Rita Wong. "lips shape yangtze, change jiang, river longing"
"the heaviness of signing on the black dotted line
when you cannot read what you've signed"
"missed the boat, even as we step off it"
Wong's poem is haunting and accusatory - though the accused is not readily apparent within the text - as she writes about the experience of disapora, of displacement; of being of the "dispossessed". There is a prevalence of suffocating imagery, from the aforequoted "heaviness of signing" to also the "sound of rocks filling your mouth" and the "clouds suffocate me" sensation. These suffocating and oppressing sensations are tied to the idea of a loss of memory, and the idea of movement increasing freedom is disrupted as the experience is not a freeing but rather a chaining one in this poem.
That paradox is evident in the last line, "missed the boat, even as we step off it", as the boat that has been missed is the symbolic one denoting freedom to a more open landscape where it is possible to claim location, whereas the actual experience was one deeply and meaningfully traumatic. The reality of dislocation and diaspora - the darker aspect to it, the sensation of being dislocated and of being denied cultural/familial/personal memories - is brought into open discourse by Wong, who refers and defers back to the place where the subject of the poem is being displaced from.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
all sorts of blue
Wayde Compton. "O."
As a major mythology buff, I thoroughly enjoyed this reinscription of the classic Osiris myth - particularly the injection of ebonics, which juxtaposed with the authorial commentary of the incestuous relationship between Osiris and Isis (sadly, not mentioning Horus) and the underlying formality of the resurrection myth, makes for a fascinatingly intense poem.
The use of ebonics is startlingly appropriate here - ebonics being the 'ghetto-ized' language of the 'margins' - as it provides strangely contemporary imagery for ancient acts of violence, with lines such as, "cut you up,/like a DJ would a groove, splintered you like a busted mirror,/razored you good". But this contemporary imagery also removes from the visceral nature of the act - by injecting similes, distance is similarly affected. Through the use of ebonics to represent the myth, the myth takes on a previously unknown tone, placed within a modern context; the previously accepted notion of incestuous love/devotion is called into disgust with the lines: "Isis, your sister, renewed you/and knew you/in an obscene way" as well as "cool Isis, who loved you right (wrong)", and Set - who has mythically been identified as the source and embodiment of evil - becomes a "punk motherfucker". A certain level of irreverence becomes present within the text, which dissipates toward the end with the question and answer session of what heaven is like - and, apparently, it is like a colour.
As a major mythology buff, I thoroughly enjoyed this reinscription of the classic Osiris myth - particularly the injection of ebonics, which juxtaposed with the authorial commentary of the incestuous relationship between Osiris and Isis (sadly, not mentioning Horus) and the underlying formality of the resurrection myth, makes for a fascinatingly intense poem.
The use of ebonics is startlingly appropriate here - ebonics being the 'ghetto-ized' language of the 'margins' - as it provides strangely contemporary imagery for ancient acts of violence, with lines such as, "cut you up,/like a DJ would a groove, splintered you like a busted mirror,/razored you good". But this contemporary imagery also removes from the visceral nature of the act - by injecting similes, distance is similarly affected. Through the use of ebonics to represent the myth, the myth takes on a previously unknown tone, placed within a modern context; the previously accepted notion of incestuous love/devotion is called into disgust with the lines: "Isis, your sister, renewed you/and knew you/in an obscene way" as well as "cool Isis, who loved you right (wrong)", and Set - who has mythically been identified as the source and embodiment of evil - becomes a "punk motherfucker". A certain level of irreverence becomes present within the text, which dissipates toward the end with the question and answer session of what heaven is like - and, apparently, it is like a colour.
That's another tricky one.
Thomas King. "The One About Coyote Going West."
Oh, orality - this story is written as if spoken, which is initially jarring yet also enormously engaging and enjoyable, not to mention its cyclical nature - of Coyote remaining on her quest to change the world, to 'fix' it. This is a very mythic short story that eludes formality in the academic sense and instead moves into an othered narrative space where there is a complicated sytem of framing taking place as stories are told by the narrator to the Coyote and back again, and these stories begin to intrude into the relative 'reality' of the short story.
