy, or a planet blooming: growth, proactive, and optimistic adds complexity to the mood and outlook of the poem. I find it meaningful to the overall poem as it leaves the situation unbiased – neither fully positive, nor negative – by using two contrasting verbs.
Syntax: The most important line of the poem is, “I never knew I was also a lamp”. The surprise of being a light for someone else arrives to the poet at the same time as the surprise hits the readers. Together, the reader becomes presently taken on the journey of the poet into the situation, after many lines of being outside. The syntax of the line and the specific use of the words, “never” and “also”, heighten the intensity of this line as a turning point in the poem.
Title: My Brother My Wound. The title emphasizes the hurt and pain that Diaz carries with her from her brother’s trauma. The use of “my” twice implies ownership. She is close with her brother through their familial connection and emotional connection. She holds a lot of his burden which creates a wound, or it can be seen as by holding a lot of his burden, she has self-inflicted pain.
Synesthesia: If this poem were a color, it would have depth and would not be able to be the same from all angles or influences of light. It would be a shade of blue that deepens as one looks closer, and glimmers of green and purple from different angles. The color would not be concrete nor primary because the mood and tone of the poem are not fixed as well. The poem is dynamic and changing, and the color would be as well.
If it were set to a musical score, it would be written for a piano. The tempo and volume of a piano changes in time with the poem, and a piano can be as powerful or light as one plays it. Similarly, this poem has moments of lightness and moments that are heavier to read, which requires an instrument that is versatile.
Content/Form Relationship: The central idea of the poem is the brother’s unstable state affecting his sister and the ways in which he seeks to find haven in her familiar. The brother’s needs and problems are disorderly which influences the structure of uneven sentences and stanzas. The poem is structured in a way that is inhibiting for the audience, however those involved in the poem understand. With this, the problems the brother is facing can only be understood by those there (his sister) and embraced, but appear striking and confusing from an outside perspective. The poem is the retelling of a scene and by not having a set structure, it conveys the disconnect of those unattached from the scene.
Context: This poem was published in March 2014. The author grew up on the border of California, Arizona and Nevada. She is Mojave, and speaks Spanish and English. Her indigenous roots are intertwined in her poetry and she is known for writing with mythical tones. From her poetry collection, When My Brother was an Aztec, readers became aware of her brother’s suffering to a Meth addiction.
Question: What is Diaz’s role in this poem for her brother? And what does this tell us as readers about her relationship with her brother?
Poem Response on “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” by Ada Limón
Fahmid Rashid
Literary Borders
Cassarino
1. Gloss
Do you have any poems that speak to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. (Troubled teens nowadays can relate more strongly to people of different cultures and ethnicities)
Would you like to come to dinner with the patrons and sip Patrón? (We want to hear more about how ‘exotic’ you are)
Will you tell us the stories that make us uncomfortable, but not complicit? (Tell us about your cultural identity and your struggles, but keep it PC – we only want to hear about what WE’RE okay with, not you)
2. Diction – “Uncomfortable”
Apart from being just one of the words that is used to describe the hardships and tales of immigrants in the poem, the entirety of the poem itself makes the readers feel uncomfortable; its satirical tone and disregard of stereotypes in an extremely unorthodox way makes us feel uncomfortable, the same way Limón must have felt uncomfortable at various points in her life.
3. Imagery – The ‘box’ “Will you check this box? We’re applying for a grant.”
I find the symbol of the box to be the most resonant of the entire poem; not only does it suggest that being considered ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ can give you more credit (or even credibility in the context of the poem), but can also mean that many minorities end up confined to a box; whether it be their environments, their society, their financial situation, or something else entirely. These ‘boxes’ completely ignore the hardships that many minorities go through simply for being different.
4. Syntax – “Don’t read the one where you are just like us”.
Going back to points aforementioned, I find this line to be the most powerful because it once again reinforces this idea of curiosity in ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ cultures, except this curiosity can come off the wrong way, and even seem repetitive or irritating. This line really helps to create an ‘us vs. them’ mentality, almost as if the experiences/hardships of these minorities are the only things separating them or making them unique.
5. Title – “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”.
There are many aspects of the title we can look at. First of all, in today’s context “the Conversation” usually refers to the discussion of serious topics (e.g political). Immigration and refugees are a bigger concern than ever in today’s world; for Limón to say “We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” is her way of saying that we need to talk about these issues of race and ethnicity. However, adding “The Contract Says” in front gives it a satirical tone, as if it is desired (or even required) to associate with some sort of multicultural identity.
6. Synesthesia
The poem in my opinion would be medallion yellow; ugly to some, yet beautiful to others. More specifically, when I first read the poem all I could think about was how aggressive it was – yet, after discussion with some peers, I started looking at it from a completely different perspective, and this led to a greater appreciation of the poem as a whole. Similar to a strong yellow color such as medallion, this poem can seem ‘ugly’ to some, and yet hold a completely different meaning to others.
7. Content/Form Relationship
Upon first read, I found this poem to have a very passive-aggressive tone, but after re-reading it I felt the tone to be more satirical, almost mocking stereotypes and those who falsely seem to be interested in other cultures/ethnicities, as well as rebutting against racists. The way the poem seems to be addressing these minorities directly in its sarcastic tone by almost embracing some of the stereotypes and confronting them headfirst instead of running away from them.
8. Context
Ada Limón is a 3rd generation Mexican (however, on her Wikipedia she is listed as American). While this poem is different from many of her others, many of her works tackle lifelong tribulations, each of which is part of its own “conversation”.
9. Question
How does Ada Limón play with the border between intrigue and insult in “We’d Like The Conversation to be Bilingual”?
“Since I was on his time, I ran” – Since I have no control of my life, I followed orders
“And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans–” – Me and my people have been stripped of our humanity through the way we are treated
“Ran past the amazed crowds that lined” – Ran by the spectators as they enjoyed the game
“The street and blurred like photographs, in rain.” – Were so far away from my reality they may as well not exist to me
“I ran from the industrial road to the soft” – I left the place of my hardship and went to the “promise land”
Diction:
I believe “tail” is the most significant word in the poem, “Mexicans Begin Jogging”, by Gary Soto. The poem is about how degraded this man, Soto, feels for having to live the life he has. The word “tail”, commonly known to refer to an animal, which epitomizes the theme of the poem of the “Mexicans” being less than they are, less than human.
Imagery:
“A dollar In my palm, hurrying me” – I find this image to be quite interesting because of its syntax. In the preceding sentence it says that Soto’s boss handed him the dollar, but the sentence was cut off leaving room for an opposing interpretation. Instead of just Soto’s boss hurrying him, the dollar itself is as well. We can infer that this “dollar” comes from America and represents much more than just a piece of valued paper. Soto is being pushed physically and metaphorically by hid treatment of the country he calls his home.
Syntax:
“And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans–” This line, I believe, holds one of the main messages of the poem that Mexicans are less than they are. Soto and his fellow Mexicans are characterized as a “short tail” alluding to a sort of animal which further dehumanizes them. I also thought that the word “short” stood out in this sentence. The “short tail” helps box all Mexicans into the same group by it being a limiting factor. Also, Soto hasn’t always been this “wag etc..”, he “became the wag” after being affected by the US border patrol.
Title:
I think the significance of the title, “Mexicans Begin Jogging”, is that this group of people weren’t always jogging. Some outside factor, the United States and United States Border Patrol, influenced this action which led to Soto choosing it for his title.
Synesthesia:
This poem would be a mix of brown and red. The Mexican name is being smudged, brown, yet Soto is still able to run and wear a “Great, silly grin” so there is some light, only some, which explains the red. This poem would be written for a violin. Violins can make long, beautiful notes as well as quite harsh ones, thus capturing the discomfort and slight peace in the poem.
Content/Form Relationship:
The central idea of this poem is the degrading of Mexicans through their efforts to escape border patrol. It is interesting how each line starts with a capital letter almost like a new breath during a run, a jog. The poem accomplishes this by creating a somewhat defeated tone throughout.
Context:
-Soto found his interest in poetry through poets such as Ernst Hemingway, John Steinbeck and many more.
-In 1981 Reagen vowed close relationship with Mexico. A step towards better relations between the two neighboring countries
Question:
How does the syntax of the poem help Soto to create this ironic struggle between Soto and the stereotypes of his race?
Gloss:
“I hope, Maxes, some good in you is of me.
Even my suffering is good, in part. Sure, I swell”
I hope my mice have benefitted from the suffering I helped put them through
“With rage, fear- the stuff that makes you see your tail
As a bar on the cage. But then the feelings pass.”
I too, relate to the feeling that my sick body has trapped me”
“And since I do absolutely nothing (my pride, like my fur,”
And like you, mice, I have also lost much of what made me human.”
Diction: “Cage, noun – A box or place of confinement for birds and other animals (or, in barbarous times, for human beings), made wholly or partly of wire, or with bars of metal or wood, so as to admit air and light, while preventing the creature’s escape.” – OED
This definition of the word “cage” exemplifies the comparison that the author creates between himself and his litter of mice. The definition implies that cages are meant for animals, but can be used to torture or restrict human beings. Ritvo would likely describe his tumor as “barbarous”, so this definition makes sense within the image he has created.
Imagery:.When Ritvo says that he understands how the tumors can make the mice mice “see your tail as a bar on the cage,” he is both creating a metaphor and a connection between himself and the mice. First, by saying his diseased body part is a cage, he demonstrates how his condition limits his freedom, as a cage would. But this line is also somewhat ambiguous because while Ritvo is speaking about his ‘rage, fear’ he refers to a tail. This furthers the alignment between his voice and the mice’s suffering.
Syntax: “I want my mice to be just like me. I don’t have any children.”
This line breaks from the typical style of the poem, which splices sentences between stanzas. This line delivers two short but profound and related pieces of information. First, it cements the alignment between the narrator and the mice. The second sentence reveals that the narrator has no children, possibly illuminating the motive behind his relationship with the mice. Perhaps the narrator sees the mice as some kind of legacy, a continuation of his life as it come to an end.
Title: “Poem to my Litter”
This title has a double meaning. First, it labels the poem as a message to the mice that are being used in his treatment. By using a possessive he seems to accept responsibility for the mice, as if he is aware or guilty of the suffering he has caused them. Second, “Litter” means trash, something thrown away. This meaning describes the narrator’s relationship with the things that he will soon leave behind in the world. He is aware that he is probably going to die, and he understands that these mice are some part of his impact on the world.
Synesthesia: If the poem was a color, it would have to be black, like the main color at a funeral. Death seeps into every line of this poem. The narrator has no hope for himself, and he knows that many mice will die anyways on his behalf. If this were set to music, it would be played on piano. Pianos offer the range that would be necessary to cover the complex web of mourning, anguish and sympathy for the mice.
Content/Form Relationship: What is the central idea of this poem, and how does the form/shape/structure of the poem convey this? (Try not to be redundant here; really think about the relationship of form & content, of form & meaning.) The poem is divided into couplets, which represent the relationship between the narrator and his litter of mice. This idea is furthered when sentences are divided between lines. This represents a shared suffering and the literal object of the shared tumors that exist in both.
Context: Max Ritvo was an American poet. This poem was written two years before his death, after a long battle with cancer. This allows the audience to understand that the details in this poem were based on the author’s real experience and emotions.
Question: What does the author’s alignment with the mice reveal about his perspective on mortality?
The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual
Ada Limón
1. Lines 21-26
Don’t mention your father be sure not to indicate
was a teacher, spoke English, loved that you had a functional family
making beer, loved baseball, tell us, it’s great and all, that your father
again about the poncho, the hubcaps, was an able man, but we really would prefer
how he stole them, how he did the thing that the people see him as a true immigrant
2. Lines 9-10
Will you tell us the stories that make
us uncomfortable, but not complicit?
