Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Contemporary American Poetry Concept Map by Grace Bucking (Motherhood:…

- - - - Like Pico and Plath, Amiri Baraka addresses personal versus external identity in his poem "Numbers, Letters":
        "I can't say who I am
        unless you agree I'm real...
        “I am real, and I can’t say who
        I am. Ask me if I know, I’ll say
        yes, I might say no.
        Still, ask.
        I’m Everett Leroi Jones, 30 yrs old.”
        Pico and Baraka negotiate the relationship between self and other by asserting their own identities in their poetry, regardless of receiving validation from others.
      - Race is a fundamental component of Amiri Baraka's poetry, just as in Tommy Pico's. Writing during the Civil Rights Movement, Baraka used poetry to convey a political message. In "The Revolutionary Theater," Baraka calls on his audience to "accuse and attack." He calls for "THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA" and an entirely new political system. Baraka says, “Our theater will show victims so that their brothers in the audience will be better able to understand that they are the brothers of victims, and that they themselves are victims, if they are blood brothers." He describes a united community which uses poetry, theater, and art to incite political action.
        "Black Art"
        "Poems are bullshit unless they are
        teeth"
        
        According to Baraka, poetry must be grounded in the physical world and incite action
        
        "Fuck poems
        and they are useful"
        
        Powerful enjambment expressing ambivalence
        
        “We want live
        words of the hip world live flesh &
        coursing blood. Hearts Brains
        Souls splintering fire”
        
        Again, poetry must be physical, fiery, and impactful
        
        “Let Black People understand
        that they are the lovers and the sons
        of lovers and warriors and sons
        of warriors Are poems & poets &
        all the loneliness here in the world”
        
        Individual and the collective
        
        “We want a black poem. And a
        Black World.
        Let the world be a Black Poem
        And Let All Black People Speak This Poem
        Silently
        or LOUD”
      - In "There It Is," poet Jayne Cortez uses pronouns to emphasize the disconnect between racial groups in America.
        "My friend
        they don't care
        if you're an individualist
        a leftist a rightist
        a shithead or a snake
        They will try to exploit you
        absorb you confine you
        disconnect you isolate you
        or kill you"
        The "they" is repeated throughout the poem, as well as Cortez's own "we" and "us," drawing attention to racial divide. "They" organize themselves into "white supremacist lynch mobs" and "klu klux klan gangs." But like Baraka, Cortez calls for action:
        “And if we don’t fight
        if we don't resist
        if we don't organize and unify and
        get the power to control our own lives
        Then we will wear
        the exaggerated look of captivity
        the stylized look of submission
        the bizarre look of suicide
        the dehumanized look of fear
        and the decomposed look of repression
        forever and ever and ever”
      - Baraka believes in poetry as political action. It should be aggressive, violent, and make definitive change.
        “We want ‘poems that kill.’
        Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
        guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
        and take their weapons leaving them dead”
        
        In Nature Poem, Teebs comparably responds to white ignorance with a physical act:
        “Later when he is fucking
        me I bite him on the cheek draw
        blood I reify savage lust”
        
        Both Pico and Baraka believe in the power of poetry:
        “Nothing can fall that wasn’t built
        except maybe my self-esteem bc I have a hunch I was born with it
        intact but then America came smacked
        me across the face said like it…
        in order to get inside
        a poem has to break you
        the way the only thing more obvious than your body
        is leaving yr shirt on in the pool” (Pico)
        "Poems are bullshit unless they are
        teeth" (Baraka)
    - - Plath's "Lady Lazarus" plays with the idea of how she sees herself in contrast with how others see her. Tommy Pico's Nature Poem also addresses the conflict between individual and external identity.
        "Once on campus I see a York Peppermint Pattie wrapper on the ground, pick it up, and throw it away. Yr such a good Indian says some dick walking to class. So,
        I no longer pick up trash.”
        Pico refers to himself in this book as an "NDN." This term is his play on the word "Indian," and it is how he contends with white America's generalization of his identity. Like many other contemporary American poets (such as Plath, O'Hara, Bishop, Lorde), Pico's authorial identity is deeply woven into the fabric of his writing. This entire book addresses Pico's frustration with others' assumptions about his race. He "swore to [himself] that [he] would never write a nature poem," yet his book is entitled Nature Poem. Pico negotiates the relationship between his personal wishes/identity and the identity that others impose on him by discussing different "kind[s] of nature that [he] would write a poem about."
        “Ray Rice punches his girlfriend on camera and drags her out of the elevator, and I’m supposed to give a fuck about pesticides?
        That’s not a kind of nature I would write a poem about."
        "He puts his hands on the ribs of my chair asks do I want to go into the bathroom with him
        Let's say it doesn't turn me on at all
        Let's say I literally hate all men bc literally men are animals—
        This is a kind of nature I would write a poem about."
        Tommy Pico's Nature Poem: Self and Self, Self and Other, Self and World
      - Nature Poem (Tommy Pico) and Dictee (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha)
        
        Unconventional forms: book length, incorporation of many mediums (e.g. Pico's use of texting lingo, social media references, pop culture references; Cha's use of images, multiple languages, varying textual structures)
        
        Reading experience is different depending on audience: audience will have different levels of understanding of Pico's and Cha's references and use of language
        
        Language is power: Cha addresses the difficulty of speaking, particularly in an unfamiliar context (pages 3-5); Pico addresses using the language of the colonizer (“English is some Stockholm shit… It’s a container / for words like whilst and hither and tamp”
        
        “Language often fails me, the static cling of an unknown word and the urge to be heard” (Pico, 53)
        "The entire lower lip would lift upwards then sink back to its original place. She would then gather both lips and protrude them in a pout taking in the breath that might utter some thing" (Cha, 3)
- - - - Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's book of experimental poetry, Dictee, is a collage of different images, textual forms, and languages. The book contains photos, diagrams, maps, handwritten notes, Chinese characters, government policy letters, dictation exercises, biographies, and more. It contains English, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, and is organized by Greek muses. For all of these elements, Dictee does not offer its reader any navigational help. The book thus presents very different readings across individuals, depending on their knowledge of the different languages and images. Cha explores ideas of race, language, and agency in this piece of poetry, and its formal inaccessibility mirrors Dictee's content.
        Key ideas:
        
        Alienation
        
        Confusion
        
        Inaccessibility
        
        Hyperawareness of not fitting in
        
        Cha's formal incorporation of these concepts reflects the immigrant experience, one of the core subjects of this book.
      - "Mother, I miss you
        I'm hungry
        I want to go home"
        in Korean
        Front matter of Dictee
- - - - “because white men can’t police their imagination black men are dying”
        In Citizen, Rankine includes a list of black men who have been murdered in the United States. With subsequent editions of the book, she has added more and more names. This growing list exemplifies what Rankine describes as the inevitability of dead black bodies. Her book, both formally and content-wise, incorporates these bodies into the experience of racism in America.
        
        "I do not always feel colored.
        I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background."
        Rankine negotiates the self and the collective in terms of race. Like Baraka and Lorde, she uses poetry to make a political statement. In this text, Rankine attempts to universalize the experience of being black in America. She uses second person narration in her anecdotes of microaggressions that she and other black people in the United States have experienced, and continue to experience every day.
        "You never really speak except for the time she makes her request and later when she tells you you smell good and have more features like a white person. You assume she thinks she is thanking you for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost white person."
        "How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another?"