Story-telling becomes a powerful process as it relates to the ability of the narrator to warn Coyote and turn to try to save the world from Coyote's method of 'fixing' it. The stories are ultimately about Coyote herself, and the story-telling process becomes interactive as she responds to what is being said, at times attempting to alter the story. Yet in this interactive process a larger, subtle metaphor emerges of the interaction between author and reader-audience as the reader draws from the text interpretations that the author may or may not have intended. The struggle between the author and the audience produces the text as emerging from that 'Third Space' of signification, where the author's intention and the audience's interpretation collide. It is also a playful sort of act, a way to generate a dynamic discourse of the nature of storytelling, and of 'authenticity'.
Oh, orality - this story is written as if spoken, which is initially jarring yet also enormously engaging and enjoyable, not to mention its cyclical nature - of Coyote remaining on her quest to change the world, to 'fix' it. This is a very mythic short story that eludes formality in the academic sense and instead moves into an othered narrative space where there is a complicated sytem of framing taking place as stories are told by the narrator to the Coyote and back again, and these stories begin to intrude into the relative 'reality' of the short story.
Story-telling becomes a powerful process as it relates to the ability of the narrator to warn Coyote and turn to try to save the world from Coyote's method of 'fixing' it. The stories are ultimately about Coyote herself, and the story-telling process becomes interactive as she responds to what is being said, at times attempting to alter the story. Yet in this interactive process a larger, subtle metaphor emerges of the interaction between author and reader-audience as the reader draws from the text interpretations that the author may or may not have intended. The struggle between the author and the audience produces the text as emerging from that 'Third Space' of signification, where the author's intention and the audience's interpretation collide. It is also a playful sort of act, a way to generate a dynamic discourse of the nature of storytelling, and of 'authenticity'.
how the pen worked perfetly with your quick body as you'd flourish off a check during a busy noon-hour rush the sun
Fred Wah, "Father/Mother Haibun #4"
Family dynamics were never so succintly written as in this 'haibun', and I find myself responding perhaps strongest to the sheer physicality of writing - the movement of it, the art that is produced, the desire to be in possession of the skill and physicality that comes from writing that Wah expresses through his four dollar fountain pen.
Writing equated with the important qualities of a person: "silver, black, gold nib, the precision I wanted also in things", the treatment of pens as jewellry, as personally important as a talisman, the necessity of having the capability of writing. For Wah's father - and also for Wah, as he watches his father, writing becomes a cathartic and relaxing act - in the midst of a lunch hour rush, Wah's father's ability to "flourish off a check" is tied to the image of the "cafe flashing" - his proficieny ensures the glowing and magical component of the cafe itself.
Family dynamics were never so succintly written as in this 'haibun', and I find myself responding perhaps strongest to the sheer physicality of writing - the movement of it, the art that is produced, the desire to be in possession of the skill and physicality that comes from writing that Wah expresses through his four dollar fountain pen.
Writing equated with the important qualities of a person: "silver, black, gold nib, the precision I wanted also in things", the treatment of pens as jewellry, as personally important as a talisman, the necessity of having the capability of writing. For Wah's father - and also for Wah, as he watches his father, writing becomes a cathartic and relaxing act - in the midst of a lunch hour rush, Wah's father's ability to "flourish off a check" is tied to the image of the "cafe flashing" - his proficieny ensures the glowing and magical component of the cafe itself.
Stan or Masato, Norma or Masako
Gerry Shikatani
"Mother is Mitsuko, Father now dead since 1974, January 22 Masajiro, Kimurasan still around over 90, Stan or Masato, Norma or masako, Junko is June but really it's just Junko, Miyako that same though she's now as much that Margaret, and Alan or Noboru, I'm Gerry or Osamu, 'Hi!'