Complicit: Involved knowingly or with passive compliance, often in something underhand, sinister, or illegal. Use of this word shows the true perspective of the speaker or voice of the poem. This word makes it clear that the speaker, which is clearly identifiable as an employer or something of the sort, is taking advantage of Limón’s immigrant background for use publicly. And the use of the word complicit to describe the barrier to the content of a story to be told makes it clear that the employer wishes only to protect and promote the company or organization at hand. “Make us uncomfortable, but don’t get us in any trouble.” The choice to explain the possible negative consequence as breaking the law, rather than activating an introspective or guilty response, shows that the speaker of the poem is truly heartless.
3. Lines 16-19
Tell us the one
about your father stealing hubcaps
after a colleague said that’s what his
kind did.
This exact image paints the picture for what people view as the stereotypical immigrant family. Poor, desperate, dirty people, it is clear to the reader that the narrator knows the story of Limón, and that they hope the pity they feel will be equally elicited within the greater audience. The clear specificity of this image is also moving, as though it’s almost a joke, a well thought out joke that is being told. It’s so oddly specific, humiliating, that there’s almost surely no way that it can be real.
4. Lines 11-12
Don’t read the one where you,
are just like us. Born to a green house,
This line is so important because it shows the roots of the issue of immigrant entry. Clearly there are similarities between the speaker and Limon, but the speaker wishes to pretend that they don’t exist, because the speaker is not an immigrant, and would never wish to be associated as such. The issue is in the stigma, rather than in the actual nature of their relationship. The form of this line does not do too much to change the reading of the poem, but the choice to end the line saying “you”, and then the sentence saying “us”, forces the reader to pause on the two, showing a clear opposition between the two.
5. Title
The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual
The nature of the title functions in a few different ways. First, it is structured as a formal request, again, clearly from an employer of sorts. This choice makes it clear to the reader the lack of emotion which the employer associates with Limón, how he is using her for utility purposes. Additionally, the choice to make the request conditional, “We’d Like”, adds a feeling of false manners to ‘offer’. We as the readers understand that traditionally an immigrant may not be given such great diversity of choices upon entrance into the country, and that this request is most likely non-negotiable.
6. If this poem were a color, it would likely be grey. Grey is dull, emotionless, bland, and the speaker of the poem is clearly the same way. If this poem were set to a musical score, it would be made for a piano. Although the piano is capable of being played in amazing ways, it is among the most common instruments, and therefore would articulate the lack of originality in the ideas presented in the poem, just another song that doesn’t quite get it right.
7. The central idea of the poem is clear to be rooted in the concept that we as Americans, those taking in the immigrants, have a clear description of who they are, a clear image of what they will be like, and the stories they will have to tell. Additionally, it is expressed that to many, immigrants matter little in actual value as humans, but instead in their ability to “diversify” the group, creating the appearance of plurality in the workplace. This is expressed in a few ways in the structure of the poem. First, the moved structurally follows a very standard 2 line stanza formation, the appearance of which is remarkably typical, serving to refer to the ideas presented in the same way.
8. Limón grew up in Sonoma, California, so her true origin is not that of an immigrant. On top of this, he accolades as a student and writer are prestigious, knowing his makes her position as a “stat booster” in the poem even more ridiculous.
9. How does the structure and perspective form of the poem “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” serve to represent the perpetuation of immigrant and minority stereotypes?
GLOSS:
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth (Despite the fact that America hurts McKay so much, treats him like a second-class citizen)
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess (suffocates him with discrimination and racism)
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! (Though he lives in “hell”, it’s a hell with culture and music and art and brimming to the surface with life!)
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood (America’s enthusiasm and excitement for life strengthens McKay, makes him who he is, makes him stronger)
DICTION: “Vigor”. This word, stemming from the latin word “vigere” which means “be lively” sums up well what McKay feels America is. America is energetic, powerful, and so very alive. In the end, America is powerful potential energy. Potential for hate, but also potential for great good.
IMAGERY:
“Her vigor flows like tides into my blood/giving me strength erect against her hate”
America is a paradox; she destroys McKay, yet she also gives him the strength to fight back. This simile of America’s vigor being washed into McKay like a powerful ocean, strengthening him against her racism and hatred, contributes to the main theme of the poem: hope for the future of America. America’s energy has the potential to be directed towards good.
SYNTAX:
“Darkly I gave into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,”
This line is McKay’s message: that America has the potential for good. “Her might and granite wonders” will soon, in the near future, be for all Americans to enjoy. This line is at the end of the poem, and works well with the narrative of the poem. The first few lines have McKay acknowledging all the evil America does, the middle section has him exclaiming his love for America, while the end has him promising that America can be better.
TITLE:
The title is simple. Just, America. America with all her faults and all her wonderfulness, America with all her racism and all her potential to change all that and transform into something beautiful. McKay isn’t trying give America another name. She is who she is.
SYNESTHESIA:
What colors? Why, red, white, and blue, of course! For America! Land of freedom and opportunity! Proud colors of a proud and very imperfect nation.
The song on this poem would for sure be played by a trumpet. An instrument that is as loud and proud as you can get.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP:
The poem’s form supports its message of hopefulness. Written in iambic meter, with alternate rhyme, it is a structured, orderly poem. It is polished, consisting of an octave and a couplet. There is no chaos or breaking of meter. McKay is sure about what he is saying, and feels his prophecy of America’s greatness will come true. The rhyme scheme is a consistent alternate rhyme until the last couplet (which rhyme together). There is no enjambment, except when McKay transitions from the third line to the fourth, in which he shifts from speaking about how America hurts him to speaking about why he loves America.
CONTEXT:
This poem was created during the Harlem Renaissance, a period (1920s, NYC) in which black Americans were reaffirming their cultural and artistic identity and starting to imagine some glimmers of equality on the horizon.
QUESTION:
Has America become today what Claude McKay dreamed it could be?
GLOSS:
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
[Finally accepting age, loss of ability and increase of reliancy]
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
[Waiting for the things that he could not see, but also for the return of the past, maybe?]
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
[Gave him what he had given his child; knowledge of the fruit and the past; a bittersweet reminder]
and sweet as love.
[A token of his gratitude, support, and love]
DICTION:
“Ripe,” serves as the most important word in “Persimmons.” Given the focus of identity development throughout the poem, the essence of sweet, fruitful maturity informs the beauty of Lee’s growth and journey into adulthood.
IMAGERY:
“I sit beside him and untie
three painting by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.”
The three paintings by the father are important in the way that they encapsulate the progression of the poem. The hibiscus leaf and white flower possibly representing fertility and growth, also allude to the beauty of Lee’s Chinese heritage. The “two cats preening,” could be symbolic of a youthful love and a search for that companionship or even the grooming most go through to fit in with the mix. And lastly, the persimmons are so representative of Lee and his father, “two persimmons” ripe with the time they have spent together and so ready to share the sweetness of their identity.
SYNTAX:
“I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.”
There is a warmth to this line of the poem that sits so well with the reflective nature and tone of Lee’s authorship. This very line digs at the ache of heritage, how it sits with you and doesn’t really leave you. Persimmons, in all of their ripened glory, literally live in the mind of Lee’s father. They represent the cultural footprint of his upbringing and carry a memory so sweet in nature that their image never leaves the man with no sight. Even more, Lee’s father remembers that even with sight he painted his persimmons with his eyes closed. It seems that it wasn’t the persimmons that he was remembering but the memories etched around them.
TITLE:
The significance of “Persimmons” is its relationship to the cultural identity of the speaker and the allusion it occupies to portray a maturing from boy to man, from bitter to sweet, to tasteful and whole.
SYNESTHESIA:
If this poem were a color, it would be a sunset orange. More specifically, it would be the color of a ripe persimmon. There is a fire to the color orange that suggests a welcoming heat and a force to be reckoned with. Lee’s understanding and beautifully woven explanation of cultural identity houses both of those things and more. The poem is demanding and inviting, it’s truly difficult to tear your eyes away from its brilliance.
Now, if this poem were a music score, it would be written for a violin. There is a high ringing of great poetry and narrative in this piece. It communicates through imagery and is subtle in its build up of emotion, much like a violin throughout the course of a great song.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP:
The central idea of this poem is the beauty of a developing identity, specifically Lee’s. By structuring the poem as a progression of time with a hefty amount of imagery to document its development, Lee seems to explain his understanding of his cultural identity to not only the reader but to himself. By breaking up sentences into new stanzas, Lee seems to suggest that each stanza informs the other just as each period of his life is influenced by the one before.
CONTEXT:
This poem was published in 1986. In 1986 Chernobyl exploded, Oprah Winfrey had her first show, Phantom of the Opera had its first stage performance, and this poem was published. Like with any year, people had things going on within their lives that doesn’t reach the news, or at least that is what these bits of information tell me. Lee was born to Chinese parents who fled China in the wake of political exile. His family was one of strong political ties, with his great grandfather servings as the first president of the Republic of China. In interviews, Lee has expressed a lack of belonging, his identity defined by the borders he crossed as a child and those that he still walks along as an adult.
QUESTION:
How does heritage inform the graduation from childhood to adulthood? Or rather, does it?
Gloss:
“I’ve Stayed in the front yard all my life. (I have no seen much of the world)
I want a peek at the back (and I want to see what it has in store)
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. (where it’s unprotected, uncencensored, and unpredictable)
A girl gets sick of a rose” (There is more to the world than the beautiful)
Diction:
“Stayed”
This is the most important word in this poem because it is all about place, and not being able to see the world from a different perspective. This poem is about a girl’s desire to change and explore but her inability to do so because of upbringing, so thus she must stay in place.
Imagery:
“And I’d like to be a bad women, too,
And wear the brave stocking of night-black lace”
This image gives a stark image of a women wearing lace stockings, which are often associated with stereotypical “bad women” such as strippers or sex workers. This image connects to the scheme of the poem as it displays the narrators desires, but also perhaps her ignorance as a child and what it really meant to “wear the brace stocking of night-black lace”.
Syntax:
“A girl gets sick of a rose”
This line plays a critical role in establishing the tone of the poem, and demonstrating that the narrator is uncomfortable in the life she lives and seeks change, which is the overlying theme of the poem. By referring to herself as “A girl” rather than “I” you feel the narrator’s disconnect with herself and her desire to change.
Title: “a song in the front yard”
The title plays a significant role in the understanding of the poem becuase she calls the piece “a song”, which are often about a story or something made up that one will never attain. This relates to her longing for a taste of the real world and not her own censored reality.
Synaesthesia:
If this poem were a color it would be a dark red because of the colors associations with not only frustration but also longing and desire.
If this poem were to be played by an instrument it would be an acoustic guitar playing spanish music because of the beauty of the sound but also because of the elements of love, longing, and anguish that are felt with this music
Content/Form Relationship:
This poem is purposely kept short and for the most part fairly concrete. Likewise, there are 3 4 line stanzas and one 6 line. The length of the stanzas serves an important role because the longest stanza is about the narrator’s mother. This is important in regards to the central theme because it demonstrates how the narrator wants to change but the mother will not allow it due to her fear of social humiliation.
Context: African American Poet (1913-200)
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Often wrote about the struggles of the ordinary people in communities
Question: How does our reading and interpretation of this piece change understanding that it is coming from the perspective of a person of color rather than a white individual?
Poem Exercises on “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar”
William Blastos
Literary Borders
Cassarino
Gloss.
“this gin-heavy heaven, blessed ground to think gay & mean we.
[this bar is a place where gay is not isolating but instead unifying]
bless the fake id & the bouncer who knew
[thanks to the fake id and the bouncer who let me in even though he knew it was fake]
this need to be needed, to belong, to know how
[needing to belong and feel wanted]
a man taste full on vodka & free of sin. i know not which god to pray to.
