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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118 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY<br />
I keep <strong>in</strong> m<strong>in</strong>d (and <strong>the</strong> reader should as well) that <strong>the</strong> subject of<br />
chapter 4—hip-hop music—also actuates a type of migratory agency<br />
<strong>in</strong> its conscious borrow<strong>in</strong>g and mix<strong>in</strong>g (and consequent reshap<strong>in</strong>g) of<br />
a variety of languages, discourses, and musical traditions. Though<br />
both Modernism and hip-hop migrate between cultural codes, nei<strong>the</strong>r<br />
of <strong>the</strong>m embody <strong>the</strong> speak<strong>in</strong>g voice of <strong>the</strong> migrant. The ma<strong>in</strong> figure<br />
of voice <strong>in</strong> poems of migratory agency emphasizes <strong>the</strong> agency of <strong>the</strong><br />
l<strong>in</strong>guistic and cultural migrant, who moves between Spanish and<br />
English and between <strong>the</strong> worlds and cultural sensibilities from which<br />
<strong>the</strong>se two languages emerge (and merge). These poems foreground<br />
<strong>the</strong> poetic agency of <strong>the</strong> border-crosser and <strong>the</strong> voices that are<br />
possible only <strong>in</strong> a bil<strong>in</strong>gual poet.<br />
First, I want to work through my <strong>in</strong>itial two imperatives for chapter 3.<br />
Despite two decades of discuss<strong>in</strong>g multiculturalism with regard to<br />
pedagogy, <strong>the</strong> canon, and American literature, most critical work <strong>in</strong><br />
American <strong>poetry</strong> studies is organized by or dedicated to a specific ethnicity,<br />
gender, topic, or to what I consider an elite survey of American<br />
<strong>poetry</strong> and culture. Book-length studies of American <strong>poetry</strong> generally<br />
focus on, for example, African American, Asian American, Native<br />
American, Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o, Chicana/o, or female writers, or on a topic such<br />
as environmental, war, fem<strong>in</strong>ist, postmodern, prophetic, Language, or<br />
resistance <strong>poetry</strong>. These <strong>the</strong>matic works generally exclude Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o<br />
writers, writers from alternative traditions, spoken word and hip-hop<br />
artists, and American poets who write <strong>in</strong> more than one language.<br />
“Comprehensive” American <strong>poetry</strong> surveys usually consider only<br />
canonical (primarily white male) writers with a (white) woman or an<br />
African American <strong>in</strong>cluded for comparative (or P.C.) purposes. More<br />
encompass<strong>in</strong>g volumes, such as books of essays edited by Charles<br />
Bernste<strong>in</strong> and Marjorie Perloff, are better, but <strong>the</strong>y do little with<br />
bil<strong>in</strong>gual <strong>poetry</strong> or hip-hop.<br />
Lat<strong>in</strong>a/o poets are generally left out of even “comprehensive”<br />
critical studies of American <strong>poetry</strong>. Yet <strong>the</strong>y are not simply marg<strong>in</strong>alized<br />
because even marg<strong>in</strong>alization implies an existence at <strong>the</strong> edges of<br />
a critic’s scope. For <strong>in</strong>stance, <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> sem<strong>in</strong>al American Poetry and<br />
Culture 1945–1980 (1985), Robert von Hallberg focuses on Robert<br />
Creeley, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Robert Lowell, Edward Dorn,<br />
Mona Van Duyn, and Robert P<strong>in</strong>sky, all of whom have “shown<br />
marked curiosity about <strong>the</strong> dom<strong>in</strong>ant American culture” (8). 1 To<br />
be fair, von Hallberg is <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> poets who “have looked more<br />
search<strong>in</strong>gly and fairly at <strong>the</strong> national culture”; he claims that <strong>the</strong><br />
endur<strong>in</strong>g popular perception “that American poets have made <strong>the</strong>mselves<br />
cultural outlaws” (244) is <strong>in</strong>accurate. Though I agree <strong>in</strong> part