There, I've done it, named my family here on a page" (208).
Such a peculiar exercise. My version:
Haha-ue is Reiko Fujibayashi, she kept her maiden name, Dad is Michael, Haji is Hajime though also Ira, Duchan is Ryuuchi but only when I want to annoy him, though generally in public now he's Ezra, and I'm Petra, or Michiko, whichever you can pronounce easier. A pleasure to meet you!
~ Such a split of consciousness that comes from having two names that mean so stridently of different cultures/places. It could get claustrophobically crowded within this family's psyche, with all these names floating around and taking on their own forces of personality. More and more as 'Petra' I feel different as 'Michiko', and it becomes a choice in the morning to be white or yellow. Or if undecided, I wait for the first person to greet me to name me and treat me this or the other half of my split ethnicity/identity, and go from there. I am an undecided soul.
The Shikatani public/private names: "Junko is June but really it's just Junko", the ways of fitting into a society that demands homogeneity of not only culture but also of physicality and name, and so it becomes easier to choose a pronounceable name so as not to feel alienated/isolated by the inability of an addresser to pronounce all the syllables of this name. My mom, Reiko: RAY - KO. Not: Reeee-ko. Though that happens often. Michiko: Mi-chi-ko. So often, though: Mich-ko/Mit-sh-ko/Mee-kak-o. Once, memorably, 'Mexico'. I liked being a country. Ryuichi: Dh-yuu-e-chi. So often: Roo-chee. So it becomes an easier thing to choose the public Western name, in order to protect the private Eastern name from a slaughtering of mispronounciation, an insistence on: "How do you say that? Am I saying it right? I want to get it right, say your name again for me, please, how does it go again? Your name is so different, I've never heard anything like that before, what does it mean?"
The name Shikatani writes under, Gerry, is testament: he cannot hide his ethnicity within an anglo name, his family name precludes this, but he can present himself as partially assimilated by virtue of 'Gerry'. Show through his Western-Eastern name coupling his willingness to become hybrid bridge.
"Mother is Mitsuko, Father now dead since 1974, January 22 Masajiro, Kimurasan still around over 90, Stan or Masato, Norma or masako, Junko is June but really it's just Junko, Miyako that same though she's now as much that Margaret, and Alan or Noboru, I'm Gerry or Osamu, 'Hi!'
There, I've done it, named my family here on a page" (208).
Such a peculiar exercise. My version:
Haha-ue is Reiko Fujibayashi, she kept her maiden name, Dad is Michael, Haji is Hajime though also Ira, Duchan is Ryuuchi but only when I want to annoy him, though generally in public now he's Ezra, and I'm Petra, or Michiko, whichever you can pronounce easier. A pleasure to meet you!
~ Such a split of consciousness that comes from having two names that mean so stridently of different cultures/places. It could get claustrophobically crowded within this family's psyche, with all these names floating around and taking on their own forces of personality. More and more as 'Petra' I feel different as 'Michiko', and it becomes a choice in the morning to be white or yellow. Or if undecided, I wait for the first person to greet me to name me and treat me this or the other half of my split ethnicity/identity, and go from there. I am an undecided soul.
The Shikatani public/private names: "Junko is June but really it's just Junko", the ways of fitting into a society that demands homogeneity of not only culture but also of physicality and name, and so it becomes easier to choose a pronounceable name so as not to feel alienated/isolated by the inability of an addresser to pronounce all the syllables of this name. My mom, Reiko: RAY - KO. Not: Reeee-ko. Though that happens often. Michiko: Mi-chi-ko. So often, though: Mich-ko/Mit-sh-ko/Mee-kak-o. Once, memorably, 'Mexico'. I liked being a country. Ryuichi: Dh-yuu-e-chi. So often: Roo-chee. So it becomes an easier thing to choose the public Western name, in order to protect the private Eastern name from a slaughtering of mispronounciation, an insistence on: "How do you say that? Am I saying it right? I want to get it right, say your name again for me, please, how does it go again? Your name is so different, I've never heard anything like that before, what does it mean?"