[needing explore my sexuality without it being dubbed a sin]
i look to christ, i look to every mouth on the dance floor”
[I don’t know what god will accept me]
Diction.
The most important word in “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” is sin. In the context of this poem sin is used not to describe being gay, rather to describe the gay bar as “free of sin.” This is interesting because instead of painting the actions often seen as distasteful that would usually be associated with gay bars as sinful, he says a man tasting of vodka is sin free, within the walls of the bar. This suggests that the homosexual actions are not actually sinful in nature, but are only seen as such by broader society. Sin is perfectly contextual for this poem and its use underpins a major theme in Smith’s poem.
Imagery.
“i want to raise a city behind his teeth for all the boys of choirs & closets to refuge in.”
This line is heavy with imagery through which Smith explores the desires and emotions of having to mature in secret. Choir boys and coming out of closets are both associated with the homosexual experience of growing up. Smith speaks about raising a city behind the teeth of a lover for young gay men to seek refuge in. These “cities” and refuges exist, and for many they took the form of gay bars, that while dark and tinged with stigma, were more welcoming than many people’s homes and families.
Syntax.
“i want my new god to look at the mecca i built him & call it damn good.”
This line stands out as one of the most important as the poem because it reflects the resentment and frustration that the author is feeling. Many queer people have felt excluded or, worse, persecuted by organized religion, specifically the Christian faith. Smith talks about building a mecca for a new god, in the context of the poem this is significant because it is a rejection of the Christian god for his condemnation of homosexuality. One feature in the syntax of this line that stands out is Smith’s choice to not capitalize the g in god, an action seen as taboo by many Christians. This highlights his lack of respect for a faith and a god that does not respect his sexuality.
Title.
“The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar”
The title of this poem is significant because it is both bold and relatable for many. As a young gay man I related to this title a lot, and even before reading the poem understood the feelings the poem explores. Many gay men sexually mature in secret through apps like grindr and through lying about their age and sneaking into gay bars, and the title of this poem reflects that.
Synesthesia.
If this poem was a color I think it would be red. Red is a color that is equal parts passion and anger, and this poem embodies that as well. Both a critique of the stigma surrounding homosexulaity that pushes young gay men to hide and an ode to the underground havens that allow gay men to mature in secrecy, “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” explores these emotions in a relatable context for those that have similar experiences. And immediately after reading this poem the color red was the only one that fit.
Content/Form Relationship
“The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” reads less as a tradition poem and more as free form prose. The poem is organized into two large stanzas, seven and eight lines respectively, that split the poem into two parts. This organizational style breaks up the poem in an interesting way, and with the transition form the first stanza into the second the speaker of the poem translations from discussing the bar as a safe haven into discussing the lover as a haven.
Context.
Danez Smith is an American poet from Saint Paul, Minnesota. His poems in general reflect his ethos as a queer black man. “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar,” was written in 2017 and can therefore be looked at in a modern context. The experiences described in the poem are likely from Smith’s youth, and thus he draws on the secretive culture that is common in many homosexual spheres, both in Smith’s youth and in current times. This context is important for fully understanding this poem.
Question.
How does society’s lack of acceptance of certain groups force those groups underground? And how does this affect the maturation of members of these “othered” groups?
Kelly Campa
February 18, 2019
“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye
1. Gloss
I thought pain had no tongue. (Everyone of every language and culture feels pain)
Or every tongue at once, supreme translator, sieve. (All people experience pain, and it’s a shared experience that can transcend language)
I admit my shame. (To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging)
its rich threads without understanding how to weave the rug (There’s shame in not knowing the language of your family, and Nye tries to speak Arabic but she doesn’t speak it well)
…I have no gift. The sound, but not the sense. (She can speak the language but it isn’t natural to her)
2. Diction
The most important word in “Arabic” is “pain.” Not only does it repeat itself several times throughout the poem, but also the concept of pain is at the core of poem, with Arabic being described as a painful language, Nye expressing her discomfort with Arabic, and a dying friend. The world pain derives from the world penalty, and the original definition of the word described it as “suffering inflicted as punishment for an offense.” I’m not sure that there’s an offense being committed in this poem, but it is an interesting angle to explore.
3. Imagery
“…but later in the slick street / hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped / in every language and opened its doors. “ I personally found the very last image of the poem, the cab in the rain, to be a powerful last image that ties back into the central idea that pain is a shared experience for everyone in the world, regardless of language. Everyone has experienced the relief, the comfort, and the happiness of finally hailing a cab in the rain, and this evokes the idea of welcoming a friend inside from the cold into the shared experience of bonding over the suffering of languages for everyone of every language.
4. Syntax
The most important line in the poem is also the first: “The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling / to say, ‘Until you speak Arabic, / you will not understand pain.” It’s a highly effective opening that connotes some nostalgia or ache even if the reader doesn’t have any experience with the Arabic language. Part of that effect is a result of the syntax, which introduces the sad man with laughing eyes before telling of what he said.
5. Title
The title of this poem is “Arabic,” which obviously refers to the language that is at the center of the poem’s discussion. However, the simplicity of this title also does well to remind readers that the poem is fundamentally about the Arabic language and Middle Eastern culture, even when Nye doesn’t say so outright.
6. Synesthesia
If this poem was a color, it would be a dry, cracked yellow. Perhaps it’s because of the language about cracking and stones, or perhaps because the stereotypical image of the Middle East is the desert. Reading this poem a second time reminded me of the song Aoede by Mashrou’ Leila, one of my favorite Lebanese bands. It’s in Arabic, but the tune and the vibe is one that I enjoyed even before I started learning Arabic, so I think it’s very malleable and enjoyable in any language. It’s also a very dramatic, somewhat angsty song that recalled the pain described in the poem.
7. Content/Form Relationship
I believe there are several central ideas to this poem, and I’m not sure which is most important. First and foremost is the poet’s complicated relationship with the Arabic language, in which she feels like an outsider and can’t quite master it. Maybe the short tercets that constitute most of the poem signify her hesitation, her discomfort and her unwillingness to stretch her language further. A few lines, such as “I can’t write” and “I’ll work on it” and “Pain!” are written in italics as if they are her or someone else’s inner thoughts, displaying her mental confusion. Another central idea is that pain is universal. The poem looks physically jagged; it’s full of broken lines and inconsistent structure, and to be honest it’s a little painful to read / difficult to decipher at first. Another core concept of the poem is about Middle Eastern culture, but to be honest I’m not sure yet how the form affects this.
8. Context
Naomi Shihahb Nye was born in 1952 in St. Louis to a Palestinian father and American mother, and she lived in Palestine, Israel, and the United States throughout her childhood. “Arabic” was published in 1994.
9. Question
How can language be painful? In what ways does our relationship with the languages we speak (our mother tongues in addition to any other languages) affect our daily lives?
Arthur Romero da Veiga Martins
February 17, 2019
Reading Response to Limón’s “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
GLOSS —
When you come, bring your brown- When you present yourself,
ness so we can be sure to please we want you to highlight your
exotic nature to make us seem
the funders. Will you check this diverse.
box; we’re applying for a grant.
Your identity is of interest as
Do you have any poems that speak long as it is useful; to get
to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. funding or to sell poetry to
troubled teens.
DICTION — “Brownness”
The word brownness, a noun remarking the quality of something as to being ‘brown’, establishes the relation of ‘otherness’ between the author and her interlocutors. Introduced in the first few verses of the poem, ‘brownness’ is a qualifier of the poet’s experiences and, in the wider context of her conversation, connotes the sole reason as to why her identity is relevant. It permeates how her work and herself are only valued because they deviate from the cultural repertoire of her interlocutors; in essence, how their non-brownness promotes an objectification of her ‘brown’ background. Highlighting this intrinsic divide between her ‘brown’ self and the others, Limón creates a contrast that is vital to propel the poem’s sarcastic poem and, ultimately, deliver a compelling critique of tokenism.
IMAGERY — The Analogy of the Hubcaps, “Tell us the one about your father
Limón introduces a contrast between two stories: one that reaffirms her being American, the one with the green house and tomatoes, and the one that narrates how her father supposedly stole hubcaps. This analogy bounds the image of her father, herein representing the Mexican-American identity, to popular stereotypes found in the American culture. It aids her argument that no matter how accomplished or complex her, her father, or any other ‘brown’ American may be, there will be those who hold them accountable to these misconceptions.
SYNTAX — “Don’t read the one where you are just like us.”
This sentence encapsulates the power dynamics which permeate the poem and set apart Limón’s persona and that of her interlocutors. It being phrased as a negative imperative, ‘don’t read…’, establishes an idea that she is being oppressed and censored. Instantly, that begets the question of who is oppressing her; who the speaker of the command is. The sentence also makes evident that the speaker sees Limón as an outsider, someone who seeks to assimilate into a group in which they do not belong. The question proposes that Limón stop trying to ‘just [be] like us’ and, in this way, evokes the ‘us versus them’ theme present in throughout the poem.
TITLE — “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
The title of the poem significantly informs the reader how to engage with the text. For instance, we can derive both the setting of the poem and allude to a conflict represented in the text from the sentence ‘The Contract Says’. The word contract implies a formal structure permeated by obligations, a business transaction. Personifying the contract as saying something alludes to the subtext dialogue between Limón and her bosses, which is marked by their inflexibility and imperativeness. Similarly, “We’d like…” further denotes the nature and tone of this business relationship, thus instigating the readers’ imagination as they begin the poem.
SYNESTHESIA — “Blue and purple”
This poem would be represented by a dualism between blue and purple. Whereas purple contains both blue and red, it cannot be simply reduced to being either color individually. Purple is, therefore, bicolor; its identity can only exist when both of its composing factors interact. Yet, Limón narrates how her bicolor identity is picked apart and has one of its elements, her ‘brownness’, objectified. Whereas her white identity—blue, if you will—is quintessential in informing who she is, her interlocutors are more concerned with the exotic factor of her ‘redness’.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP
The poem offers a sarcastic critique to the objectification of ‘foreign’, or so perceived, identities. It portrays the common incident where people of diverse heritage, i.e., bicultural, bi-nationals, immigrants, not only have their experiences labeled as exotic, but are also exploited for emotional and commercial purposes. In order to present this ‘picking apart’, Limón structures the text in couplets; as a result, sentences are seldom completed in one line or even within a stanza. This affects how the reader interacts with the concept of fragmentation, literary or otherwise.
QUESTION
“What is the effect of using a second-person point of view? Is it an effective way to engage the reader and have them empathize with the content?”
Augie Schultz
Prof. Cassarino
2/18/19
“Jerusalem” Exercise
1.
“A woman speaks to a tree in place A mother’s son is dead and there’s a tree
Of her son. And olives come. In his place. She remembers him through
A child’s poem says, Olives. A Child’s innocence sees the pain
I don’t like wars, and suffering that coincides with
they end up with monuments. Monuments. Therefore, seeing a monument
is like seeing pain. Maybe it’s even the monument that causes the pain.
2.
The most important word in “Jerusalem” is tender. The word, used in the context of a “tender spot,” is immediately defined as “something our lives forgot to give us.” Tender is applicable to every interpretation of this poem. The suffering, the acknowledgment of suffering, and the “getting over” suffering are all such vulnerable and tender processes. With a theme of war and suffering, tender is the perfect opposite.
3.
“Once when my father was a boy
A stone hit his head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot and
its riddle.”
This depiction of the speaker’s father is the first glimpse into the central theme of the poem: othering and suffering. The imagery used here gives the reader a sense of violence and suffering from the perspective of a loved one. Through the son noticing his father’s scar, and describing it in such a curious manner, the speaker is able to associate intimacy with the hate-related injury.
4.
“Why are we so monumentally slow?”
