Unlike poetry in the past, I have particularly enjoyed the work we have began with poetry. Instead of searching for rhymes and metaphors, these poems transcend into the ongoing struggles that the globalizing world faced. By reaching beyond the classic lyric poem thats flooded with emotion about lovers and gardens, the poetry we have taken stance with proves as a provoking and pleasant literature. Furthermore, the poetry that we have chosen speaks to real traumas and implications that the human race faces today. As it highlights an ongoing, contemporary issue, the poetry taken up in ASTU has particularly spiked my interest. By conceptualizing globalization, traumatic events, and individualism through art and rhythm, poetry allows me to connect different abstractions and patterns through a new lens.
Building off of our ideas of connectedness, precarity, and unity, I particularly enjoy Spahr’s pieces. While they were lengthy and at times repetitive, she managed to provoke my interests and help me to take further interest in poetry as I have in the past. I took particular interest in Thursday’s discussion regarding skin and the tropes found in her works, and found in an intriguing and realistic metaphor to the greater separations found in our international network. Spahr’s first poem, and her connections to the biological foundations that all living beings share furthered my understanding of race and distinction as solely a social construct formulated by opinion and ignorance.
After discussing today, the idea of language poetry, I began to search in words and sentences a specific sound and rythym as a way to familiarize myself with the concept of words as the meaning themselves, instead of a representation of another idea. I began to read a couple of works by Micheal Palmer, Ron Silliman and Bob Perleman to find an idea of what these poems achieved through sound and articulation. I was personally intrigued by one of Perlemans works, titled Chronic Meanings due to its fragmented sentences that simultaneously connected. While there was no constant flow of ideas, the back to back lines flowed through one another. Each sentence cut off just prior to giving us full information, so it kept me reading into the next line even if the theme didn’t continue. I have left the link below for readers to enjoy as well!
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/%7Eafilreis/88v/chronic-meanings.html