The name Shikatani writes under, Gerry, is testament: he cannot hide his ethnicity within an anglo name, his family name precludes this, but he can present himself as partially assimilated by virtue of 'Gerry'. Show through his Western-Eastern name coupling his willingness to become hybrid bridge.
white anglo saxon protestant, with a cleft tongue
Kiyooka, "We Asian North Americanos: An unhistorical 'take' on growing up yellow in a white world".
creatively speaking:
The half-breed tongue: everything laced with another syntax. Until it is never just one or two languages being spoken but some strange number be/tween one & two. A hyphenation, dependent on context to lean toward one or the other way, linguistically speaking. Most often in canadian english, my fathertongue, though also in japanese english, which is my mothertongue, which is to say that it is english words with japanese meaning. It was very strange when I first realized I was not speaking english sometimes. It seemed english to me, or maybe not classified/categorized in any certain method, just 'language' - spoken thought conveying intention. But there were mistranslations and misunderstandings and so I labelled certain of my sayings as 'non-english, do not say outside of home' and so this remains, though sometimes I forget myself and state them, and see that familiar look of confusion on an other's face.
My japanese, scant tho it is, is not the japanese of a grown woman but rather the baby-speak that is given to children, intentionally cute and dimunitive. My mother tells me I speak with an accent, and I think she likes the chance to be saying that to me, to have 'accent' apply to someone other than herself. The other thing I never noticed until in public with confused other faces: my mother's accent, which supposedly is difficult to understand tho as a child it seemed the normal way of speech and syntax. Apparently not. Something to unlearn. Which is a strange reversal, me unlearning the things my mother so diligently taught, and further, later, her saying to me: "What does this mean? How do you say this?" So that I become her educator in a language that is/not my own. She so obviously outside of its linguistic structure, and asking me to be a bridge inside - this, too, requires a foot on both sides, and increasingly the footing is insecure.
My fathertongue taught by my father is phonetically correct. There is no accent there. There is no difference written into sound, and this is the mimicry I learn and go on to teach to my mothertongue. Until my tongue is both and neither, the half-breed of two languages, the bastard hybrid. Cleft? hardly. Quite unified, if confused. A linguistics of one.
creatively speaking:
The half-breed tongue: everything laced with another syntax. Until it is never just one or two languages being spoken but some strange number be/tween one & two. A hyphenation, dependent on context to lean toward one or the other way, linguistically speaking. Most often in canadian english, my fathertongue, though also in japanese english, which is my mothertongue, which is to say that it is english words with japanese meaning. It was very strange when I first realized I was not speaking english sometimes. It seemed english to me, or maybe not classified/categorized in any certain method, just 'language' - spoken thought conveying intention. But there were mistranslations and misunderstandings and so I labelled certain of my sayings as 'non-english, do not say outside of home' and so this remains, though sometimes I forget myself and state them, and see that familiar look of confusion on an other's face.
My japanese, scant tho it is, is not the japanese of a grown woman but rather the baby-speak that is given to children, intentionally cute and dimunitive. My mother tells me I speak with an accent, and I think she likes the chance to be saying that to me, to have 'accent' apply to someone other than herself. The other thing I never noticed until in public with confused other faces: my mother's accent, which supposedly is difficult to understand tho as a child it seemed the normal way of speech and syntax. Apparently not. Something to unlearn. Which is a strange reversal, me unlearning the things my mother so diligently taught, and further, later, her saying to me: "What does this mean? How do you say this?" So that I become her educator in a language that is/not my own. She so obviously outside of its linguistic structure, and asking me to be a bridge inside - this, too, requires a foot on both sides, and increasingly the footing is insecure.