This line is important because it’s the only question in the entire poem. By asking this, the speaker is able to convey the thought that compelled him to write the poem. He asks “why are humans so good at suffering, but so bad preventing it?” The syntax matters little in this sentence.
5.
The title of “Jerusalem” is incredibly important because it keys the reader into the suffering of which group of people the author is talking about specifically. If the author is writing from personal experience it’s likely he/she and or his/her relatives have been victims of either antisemitism or the conflicts in the middle east that have been centered around Israel.
6.
If the poem were a color it would be a dark, deep purple. “Jerusalem” has undertones of false hope, thus the deceivingly cheerful purple, but it also has overtones of pain, hostility, and suffering, thus the dark and deep qualities. The poem would be set to long-lasting, melancholic synthesizers in order to illustrate the dark, bleak tone of the poem.
7.
The form’s impact on the central idea of “Jerusalem” lies in both the poem’s short lines and differing length of stanzas. “Jerusalem’s” few-worded lines make each thought pungent and suspenseful. They help the reader to pause and be more mindful of the pain that is being described.
The poem has two long stanzas which each describe tangible, personal stories. These stories are, while by no means concrete, far less subjective than the first and last few stanzas which are each just four lines or fewer. During these shorter stanzas, far less information is laid out for the reader and far more of each line in the stanzas’ significance is open to interpretation.
8.
The poem was written in 1996 by Naomi Shihab Nye. She is from Palestine, which gives context to why the poem is named “Jerusalem” and why it might be centered around hatred, suffering, and war. She calls San Antonio her home but visited family in the West Bank, where Jordan and Israel are divided. It’s likely she was touched by the border and divide between the two groups of people, felt her own family caught up in the turmoil, and writes as a way to confront and appease the dissonance between people she experienced first hand.
9.
Which inherent fault in humanity does this poem make you think of?
Would you like to come to dinner Please let us show you off at a dinner
with the patrons and sip Patrón? So that the rich folks will give us more money.
Will you tell us the stories that make Please read the poems we want
us uncomfortable, but not complicit? To hear, not the ones you think we should.
Don’t read the one where you Tell us the ways that we are different.
are just like us/
Diction — derived from Middle English complice, complicit defines “The Contract Says…” by signifying the double standard of whatever foundation Limón is referring to. This group of people say that Limón’s story is important, as long as it is the aspects they wish to hear. Foundations such as these often pride themselves on giving voice to minorities, and yet, while offering this opportunity to Limón, the entirely limit what she can say.
Imagery — the details within the story about her father (16-27) mirror the tone that Limón feels about her contractors. In response to a colleague making a racist comment, Limón’s father reacted by fulfilling that stereotype, and more, in order to highlight the ridiculousness of the statement. This reverse letter plays practically the exact same purpose; to highlight the hypocrisy within this poetry foundation for picking and choosing which aspects of herself Limón can convey on stage.
Syntax — “he was trying to prove he didn’t do.”
I just love this line. There are just SO many layers to it. Firstly, it brings the father narrative to a close, stating that there is more to Limón’s dad than being Mexican. Secondly, as I stated earlier, it mirrors the feelings of Limón regarding the contractor. Thirdly, the phrasing mirrors a common white person troupe. How many times have we heard a white person, including myself, try to prove to others that he/she/they/I are NOT racist. The contractors are the epitome of that too! They say that they believe in equality, but often suffer from an intolerable superiority complex.
Title — The word “contract” brings out the formality of this letter; the writer is not giving Limón a choice in the matter of what she discusses. And, of course, the word “bilingual,” which I have not even discussed yet, is the foundation for the central idea for the poem. The contractor is looking for Limón’s “brownness” at the expense of the rest of her personality.
Synesthesia — I have never fully understood synesthesia, and I would love to discuss it more openly as a class. If I were to pick a color, it would be light brown, almost tan. This color is a literal mix between white and brown.
Content/Form Relationship — “The Contract Says…” shines a light on a more nuanced form of discrimination, usually found in high society. She chose to do so in the form of satirical letter, written in reverse. Limón would like her contractor to understand the hypocrisy within inviting Limón to speak freely while also telling her exactly what she must discuss.
Context — “The Contract Says…” was featured in Limón’s most recent work, titled The Carrying, which was published in the summer of 2018. The book is somewhat of an autobiography of her life, now aged 42. Limón grew up on the coast of Northern California in a Mexican family (she is the 3rd generation to live in the United States)
Question — As members of a fairly elite class of society (generalization, but bare with me), how prevalent is tokenism among us and the world we inhabit?
sorry, the “gloss” paraphrase did not transfer well from a word document,
Would you like to come to dinner? (Please let us show you off at dinner)
with the patrons sipping Patrón (so that the rich folks will give us more money)
Will you tell us the stories that make (Please read the poems we want)
us uncomfortable, but not complicit? (to hear, not the ones you think we should.)
Don’t read the ones where you / are just like us (Tell us the way that we are different)
Madison Middleton
February 17, 2019
Reading Response #3: Persimmons
Li-Young Lee begins his poem “Persimmons” with his teacher, Mrs. Walker, literally pummeling English into him. His difficulty distinguishing the words persimmon and precision from one another angers her. However his struggle with English does not reflect his internal knowledge: he knows precisely how to prepare and consume a persimmon. His insight is ancient, but Mrs. Walker judges him only for the mistakes he makes in English class. When he instructs how to eat a persimmon, he breaks the original meter and begins a ferocious, internal rhyme scheme. This shift in language and pattern suggests that this is a routine he is familiar with, a rhyme he was taught as a child. His description is also surprisingly sensual and helps the poem move into a love scene with a woman named “Donna.” This is when the symbolism begins.
The first creatures he mentions are crickets, an animal that brings longevity in the Chinese culture. The next comes at the end of the stanza when he tells Donna that “she is beautiful as the moon.” Similar to the crickets, the moon represents prosperity and peace. Just as we begin to make sense of his references, the poem suddenly shifts back to the English words he struggles with: fight and fright, and wren and yarn. Even though his heritage is rich, it means nothing if he fails to Westernize. Yet his way of understanding English is streamlined and elegant:
“Fight was what I did when I was frightened, / Fright was what I felt when I was fighting. / Wrens are small, plain birds, / yarn is what one knits with. / Wrens are soft as yarn. / My mother made birds out of yarn. / I loved to watch her tie the stuff; / a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.” (32-59)
As he illustrates his stream of consciousness, we see that everything is connected, and eventually, his mind makes its way back to his mother and her crafts, a reminder of tradition. His previous rhyme scheme returns when he describes an incident when Mrs. Walker brings a clearly unripe persimmon, what she calls a “Chinese apple,” to share with her class. He contrasts his teacher’s ignorance of the fruit with his mother’s profound statement that “every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face” (46-48).
Symbolism then returns in full swing. Lee dictates a scene from the end of his father’s life. First, he references a cardinal, which represents the incarnation of the soul of the sun. Such a specific emblem could go unnoticed except that the next line says the “cardinal sang, ‘The sun, the sun.’” In the world of homonyms, the cardinal might also be singing ‘the son,’ as to say that Lee is the metaphorical incarnation of his father, an upholder of tradition. Later, Lee speculates that his father sits up at night awaiting a ghost. We learn that Lee’s father is a painter. One of his compositions shows two cats, creatures known in China to ward off ghosts. He also paints a Hibiscus leaf, a symbol of the fleeting and beautiful, and a white flower, also a reference to death and spirits. Is his father expressing grief for a lost culture? Or a loved one, maybe his wife? Finally, he paints two persimmons. The last stanza of the poem is in the words of Lee’s father. He dictates in detail the precision (word choice not unnoticed) it takes to paint such a piece, but because he is so well practiced, he could create it even in blindness:
“Some things never leave a person: / scent of the hair of one you love, / the texture of persimmons, / in your palm, the ripe weight.”
This fruit becomes Lee’s personal symbol for his life, family, and culture. It is heavy in his hands, a weight he must carry, but it is ripe and rich and important. As his father’s life comes to a close, he continues the traditions he’s learnt and the persimmon justify this, for it is the symbol of transformation and the wisdom that comes thereafter.
Cecilia Needham
2/18/19
“Blood” Analysis
1. GLOSS:
“A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.”
The news says another weak Palestinian is the victim of violence
“Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root”
The symbol of Palestine has no place to call home, sadly it tried to live in the wrong place
“is too big for us. What flag can we wave?”
which is too difficult for the small Palestinian to struggle with. Where can we call home?
“I wave the flag of stone and seed,”
My home is not a place at all,
“table mat stitched in blue”
rather where I can am, with my identity whole.
2. DICTION: The word “true” is the most important word in Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood”, as it is repeated four times, almost once in each stanza, and is crucial to the core of the poem: what it means to be a “true Arab” and Nye’s struggle with that trueness in her identity as a Palestinian immigrant that considers the United States home. The first cognate with “true” is the Old Fresian “triūwe”, meaning “faithful, reliable, trustworthy, secure” (Oxford English Dictionary). Other cognates include the Old Icelandic “tryggr”, which among other things translates to “safe” and the German/Old English “trēow”, meaning “truth, faith, loyalty, pledge, covenant”. The etymology of the word “true” is helpful in finding more significance to Nye’s repeated use of the word. Someone who is true is someone reliable you can trust, someone safe, someone loyal with whom you have a covenant. In “Blood”, Nye is questioning what it means to be a “true Arab” through the knowledge of her father. Because he is a Palestinian refugee, he sees a “true Arab” as a trustworthy, safe, loyal person with whom he is in agreement with, whether it be about Palestinians’ place in Israel or the healing properties of watermelon.
3. IMAGERY: An image that stands out in Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood” is the “homeless fig” she refers to in the fourth stanza. Nye writes, “Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root // is too big for us.” A fig is a prominent fruit of Palestine, so the fig can be assumed to be a metaphor for Palestine, especially because of the fact that it is described as homeless: a condition Palestine finds itself in with its conflict with Israel over land to call home. This metaphor is furthered when Nye says the fig is a “tragedy with a terrible root”, comparing Palestine to a fig tree with a rotting root or a root in bad soil. This is to say that it is not grounded in the place it calls home. Furthermore, by referring to Palestine as a “fig”, Nye makes it seem helpless, without a consciousness or any means of helping itself, something that is furthered in her next line, “too big for us”. The tragedy of the tiny fig with the tragic and awful root is a particularly illuminating metaphor in interpreting how Nye views Palestine, her birth-country and the origin of the “true Arab”.
4. SYNTAX: In the third stanza of her poem “Blood”, Naomi Shihab Nye writes about her father’s real name, “‘Shihab’ — ‘shooting star’—”. This line is important in understanding her father’s identity and what it means to be a “true Arab”. A shooting star is a powerful metaphor, one that represent the people of Palestine: bright and beautiful, but always on the move, never stationary, gone before long. The syntax of this line is also unique in that it features two em dashes and only three words. This serves to break up the poem, provide a pause, as well as put emphasis on the Arabic word for shooting star and its meaning for the rest of the poem.
5. TITLE: Naomi Shihab Nye titles her poem “Blood” and goes on to describe and question what it means to be a “true Arab” through the context of struggle, beliefs, and behavior. The lines “I call my father, we talk about the news. // It is too much for him,” demonstrate how even when Arab Palestinians are living away from the conflict of their people, it still troubles them deeply. “True Arab” beliefs are illustrated in the line, “True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways” and an example of defining behavior is when Nye quotes her father as saying “‘A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,’ // my father would say. And he’d prove it, // cupping the buzzer instantly”. Through these actions, Nye makes it seem as though being a “true Arab” is defined as how you feel, think, and act as opposed to your ethnicity, where you were born, or what’s in your “Blood”. That said, one has to consider the line where the title appears in the poem, “Today the headlines clot in my blood.” This use of the title in the poem holds great significance and portrays the struggle of Palestine as an internal part of her, something in her blood. So although the line may make it seem like being a “true Arab” is more biological, what it is actually saying is that the struggles, along with the beliefs and behaviors, that face a “true Arab” is inside them and is what defines them.
