american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang
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CHAPTER 3<br />
Migratory Agency<br />
Introduction<br />
As <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> previous chapters, <strong>the</strong> goal of chapter 3 is to elucidate one of<br />
<strong>the</strong> primary rhetorical strategies of American <strong>political</strong> <strong>poetry</strong>.<br />
However, unlike <strong>the</strong> previous chapters on embodied and equivocal<br />
agencies, this one on migratory agency makes more significant departures<br />
from current <strong>poetry</strong> criticism and <strong>the</strong>ory. These departures are<br />
byproducts of three imperatives: to be <strong>in</strong>clusive, to embrace multil<strong>in</strong>gualism,<br />
and to articulate my belief that poems of migratory agency<br />
br<strong>in</strong>g to life a key variation on one of <strong>the</strong> most important rhetorical<br />
strategies of <strong>poetry</strong>, broadly def<strong>in</strong>ed, <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> twentieth <strong>century</strong>. With a<br />
few brief illustrative exceptions, <strong>the</strong> poems analyzed <strong>in</strong> chapter 3 are<br />
by Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o poets. However, it is not my <strong>in</strong>tention to write a chapter<br />
about Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o <strong>poetry</strong>; nor is my primary goal to argue that <strong>the</strong>se<br />
poets deserve <strong>in</strong>clusion <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> much-disputed canon. Because most<br />
Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o <strong>poetry</strong> is studied from with<strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> framework of a specif ic<br />
tradition or type of <strong>poetry</strong> and rarely as part of a larger framework,<br />
I hope that one of <strong>the</strong> byproducts of chapter 3 is a movement of <strong>the</strong>se<br />
poems and <strong>the</strong>ir languages <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong> multiethnic ma<strong>in</strong>stream of<br />
contemporary American <strong>poetry</strong>.<br />
In this chapter, <strong>the</strong>n, I discuss <strong>the</strong> dom<strong>in</strong>ant figures of voice and<br />
rhetorical strategies <strong>in</strong> migratory agency, and how <strong>the</strong>se poems depart<br />
from and are similar to o<strong>the</strong>r prom<strong>in</strong>ent literary and cultural movements<br />
<strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> twentieth <strong>century</strong>. My understand<strong>in</strong>g of migratory<br />
agency thus beg<strong>in</strong>s relatively broadly and <strong>the</strong>n narrows <strong>in</strong>to what<br />
I perceive is its primary doma<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> contemporary American <strong>poetry</strong>. In<br />
this <strong>in</strong>troduction, I look backward to Modernists Ezra Pound and<br />
T.S. Eliot, who strived to create a sophisticated, multil<strong>in</strong>gual <strong>poetry</strong><br />
that migrates between languages, cultures, and historical traditions;<br />
I also turn back briefly to a Neruda poem that illustrates <strong>in</strong>directly<br />
some key pr<strong>in</strong>ciples of migratory agency. Throughout <strong>the</strong> chapter,