My fathertongue taught by my father is phonetically correct. There is no accent there. There is no difference written into sound, and this is the mimicry I learn and go on to teach to my mothertongue. Until my tongue is both and neither, the half-breed of two languages, the bastard hybrid. Cleft? hardly. Quite unified, if confused. A linguistics of one.
Selvaduri
"Pigs Can't Fly"
Selvaduri, Shyam, in Making a Difference.
Inter-cousin politics - well I know that particular sphere - but the compelling and understated thing that grabbed my attention in "Pigs Can't Fly" was the building up of atmosphere and environment. The narrator of the story gives throwaway details that position his physical place as being in Sri Lanka, giving detailed descriptions of his grandparents' house - not in an exoticized light, but rather through a familiar gaze. The narrator's perspective is not foreign to the atmosphere, and so the reader enters into this familiarity of gaze.
Another fascinating point: the power of clothing as a tool of transformation, which is a very theatrical device as the characters of the story literally become actors within the story, but also functions as metaphor for physical skin - the unchosen inscription of identity on the basis of physical appearance/sex/so on, so forth. The narrator delights in the ability of clothing to act as transformation - while playing bride-bride, he feels the pinnacle moment is the one where he is wrapped in his white sari and transformed into the embodiment of all that is good and pure in the world. Similarly, his nemesis, Her Fatness, attempts to gain and exert power through costuming - first, by embellishing the costume of the groom that has been designated to her, and second through stealing and hiding the sari which has such significance for the narrator. The usage of clothing/costuming as constructing identity aids in the depiction of identity as a fluid structure within the short story, as by virtue of outward apparel, identity becomes mutable. The tension comes when the skin - the physical and undeniable body - is not as easy to shift as clothing. The narrator cannot escape the societal mores connected with being gendered male, and experiences despair at the thought of being confined within an identity not of his choosing, yet never wholly of the identity he has been classified into as he has not claimed it.
The physical body and the costume dynamic is carefully built into the text, coming to a head with the conclusion which depicts the narrator's grim realisation of what the rest of his life has in store for him now that he cannot depend upon clothing to change his identity, to make what he was born as not as important as what he has chosen to be.
Selvaduri, Shyam, in Making a Difference.
Inter-cousin politics - well I know that particular sphere - but the compelling and understated thing that grabbed my attention in "Pigs Can't Fly" was the building up of atmosphere and environment. The narrator of the story gives throwaway details that position his physical place as being in Sri Lanka, giving detailed descriptions of his grandparents' house - not in an exoticized light, but rather through a familiar gaze. The narrator's perspective is not foreign to the atmosphere, and so the reader enters into this familiarity of gaze.
Another fascinating point: the power of clothing as a tool of transformation, which is a very theatrical device as the characters of the story literally become actors within the story, but also functions as metaphor for physical skin - the unchosen inscription of identity on the basis of physical appearance/sex/so on, so forth. The narrator delights in the ability of clothing to act as transformation - while playing bride-bride, he feels the pinnacle moment is the one where he is wrapped in his white sari and transformed into the embodiment of all that is good and pure in the world. Similarly, his nemesis, Her Fatness, attempts to gain and exert power through costuming - first, by embellishing the costume of the groom that has been designated to her, and second through stealing and hiding the sari which has such significance for the narrator. The usage of clothing/costuming as constructing identity aids in the depiction of identity as a fluid structure within the short story, as by virtue of outward apparel, identity becomes mutable. The tension comes when the skin - the physical and undeniable body - is not as easy to shift as clothing. The narrator cannot escape the societal mores connected with being gendered male, and experiences despair at the thought of being confined within an identity not of his choosing, yet never wholly of the identity he has been classified into as he has not claimed it.
The physical body and the costume dynamic is carefully built into the text, coming to a head with the conclusion which depicts the narrator's grim realisation of what the rest of his life has in store for him now that he cannot depend upon clothing to change his identity, to make what he was born as not as important as what he has chosen to be.
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