6. SYNESTHESIA: If “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye was a color, it would be a greenish/tan, similar to the combination of colors featured in the landscape of both Palestine and San Antonio, Texas. Palestine is where Nye was born and where her father is from but she was brought up in Texas and when asked, calls it home. This struggle between place and identity is reflected in “Blood”, so the greenish/tan combination is fitting. If “Blood” was a song, it would be written for an acoustic guitar. I feel as though the guitar is capable of playing many different types of music and for varying moods, and this poem would be best served with that somewhat universal instrument to fit its tumultuous tone. At times, the guitar would simply be being strummed lightly, but during other lines, such as the ones at the end, it would be being played more aggressively and loudly.
7. CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP: I interpret “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye as an internal struggle between her Palestinian roots and American upbringing, complicated by her Palestinian father’s definitions of what it means to be a “true Arab”. Throughout the poem, she is questioning if she in fact is a true Arab: if she uses watermelon to heal, how she questions her father’s name, her reaction to the news reports on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The poem ends with her driving into the country, commonly used in real life and literature as a way of escaping one’s problems, and throwing questions to the wind: “Who calls anyone civilized? // Where can the crying heart graze? // What does a true Arab do now?” The whole poem is a struggle between who Nye is and who she is not and the form of the last three lines of the poem, framed as questions, make this debate concrete. Who defines her as a citizen? Where can she, with all this pain, call home? As a decidedly “true Arab”, or if she was a “true Arab” (this conclusion is up for debate), what is she to do now? These questions are the themes and content Nye writes about throughout all of “Blood”, and they come to a more literal fruition in the form of the last three lines.
8. CONTEXT: The author of “Blood”, Naomi Shihab Nye, was born in Palestine to a Palestinian refugee father and an American mother. Nye was born in 1952 and wrote “Blood” in 1995, so the Hundred Years’ War, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, is a great influencer to her work, this poem in particular. She spent most of her life in and considers San Antonio, Texas home but formative experiences also include spending part of her adolescence in Jerusalem and visiting family on the West Bank, a borderland between Israel and Palestine (Poetry Foundation). She is also quoted as saying “everywhere can be home the moment you unpack, make a tiny space that feels agreeable” (Wikipedia). This belief is reflected in her “Blood”, as she struggles with and identifies home more internally than a literal place, despite the geographical definition of home being at the root of Palestine’s struggles. Nye considers those struggles to be rooted in the fact that a great part of Palestine’s identity is rooted in land.
9. QUESTION: This poem is an exploration of Nye’s identity and what it means to her to be a “true Arab”. Does Nye settle on a conclusion on what this means? If so, what does she say the defining factor of a “true Arab” is? Finally, do you think Nye identifies with this: does she consider herself a “true Arab” or not?
In the Waiting Room
Elizabeth Bishop
1.
“I said to myself: three days I tried to convince myself that
and you’ll be seven years old. I wasn’t living in 1918. That I wasn’t my aunt.
I was saying it to stop I told myself this
The sensation of falling off For I was scared and thought I was falling
The round turning world.” Off the world into nothing with nothing to stop me.
2. Volcano—Among other images, Bishop describes a black volcano “full of ashes.” This directly relates to the title of the poem, In the Waiting Room. In a dormant state, it rests before billowing up in smoke and lava.
3. The speaker uses lots of dark imagery throughout the poem. The reader is told “it was winter. It got dark early.” This lack of light relates to the lack of hope that is felt especially when taken back to the time of the war.
4. “Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone?” The power of this unanswerable question resonates with me. The speaker is lost, the reader is lost, and in this place that seems to be between worlds and times he/she asks this question that borders on irrational.
5. The title of the poem is misleading. Although it seems that physically the speaker is in a dentist’s waiting room the entire time, his/her mind is doing everything but waiting. Jumping into the aunt’s mind and past life, a wild journey takes place.
6. The poem would be a deep red—chaotic and angry. Furthermore, only a piano score would be able to well represent the different energies expressed throughout.
7. It strikes me how long the first stanza is. After that, the form is jumpier and less of a narrative. This conveys the central idea that we are being ripped into and out of a room. By the end the poem gives only quick snapshots and alludes to content and images from earlier in the poem.
8. Bishop was born in 1911 which seems to suggest that she is the character in the poem as she would have been seven on February 8, 1918. The poem was written in 1976 but takes place during World War I. 1976 puts the poem in the era of postmodernism. She is known for not using precise accounts of her own life but instead weaving in details more carefully.
9. Why does Bishop frequently return to dark imagery if the waiting room itself is described as “bright and too hot?”
My Brother My Wound
by Natalie Diaz
Gloss:
He was calling in the bulls from the street. He opened his mind up to allow (called to) his thoughts to enter.
They came like a dark river — a blur of chest and hoof — everything moving, under, splinter — His held-back thoughts poured into his mind, moving fast and moving him with them – consuming his mind
Hooked their horns through the walls. His thoughts attached with strength in his mind and came into the open/aloud.
Light hummed the holes like yellow jackets. Outside light from his sister went to mend the holes created by his thoughts – attempt to calm him down.
My mouth was a nest torn empty. I emptied myself of words for him – sister gave everything and all light to brother to be there for him.
Diction: Most important word in the poem: husk
The word husk is most commonly thought of as being the outer shell to corn or fruits. In this case, it stands out because that meaning does not fit within the context of the poem. In the OED, husk also can mean: “the shell of a chrysalis or a cocoon, the external part of anything; the mere rough or worthless exterior, as contrasted with the substantial inner part or essence, or applied to the human body or a person”. The husk in the poem could be talking about her brother’s body as a whole, and then using the lens of the husk being insignificant, it adds intensity to the way significance the poet assigns to her brother. Also using the lens of a cocoon, it aligns with the word “blooming” in the line before, which signifies growth of her brother and undeveloped.
Imagery: “Mars flew out and broke open or bloomed” (lines 13 and 14). The image of a planet flying out of someone alluding to the idea that someone has an entire world inside of them that is different from other’s worlds. The use of two verbs, either a planet exploding: reactive, destructive, and messy, or a planet blooming: growth, proactive, and optimistic adds complexity to the mood and outlook of the poem. I find it meaningful to the overall poem as it leaves the situation unbiased – neither fully positive, nor negative – by using two contrasting verbs.
Syntax: The most important line of the poem is, “I never knew I was also a lamp”. The surprise of being a light for someone else arrives to the poet at the same time as the surprise hits the readers. Together, the reader becomes presently taken on the journey of the poet into the situation, after many lines of being outside. The syntax of the line and the specific use of the words, “never” and “also”, heighten the intensity of this line as a turning point in the poem.
Title: My Brother My Wound. The title emphasizes the hurt and pain that Diaz carries with her from her brother’s trauma. The use of “my” twice implies ownership. She is close with her brother through their familial connection and emotional connection. She holds a lot of his burden which creates a wound, or it can be seen as by holding a lot of his burden, she has self-inflicted pain.
Synesthesia: If this poem were a color, it would have depth and would not be able to be the same from all angles or influences of light. It would be a shade of blue that deepens as one looks closer, and glimmers of green and purple from different angles. The color would not be concrete nor primary because the mood and tone of the poem are not fixed as well. The poem is dynamic and changing, and the color would be as well.
If it were set to a musical score, it would be written for a piano. The tempo and volume of a piano changes in time with the poem, and a piano can be as powerful or light as one plays it. Similarly, this poem has moments of lightness and moments that are heavier to read, which requires an instrument that is versatile.
Content/Form Relationship: The central idea of the poem is the brother’s unstable state affecting his sister and the ways in which he seeks to find haven in her familiar. The brother’s needs and problems are disorderly which influences the structure of uneven sentences and stanzas. The poem is structured in a way that is inhibiting for the audience, however those involved in the poem understand. With this, the problems the brother is facing can only be understood by those there (his sister) and embraced, but appear striking and confusing from an outside perspective. The poem is the retelling of a scene and by not having a set structure, it conveys the disconnect of those unattached from the scene.
Context: This poem was published in March 2014. The author grew up on the border of California, Arizona and Nevada. She is Mojave, and speaks Spanish and English. Her indigenous roots are intertwined in her poetry and she is known for writing with mythical tones. From her poetry collection, When My Brother was an Aztec, readers became aware of her brother’s suffering to a Meth addiction.
Question: What is Diaz’s role in this poem for her brother? And what does this tell us as readers about her relationship with her brother?
Poem Response on “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” by Ada Limón
Fahmid Rashid
Literary Borders
Cassarino
1. Gloss
Do you have any poems that speak to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. (Troubled teens nowadays can relate more strongly to people of different cultures and ethnicities)
Would you like to come to dinner with the patrons and sip Patrón? (We want to hear more about how ‘exotic’ you are)
Will you tell us the stories that make us uncomfortable, but not complicit? (Tell us about your cultural identity and your struggles, but keep it PC – we only want to hear about what WE’RE okay with, not you)
2. Diction – “Uncomfortable”
Apart from being just one of the words that is used to describe the hardships and tales of immigrants in the poem, the entirety of the poem itself makes the readers feel uncomfortable; its satirical tone and disregard of stereotypes in an extremely unorthodox way makes us feel uncomfortable, the same way Limón must have felt uncomfortable at various points in her life.
3. Imagery – The ‘box’ “Will you check this box? We’re applying for a grant.”
I find the symbol of the box to be the most resonant of the entire poem; not only does it suggest that being considered ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ can give you more credit (or even credibility in the context of the poem), but can also mean that many minorities end up confined to a box; whether it be their environments, their society, their financial situation, or something else entirely. These ‘boxes’ completely ignore the hardships that many minorities go through simply for being different.
4. Syntax – “Don’t read the one where you are just like us”.
Going back to points aforementioned, I find this line to be the most powerful because it once again reinforces this idea of curiosity in ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ cultures, except this curiosity can come off the wrong way, and even seem repetitive or irritating. This line really helps to create an ‘us vs. them’ mentality, almost as if the experiences/hardships of these minorities are the only things separating them or making them unique.
5. Title – “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”.
There are many aspects of the title we can look at. First of all, in today’s context “the Conversation” usually refers to the discussion of serious topics (e.g political). Immigration and refugees are a bigger concern than ever in today’s world; for Limón to say “We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” is her way of saying that we need to talk about these issues of race and ethnicity. However, adding “The Contract Says” in front gives it a satirical tone, as if it is desired (or even required) to associate with some sort of multicultural identity.
6. Synesthesia
The poem in my opinion would be medallion yellow; ugly to some, yet beautiful to others. More specifically, when I first read the poem all I could think about was how aggressive it was – yet, after discussion with some peers, I started looking at it from a completely different perspective, and this led to a greater appreciation of the poem as a whole. Similar to a strong yellow color such as medallion, this poem can seem ‘ugly’ to some, and yet hold a completely different meaning to others.
7. Content/Form Relationship
Upon first read, I found this poem to have a very passive-aggressive tone, but after re-reading it I felt the tone to be more satirical, almost mocking stereotypes and those who falsely seem to be interested in other cultures/ethnicities, as well as rebutting against racists. The way the poem seems to be addressing these minorities directly in its sarcastic tone by almost embracing some of the stereotypes and confronting them headfirst instead of running away from them.
8. Context
Ada Limón is a 3rd generation Mexican (however, on her Wikipedia she is listed as American). While this poem is different from many of her others, many of her works tackle lifelong tribulations, each of which is part of its own “conversation”.
9. Question
How does Ada Limón play with the border between intrigue and insult in “We’d Like The Conversation to be Bilingual”?
“Mexicans Begin Jogging” Response
Gloss:
“Since I was on his time, I ran” – Since I have no control of my life, I followed orders
“And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans–” – Me and my people have been stripped of our humanity through the way we are treated
“Ran past the amazed crowds that lined” – Ran by the spectators as they enjoyed the game
“The street and blurred like photographs, in rain.” – Were so far away from my reality they may as well not exist to me
“I ran from the industrial road to the soft” – I left the place of my hardship and went to the “promise land”
Diction:
I believe “tail” is the most significant word in the poem, “Mexicans Begin Jogging”, by Gary Soto. The poem is about how degraded this man, Soto, feels for having to live the life he has. The word “tail”, commonly known to refer to an animal, which epitomizes the theme of the poem of the “Mexicans” being less than they are, less than human.
Imagery:
“A dollar In my palm, hurrying me” – I find this image to be quite interesting because of its syntax. In the preceding sentence it says that Soto’s boss handed him the dollar, but the sentence was cut off leaving room for an opposing interpretation. Instead of just Soto’s boss hurrying him, the dollar itself is as well. We can infer that this “dollar” comes from America and represents much more than just a piece of valued paper. Soto is being pushed physically and metaphorically by hid treatment of the country he calls his home.
Syntax:
“And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans–” This line, I believe, holds one of the main messages of the poem that Mexicans are less than they are. Soto and his fellow Mexicans are characterized as a “short tail” alluding to a sort of animal which further dehumanizes them. I also thought that the word “short” stood out in this sentence. The “short tail” helps box all Mexicans into the same group by it being a limiting factor. Also, Soto hasn’t always been this “wag etc..”, he “became the wag” after being affected by the US border patrol.
Title:
I think the significance of the title, “Mexicans Begin Jogging”, is that this group of people weren’t always jogging. Some outside factor, the United States and United States Border Patrol, influenced this action which led to Soto choosing it for his title.
Synesthesia:
This poem would be a mix of brown and red. The Mexican name is being smudged, brown, yet Soto is still able to run and wear a “Great, silly grin” so there is some light, only some, which explains the red. This poem would be written for a violin. Violins can make long, beautiful notes as well as quite harsh ones, thus capturing the discomfort and slight peace in the poem.
Content/Form Relationship:
The central idea of this poem is the degrading of Mexicans through their efforts to escape border patrol. It is interesting how each line starts with a capital letter almost like a new breath during a run, a jog. The poem accomplishes this by creating a somewhat defeated tone throughout.
Context:
-Soto found his interest in poetry through poets such as Ernst Hemingway, John Steinbeck and many more.
-In 1981 Reagen vowed close relationship with Mexico. A step towards better relations between the two neighboring countries
Question:
How does the syntax of the poem help Soto to create this ironic struggle between Soto and the stereotypes of his race?
Poem to my Litter
By Max Ritvo
Gloss:
“I hope, Maxes, some good in you is of me.
Even my suffering is good, in part. Sure, I swell”
I hope my mice have benefitted from the suffering I helped put them through
“With rage, fear- the stuff that makes you see your tail
As a bar on the cage. But then the feelings pass.”
I too, relate to the feeling that my sick body has trapped me”
“And since I do absolutely nothing (my pride, like my fur,”
And like you, mice, I have also lost much of what made me human.”
Diction: “Cage, noun – A box or place of confinement for birds and other animals (or, in barbarous times, for human beings), made wholly or partly of wire, or with bars of metal or wood, so as to admit air and light, while preventing the creature’s escape.” – OED
This definition of the word “cage” exemplifies the comparison that the author creates between himself and his litter of mice. The definition implies that cages are meant for animals, but can be used to torture or restrict human beings. Ritvo would likely describe his tumor as “barbarous”, so this definition makes sense within the image he has created.
Imagery:.When Ritvo says that he understands how the tumors can make the mice mice “see your tail as a bar on the cage,” he is both creating a metaphor and a connection between himself and the mice. First, by saying his diseased body part is a cage, he demonstrates how his condition limits his freedom, as a cage would. But this line is also somewhat ambiguous because while Ritvo is speaking about his ‘rage, fear’ he refers to a tail. This furthers the alignment between his voice and the mice’s suffering.
Syntax: “I want my mice to be just like me. I don’t have any children.”
This line breaks from the typical style of the poem, which splices sentences between stanzas. This line delivers two short but profound and related pieces of information. First, it cements the alignment between the narrator and the mice. The second sentence reveals that the narrator has no children, possibly illuminating the motive behind his relationship with the mice. Perhaps the narrator sees the mice as some kind of legacy, a continuation of his life as it come to an end.
Title: “Poem to my Litter”
This title has a double meaning. First, it labels the poem as a message to the mice that are being used in his treatment. By using a possessive he seems to accept responsibility for the mice, as if he is aware or guilty of the suffering he has caused them. Second, “Litter” means trash, something thrown away. This meaning describes the narrator’s relationship with the things that he will soon leave behind in the world. He is aware that he is probably going to die, and he understands that these mice are some part of his impact on the world.
Synesthesia: If the poem was a color, it would have to be black, like the main color at a funeral. Death seeps into every line of this poem. The narrator has no hope for himself, and he knows that many mice will die anyways on his behalf. If this were set to music, it would be played on piano. Pianos offer the range that would be necessary to cover the complex web of mourning, anguish and sympathy for the mice.
Content/Form Relationship: What is the central idea of this poem, and how does the form/shape/structure of the poem convey this? (Try not to be redundant here; really think about the relationship of form & content, of form & meaning.) The poem is divided into couplets, which represent the relationship between the narrator and his litter of mice. This idea is furthered when sentences are divided between lines. This represents a shared suffering and the literal object of the shared tumors that exist in both.
Context: Max Ritvo was an American poet. This poem was written two years before his death, after a long battle with cancer. This allows the audience to understand that the details in this poem were based on the author’s real experience and emotions.
Question: What does the author’s alignment with the mice reveal about his perspective on mortality?
The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual
Ada Limón
1. Lines 21-26
Don’t mention your father be sure not to indicate
was a teacher, spoke English, loved that you had a functional family
making beer, loved baseball, tell us, it’s great and all, that your father
again about the poncho, the hubcaps, was an able man, but we really would prefer
how he stole them, how he did the thing that the people see him as a true immigrant
2. Lines 9-10
Will you tell us the stories that make
us uncomfortable, but not complicit?
Complicit: Involved knowingly or with passive compliance, often in something underhand, sinister, or illegal. Use of this word shows the true perspective of the speaker or voice of the poem. This word makes it clear that the speaker, which is clearly identifiable as an employer or something of the sort, is taking advantage of Limón’s immigrant background for use publicly. And the use of the word complicit to describe the barrier to the content of a story to be told makes it clear that the employer wishes only to protect and promote the company or organization at hand. “Make us uncomfortable, but don’t get us in any trouble.” The choice to explain the possible negative consequence as breaking the law, rather than activating an introspective or guilty response, shows that the speaker of the poem is truly heartless.
3. Lines 16-19
Tell us the one
about your father stealing hubcaps
after a colleague said that’s what his
kind did.
This exact image paints the picture for what people view as the stereotypical immigrant family. Poor, desperate, dirty people, it is clear to the reader that the narrator knows the story of Limón, and that they hope the pity they feel will be equally elicited within the greater audience. The clear specificity of this image is also moving, as though it’s almost a joke, a well thought out joke that is being told. It’s so oddly specific, humiliating, that there’s almost surely no way that it can be real.
4. Lines 11-12
Don’t read the one where you,
are just like us. Born to a green house,
This line is so important because it shows the roots of the issue of immigrant entry. Clearly there are similarities between the speaker and Limon, but the speaker wishes to pretend that they don’t exist, because the speaker is not an immigrant, and would never wish to be associated as such. The issue is in the stigma, rather than in the actual nature of their relationship. The form of this line does not do too much to change the reading of the poem, but the choice to end the line saying “you”, and then the sentence saying “us”, forces the reader to pause on the two, showing a clear opposition between the two.
5. Title
The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual
The nature of the title functions in a few different ways. First, it is structured as a formal request, again, clearly from an employer of sorts. This choice makes it clear to the reader the lack of emotion which the employer associates with Limón, how he is using her for utility purposes. Additionally, the choice to make the request conditional, “We’d Like”, adds a feeling of false manners to ‘offer’. We as the readers understand that traditionally an immigrant may not be given such great diversity of choices upon entrance into the country, and that this request is most likely non-negotiable.
6. If this poem were a color, it would likely be grey. Grey is dull, emotionless, bland, and the speaker of the poem is clearly the same way. If this poem were set to a musical score, it would be made for a piano. Although the piano is capable of being played in amazing ways, it is among the most common instruments, and therefore would articulate the lack of originality in the ideas presented in the poem, just another song that doesn’t quite get it right.
7. The central idea of the poem is clear to be rooted in the concept that we as Americans, those taking in the immigrants, have a clear description of who they are, a clear image of what they will be like, and the stories they will have to tell. Additionally, it is expressed that to many, immigrants matter little in actual value as humans, but instead in their ability to “diversify” the group, creating the appearance of plurality in the workplace. This is expressed in a few ways in the structure of the poem. First, the moved structurally follows a very standard 2 line stanza formation, the appearance of which is remarkably typical, serving to refer to the ideas presented in the same way.
8. Limón grew up in Sonoma, California, so her true origin is not that of an immigrant. On top of this, he accolades as a student and writer are prestigious, knowing his makes her position as a “stat booster” in the poem even more ridiculous.
9. How does the structure and perspective form of the poem “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual” serve to represent the perpetuation of immigrant and minority stereotypes?
America by Claude McKay
GLOSS:
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth (Despite the fact that America hurts McKay so much, treats him like a second-class citizen)
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess (suffocates him with discrimination and racism)
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! (Though he lives in “hell”, it’s a hell with culture and music and art and brimming to the surface with life!)
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood (America’s enthusiasm and excitement for life strengthens McKay, makes him who he is, makes him stronger)
DICTION: “Vigor”. This word, stemming from the latin word “vigere” which means “be lively” sums up well what McKay feels America is. America is energetic, powerful, and so very alive. In the end, America is powerful potential energy. Potential for hate, but also potential for great good.
IMAGERY:
“Her vigor flows like tides into my blood/giving me strength erect against her hate”
America is a paradox; she destroys McKay, yet she also gives him the strength to fight back. This simile of America’s vigor being washed into McKay like a powerful ocean, strengthening him against her racism and hatred, contributes to the main theme of the poem: hope for the future of America. America’s energy has the potential to be directed towards good.
SYNTAX:
“Darkly I gave into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,”
This line is McKay’s message: that America has the potential for good. “Her might and granite wonders” will soon, in the near future, be for all Americans to enjoy. This line is at the end of the poem, and works well with the narrative of the poem. The first few lines have McKay acknowledging all the evil America does, the middle section has him exclaiming his love for America, while the end has him promising that America can be better.
TITLE:
The title is simple. Just, America. America with all her faults and all her wonderfulness, America with all her racism and all her potential to change all that and transform into something beautiful. McKay isn’t trying give America another name. She is who she is.
SYNESTHESIA:
What colors? Why, red, white, and blue, of course! For America! Land of freedom and opportunity! Proud colors of a proud and very imperfect nation.
The song on this poem would for sure be played by a trumpet. An instrument that is as loud and proud as you can get.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP:
The poem’s form supports its message of hopefulness. Written in iambic meter, with alternate rhyme, it is a structured, orderly poem. It is polished, consisting of an octave and a couplet. There is no chaos or breaking of meter. McKay is sure about what he is saying, and feels his prophecy of America’s greatness will come true. The rhyme scheme is a consistent alternate rhyme until the last couplet (which rhyme together). There is no enjambment, except when McKay transitions from the third line to the fourth, in which he shifts from speaking about how America hurts him to speaking about why he loves America.
CONTEXT:
This poem was created during the Harlem Renaissance, a period (1920s, NYC) in which black Americans were reaffirming their cultural and artistic identity and starting to imagine some glimmers of equality on the horizon.
QUESTION:
Has America become today what Claude McKay dreamed it could be?
GLOSS:
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
[Finally accepting age, loss of ability and increase of reliancy]
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
[Waiting for the things that he could not see, but also for the return of the past, maybe?]
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
[Gave him what he had given his child; knowledge of the fruit and the past; a bittersweet reminder]
and sweet as love.
[A token of his gratitude, support, and love]
DICTION:
“Ripe,” serves as the most important word in “Persimmons.” Given the focus of identity development throughout the poem, the essence of sweet, fruitful maturity informs the beauty of Lee’s growth and journey into adulthood.
IMAGERY:
“I sit beside him and untie
three painting by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.”
The three paintings by the father are important in the way that they encapsulate the progression of the poem. The hibiscus leaf and white flower possibly representing fertility and growth, also allude to the beauty of Lee’s Chinese heritage. The “two cats preening,” could be symbolic of a youthful love and a search for that companionship or even the grooming most go through to fit in with the mix. And lastly, the persimmons are so representative of Lee and his father, “two persimmons” ripe with the time they have spent together and so ready to share the sweetness of their identity.
SYNTAX:
“I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.”
There is a warmth to this line of the poem that sits so well with the reflective nature and tone of Lee’s authorship. This very line digs at the ache of heritage, how it sits with you and doesn’t really leave you. Persimmons, in all of their ripened glory, literally live in the mind of Lee’s father. They represent the cultural footprint of his upbringing and carry a memory so sweet in nature that their image never leaves the man with no sight. Even more, Lee’s father remembers that even with sight he painted his persimmons with his eyes closed. It seems that it wasn’t the persimmons that he was remembering but the memories etched around them.
TITLE:
The significance of “Persimmons” is its relationship to the cultural identity of the speaker and the allusion it occupies to portray a maturing from boy to man, from bitter to sweet, to tasteful and whole.
SYNESTHESIA:
If this poem were a color, it would be a sunset orange. More specifically, it would be the color of a ripe persimmon. There is a fire to the color orange that suggests a welcoming heat and a force to be reckoned with. Lee’s understanding and beautifully woven explanation of cultural identity houses both of those things and more. The poem is demanding and inviting, it’s truly difficult to tear your eyes away from its brilliance.
Now, if this poem were a music score, it would be written for a violin. There is a high ringing of great poetry and narrative in this piece. It communicates through imagery and is subtle in its build up of emotion, much like a violin throughout the course of a great song.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP:
The central idea of this poem is the beauty of a developing identity, specifically Lee’s. By structuring the poem as a progression of time with a hefty amount of imagery to document its development, Lee seems to explain his understanding of his cultural identity to not only the reader but to himself. By breaking up sentences into new stanzas, Lee seems to suggest that each stanza informs the other just as each period of his life is influenced by the one before.
CONTEXT:
This poem was published in 1986. In 1986 Chernobyl exploded, Oprah Winfrey had her first show, Phantom of the Opera had its first stage performance, and this poem was published. Like with any year, people had things going on within their lives that doesn’t reach the news, or at least that is what these bits of information tell me. Lee was born to Chinese parents who fled China in the wake of political exile. His family was one of strong political ties, with his great grandfather servings as the first president of the Republic of China. In interviews, Lee has expressed a lack of belonging, his identity defined by the borders he crossed as a child and those that he still walks along as an adult.
QUESTION:
How does heritage inform the graduation from childhood to adulthood? Or rather, does it?
Gloss:
“I’ve Stayed in the front yard all my life. (I have no seen much of the world)
I want a peek at the back (and I want to see what it has in store)
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. (where it’s unprotected, uncencensored, and unpredictable)
A girl gets sick of a rose” (There is more to the world than the beautiful)
Diction:
“Stayed”
This is the most important word in this poem because it is all about place, and not being able to see the world from a different perspective. This poem is about a girl’s desire to change and explore but her inability to do so because of upbringing, so thus she must stay in place.
Imagery:
“And I’d like to be a bad women, too,
And wear the brave stocking of night-black lace”
This image gives a stark image of a women wearing lace stockings, which are often associated with stereotypical “bad women” such as strippers or sex workers. This image connects to the scheme of the poem as it displays the narrators desires, but also perhaps her ignorance as a child and what it really meant to “wear the brace stocking of night-black lace”.
Syntax:
“A girl gets sick of a rose”
This line plays a critical role in establishing the tone of the poem, and demonstrating that the narrator is uncomfortable in the life she lives and seeks change, which is the overlying theme of the poem. By referring to herself as “A girl” rather than “I” you feel the narrator’s disconnect with herself and her desire to change.
Title: “a song in the front yard”
The title plays a significant role in the understanding of the poem becuase she calls the piece “a song”, which are often about a story or something made up that one will never attain. This relates to her longing for a taste of the real world and not her own censored reality.
Synaesthesia:
If this poem were a color it would be a dark red because of the colors associations with not only frustration but also longing and desire.
If this poem were to be played by an instrument it would be an acoustic guitar playing spanish music because of the beauty of the sound but also because of the elements of love, longing, and anguish that are felt with this music
Content/Form Relationship:
This poem is purposely kept short and for the most part fairly concrete. Likewise, there are 3 4 line stanzas and one 6 line. The length of the stanzas serves an important role because the longest stanza is about the narrator’s mother. This is important in regards to the central theme because it demonstrates how the narrator wants to change but the mother will not allow it due to her fear of social humiliation.
Context: African American Poet (1913-200)
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Often wrote about the struggles of the ordinary people in communities
Question: How does our reading and interpretation of this piece change understanding that it is coming from the perspective of a person of color rather than a white individual?
Poem Exercises on “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar”
William Blastos
Literary Borders
Cassarino
Gloss.
“this gin-heavy heaven, blessed ground to think gay & mean we.
[this bar is a place where gay is not isolating but instead unifying]
bless the fake id & the bouncer who knew
[thanks to the fake id and the bouncer who let me in even though he knew it was fake]
this need to be needed, to belong, to know how
[needing to belong and feel wanted]
a man taste full on vodka & free of sin. i know not which god to pray to.
[needing explore my sexuality without it being dubbed a sin]
i look to christ, i look to every mouth on the dance floor”
[I don’t know what god will accept me]
Diction.
The most important word in “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” is sin. In the context of this poem sin is used not to describe being gay, rather to describe the gay bar as “free of sin.” This is interesting because instead of painting the actions often seen as distasteful that would usually be associated with gay bars as sinful, he says a man tasting of vodka is sin free, within the walls of the bar. This suggests that the homosexual actions are not actually sinful in nature, but are only seen as such by broader society. Sin is perfectly contextual for this poem and its use underpins a major theme in Smith’s poem.
Imagery.
“i want to raise a city behind his teeth for all the boys of choirs & closets to refuge in.”
This line is heavy with imagery through which Smith explores the desires and emotions of having to mature in secret. Choir boys and coming out of closets are both associated with the homosexual experience of growing up. Smith speaks about raising a city behind the teeth of a lover for young gay men to seek refuge in. These “cities” and refuges exist, and for many they took the form of gay bars, that while dark and tinged with stigma, were more welcoming than many people’s homes and families.
Syntax.
“i want my new god to look at the mecca i built him & call it damn good.”
This line stands out as one of the most important as the poem because it reflects the resentment and frustration that the author is feeling. Many queer people have felt excluded or, worse, persecuted by organized religion, specifically the Christian faith. Smith talks about building a mecca for a new god, in the context of the poem this is significant because it is a rejection of the Christian god for his condemnation of homosexuality. One feature in the syntax of this line that stands out is Smith’s choice to not capitalize the g in god, an action seen as taboo by many Christians. This highlights his lack of respect for a faith and a god that does not respect his sexuality.
Title.
“The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar”
The title of this poem is significant because it is both bold and relatable for many. As a young gay man I related to this title a lot, and even before reading the poem understood the feelings the poem explores. Many gay men sexually mature in secret through apps like grindr and through lying about their age and sneaking into gay bars, and the title of this poem reflects that.
Synesthesia.
If this poem was a color I think it would be red. Red is a color that is equal parts passion and anger, and this poem embodies that as well. Both a critique of the stigma surrounding homosexulaity that pushes young gay men to hide and an ode to the underground havens that allow gay men to mature in secrecy, “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” explores these emotions in a relatable context for those that have similar experiences. And immediately after reading this poem the color red was the only one that fit.
Content/Form Relationship
“The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar” reads less as a tradition poem and more as free form prose. The poem is organized into two large stanzas, seven and eight lines respectively, that split the poem into two parts. This organizational style breaks up the poem in an interesting way, and with the transition form the first stanza into the second the speaker of the poem translations from discussing the bar as a safe haven into discussing the lover as a haven.
Context.
Danez Smith is an American poet from Saint Paul, Minnesota. His poems in general reflect his ethos as a queer black man. “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar,” was written in 2017 and can therefore be looked at in a modern context. The experiences described in the poem are likely from Smith’s youth, and thus he draws on the secretive culture that is common in many homosexual spheres, both in Smith’s youth and in current times. This context is important for fully understanding this poem.
Question.
How does society’s lack of acceptance of certain groups force those groups underground? And how does this affect the maturation of members of these “othered” groups?
Kelly Campa
February 18, 2019
“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye
1. Gloss
I thought pain had no tongue. (Everyone of every language and culture feels pain)
Or every tongue at once, supreme translator, sieve. (All people experience pain, and it’s a shared experience that can transcend language)
I admit my shame. (To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging)
its rich threads without understanding how to weave the rug (There’s shame in not knowing the language of your family, and Nye tries to speak Arabic but she doesn’t speak it well)
…I have no gift. The sound, but not the sense. (She can speak the language but it isn’t natural to her)
2. Diction
The most important word in “Arabic” is “pain.” Not only does it repeat itself several times throughout the poem, but also the concept of pain is at the core of poem, with Arabic being described as a painful language, Nye expressing her discomfort with Arabic, and a dying friend. The world pain derives from the world penalty, and the original definition of the word described it as “suffering inflicted as punishment for an offense.” I’m not sure that there’s an offense being committed in this poem, but it is an interesting angle to explore.
3. Imagery
“…but later in the slick street / hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped / in every language and opened its doors. “ I personally found the very last image of the poem, the cab in the rain, to be a powerful last image that ties back into the central idea that pain is a shared experience for everyone in the world, regardless of language. Everyone has experienced the relief, the comfort, and the happiness of finally hailing a cab in the rain, and this evokes the idea of welcoming a friend inside from the cold into the shared experience of bonding over the suffering of languages for everyone of every language.
4. Syntax
The most important line in the poem is also the first: “The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling / to say, ‘Until you speak Arabic, / you will not understand pain.” It’s a highly effective opening that connotes some nostalgia or ache even if the reader doesn’t have any experience with the Arabic language. Part of that effect is a result of the syntax, which introduces the sad man with laughing eyes before telling of what he said.
5. Title
The title of this poem is “Arabic,” which obviously refers to the language that is at the center of the poem’s discussion. However, the simplicity of this title also does well to remind readers that the poem is fundamentally about the Arabic language and Middle Eastern culture, even when Nye doesn’t say so outright.
6. Synesthesia
If this poem was a color, it would be a dry, cracked yellow. Perhaps it’s because of the language about cracking and stones, or perhaps because the stereotypical image of the Middle East is the desert. Reading this poem a second time reminded me of the song Aoede by Mashrou’ Leila, one of my favorite Lebanese bands. It’s in Arabic, but the tune and the vibe is one that I enjoyed even before I started learning Arabic, so I think it’s very malleable and enjoyable in any language. It’s also a very dramatic, somewhat angsty song that recalled the pain described in the poem.
7. Content/Form Relationship
I believe there are several central ideas to this poem, and I’m not sure which is most important. First and foremost is the poet’s complicated relationship with the Arabic language, in which she feels like an outsider and can’t quite master it. Maybe the short tercets that constitute most of the poem signify her hesitation, her discomfort and her unwillingness to stretch her language further. A few lines, such as “I can’t write” and “I’ll work on it” and “Pain!” are written in italics as if they are her or someone else’s inner thoughts, displaying her mental confusion. Another central idea is that pain is universal. The poem looks physically jagged; it’s full of broken lines and inconsistent structure, and to be honest it’s a little painful to read / difficult to decipher at first. Another core concept of the poem is about Middle Eastern culture, but to be honest I’m not sure yet how the form affects this.
8. Context
Naomi Shihahb Nye was born in 1952 in St. Louis to a Palestinian father and American mother, and she lived in Palestine, Israel, and the United States throughout her childhood. “Arabic” was published in 1994.
9. Question
How can language be painful? In what ways does our relationship with the languages we speak (our mother tongues in addition to any other languages) affect our daily lives?
Arthur Romero da Veiga Martins
February 17, 2019
Reading Response to Limón’s “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
GLOSS —
When you come, bring your brown- When you present yourself,
ness so we can be sure to please we want you to highlight your
exotic nature to make us seem
the funders. Will you check this diverse.
box; we’re applying for a grant.
Your identity is of interest as
Do you have any poems that speak long as it is useful; to get
to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. funding or to sell poetry to
troubled teens.
DICTION — “Brownness”
The word brownness, a noun remarking the quality of something as to being ‘brown’, establishes the relation of ‘otherness’ between the author and her interlocutors. Introduced in the first few verses of the poem, ‘brownness’ is a qualifier of the poet’s experiences and, in the wider context of her conversation, connotes the sole reason as to why her identity is relevant. It permeates how her work and herself are only valued because they deviate from the cultural repertoire of her interlocutors; in essence, how their non-brownness promotes an objectification of her ‘brown’ background. Highlighting this intrinsic divide between her ‘brown’ self and the others, Limón creates a contrast that is vital to propel the poem’s sarcastic poem and, ultimately, deliver a compelling critique of tokenism.
IMAGERY — The Analogy of the Hubcaps, “Tell us the one about your father
Limón introduces a contrast between two stories: one that reaffirms her being American, the one with the green house and tomatoes, and the one that narrates how her father supposedly stole hubcaps. This analogy bounds the image of her father, herein representing the Mexican-American identity, to popular stereotypes found in the American culture. It aids her argument that no matter how accomplished or complex her, her father, or any other ‘brown’ American may be, there will be those who hold them accountable to these misconceptions.
SYNTAX — “Don’t read the one where you are just like us.”
This sentence encapsulates the power dynamics which permeate the poem and set apart Limón’s persona and that of her interlocutors. It being phrased as a negative imperative, ‘don’t read…’, establishes an idea that she is being oppressed and censored. Instantly, that begets the question of who is oppressing her; who the speaker of the command is. The sentence also makes evident that the speaker sees Limón as an outsider, someone who seeks to assimilate into a group in which they do not belong. The question proposes that Limón stop trying to ‘just [be] like us’ and, in this way, evokes the ‘us versus them’ theme present in throughout the poem.
TITLE — “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
The title of the poem significantly informs the reader how to engage with the text. For instance, we can derive both the setting of the poem and allude to a conflict represented in the text from the sentence ‘The Contract Says’. The word contract implies a formal structure permeated by obligations, a business transaction. Personifying the contract as saying something alludes to the subtext dialogue between Limón and her bosses, which is marked by their inflexibility and imperativeness. Similarly, “We’d like…” further denotes the nature and tone of this business relationship, thus instigating the readers’ imagination as they begin the poem.
SYNESTHESIA — “Blue and purple”
This poem would be represented by a dualism between blue and purple. Whereas purple contains both blue and red, it cannot be simply reduced to being either color individually. Purple is, therefore, bicolor; its identity can only exist when both of its composing factors interact. Yet, Limón narrates how her bicolor identity is picked apart and has one of its elements, her ‘brownness’, objectified. Whereas her white identity—blue, if you will—is quintessential in informing who she is, her interlocutors are more concerned with the exotic factor of her ‘redness’.
CONTENT/FORM RELATIONSHIP
The poem offers a sarcastic critique to the objectification of ‘foreign’, or so perceived, identities. It portrays the common incident where people of diverse heritage, i.e., bicultural, bi-nationals, immigrants, not only have their experiences labeled as exotic, but are also exploited for emotional and commercial purposes. In order to present this ‘picking apart’, Limón structures the text in couplets; as a result, sentences are seldom completed in one line or even within a stanza. This affects how the reader interacts with the concept of fragmentation, literary or otherwise.
QUESTION
“What is the effect of using a second-person point of view? Is it an effective way to engage the reader and have them empathize with the content?”
CORRECTED:
When you come, bring your brown-
ness so we can be sure to please
the funders. Will you check this
box; we’re applying for a grant.
(When you present yourself,
we want you to highlight your
exotic nature to make us seem diverse)
Do you have any poems that speak
to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.
(Your identity is of interest as long as it is useful;
to get funding or to sell poetry to troubled teens.)
Augie Schultz
Prof. Cassarino
2/18/19
“Jerusalem” Exercise
1.
“A woman speaks to a tree in place A mother’s son is dead and there’s a tree
Of her son. And olives come. In his place. She remembers him through
A child’s poem says, Olives. A Child’s innocence sees the pain
I don’t like wars, and suffering that coincides with
they end up with monuments. Monuments. Therefore, seeing a monument
is like seeing pain. Maybe it’s even the monument that causes the pain.
2.
The most important word in “Jerusalem” is tender. The word, used in the context of a “tender spot,” is immediately defined as “something our lives forgot to give us.” Tender is applicable to every interpretation of this poem. The suffering, the acknowledgment of suffering, and the “getting over” suffering are all such vulnerable and tender processes. With a theme of war and suffering, tender is the perfect opposite.
3.
“Once when my father was a boy
A stone hit his head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot and
its riddle.”
This depiction of the speaker’s father is the first glimpse into the central theme of the poem: othering and suffering. The imagery used here gives the reader a sense of violence and suffering from the perspective of a loved one. Through the son noticing his father’s scar, and describing it in such a curious manner, the speaker is able to associate intimacy with the hate-related injury.
4.
“Why are we so monumentally slow?”
This line is important because it’s the only question in the entire poem. By asking this, the speaker is able to convey the thought that compelled him to write the poem. He asks “why are humans so good at suffering, but so bad preventing it?” The syntax matters little in this sentence.
5.
The title of “Jerusalem” is incredibly important because it keys the reader into the suffering of which group of people the author is talking about specifically. If the author is writing from personal experience it’s likely he/she and or his/her relatives have been victims of either antisemitism or the conflicts in the middle east that have been centered around Israel.
6.
If the poem were a color it would be a dark, deep purple. “Jerusalem” has undertones of false hope, thus the deceivingly cheerful purple, but it also has overtones of pain, hostility, and suffering, thus the dark and deep qualities. The poem would be set to long-lasting, melancholic synthesizers in order to illustrate the dark, bleak tone of the poem.
7.
The form’s impact on the central idea of “Jerusalem” lies in both the poem’s short lines and differing length of stanzas. “Jerusalem’s” few-worded lines make each thought pungent and suspenseful. They help the reader to pause and be more mindful of the pain that is being described.
The poem has two long stanzas which each describe tangible, personal stories. These stories are, while by no means concrete, far less subjective than the first and last few stanzas which are each just four lines or fewer. During these shorter stanzas, far less information is laid out for the reader and far more of each line in the stanzas’ significance is open to interpretation.
8.
The poem was written in 1996 by Naomi Shihab Nye. She is from Palestine, which gives context to why the poem is named “Jerusalem” and why it might be centered around hatred, suffering, and war. She calls San Antonio her home but visited family in the West Bank, where Jordan and Israel are divided. It’s likely she was touched by the border and divide between the two groups of people, felt her own family caught up in the turmoil, and writes as a way to confront and appease the dissonance between people she experienced first hand.
9.
Which inherent fault in humanity does this poem make you think of?
Gloss
Would you like to come to dinner Please let us show you off at a dinner
with the patrons and sip Patrón? So that the rich folks will give us more money.
Will you tell us the stories that make Please read the poems we want
us uncomfortable, but not complicit? To hear, not the ones you think we should.
Don’t read the one where you Tell us the ways that we are different.
are just like us/
Diction — derived from Middle English complice, complicit defines “The Contract Says…” by signifying the double standard of whatever foundation Limón is referring to. This group of people say that Limón’s story is important, as long as it is the aspects they wish to hear. Foundations such as these often pride themselves on giving voice to minorities, and yet, while offering this opportunity to Limón, the entirely limit what she can say.
Imagery — the details within the story about her father (16-27) mirror the tone that Limón feels about her contractors. In response to a colleague making a racist comment, Limón’s father reacted by fulfilling that stereotype, and more, in order to highlight the ridiculousness of the statement. This reverse letter plays practically the exact same purpose; to highlight the hypocrisy within this poetry foundation for picking and choosing which aspects of herself Limón can convey on stage.
Syntax — “he was trying to prove he didn’t do.”
I just love this line. There are just SO many layers to it. Firstly, it brings the father narrative to a close, stating that there is more to Limón’s dad than being Mexican. Secondly, as I stated earlier, it mirrors the feelings of Limón regarding the contractor. Thirdly, the phrasing mirrors a common white person troupe. How many times have we heard a white person, including myself, try to prove to others that he/she/they/I are NOT racist. The contractors are the epitome of that too! They say that they believe in equality, but often suffer from an intolerable superiority complex.
Title — The word “contract” brings out the formality of this letter; the writer is not giving Limón a choice in the matter of what she discusses. And, of course, the word “bilingual,” which I have not even discussed yet, is the foundation for the central idea for the poem. The contractor is looking for Limón’s “brownness” at the expense of the rest of her personality.
Synesthesia — I have never fully understood synesthesia, and I would love to discuss it more openly as a class. If I were to pick a color, it would be light brown, almost tan. This color is a literal mix between white and brown.
Content/Form Relationship — “The Contract Says…” shines a light on a more nuanced form of discrimination, usually found in high society. She chose to do so in the form of satirical letter, written in reverse. Limón would like her contractor to understand the hypocrisy within inviting Limón to speak freely while also telling her exactly what she must discuss.
Context — “The Contract Says…” was featured in Limón’s most recent work, titled The Carrying, which was published in the summer of 2018. The book is somewhat of an autobiography of her life, now aged 42. Limón grew up on the coast of Northern California in a Mexican family (she is the 3rd generation to live in the United States)
https://composejournal.com/an-interview-with-poet-ada-limon/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/the-human-capacity-to-carry-many-things-at-once
Question — As members of a fairly elite class of society (generalization, but bare with me), how prevalent is tokenism among us and the world we inhabit?
sorry, the “gloss” paraphrase did not transfer well from a word document,
Would you like to come to dinner? (Please let us show you off at dinner)
with the patrons sipping Patrón (so that the rich folks will give us more money)
Will you tell us the stories that make (Please read the poems we want)
us uncomfortable, but not complicit? (to hear, not the ones you think we should.)
Don’t read the ones where you / are just like us (Tell us the way that we are different)