american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

204 NOTES
7. The best creative work on the “official story” occurs in O’Brien’s
The Things They Carried (1990). See “How to Tell a True War Story”
for perspective on objectivity in the context of war.
8. Gibbons explains that exteriorism was developed by Cardenal in
response to the abstractions, romanticism, and symbolism of Latin
American poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. Cardenal’s poetics have
“a diction that is concrete and detailed with proper names and the
names of things in preference to the accepted poetic language, which
was more abstract, general, and vaguely symbolic” (“Political” 278).
9. Altieri’s conception of this visionary leap in 1980s poetry is strikingly
similar to von Hallberg’s understanding of much Vietnam-era poetry.
10. Collins’s poem (76–77) has eerie reverberations with Uruguayan
Cristina Peri Rossi’s story “El prócer,” which is about the life, geopolitical
ramifications, and malleability of a war memorial statue in an
unnamed Latin American plaza.
11. See “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch” for
the humiliations of giving concessions to white people and “staying in
your place.” See also “Fire and Cloud” for the tension between active
resistance and protest and the need to “wait” and be patient, both in
Uncle Tom’s Children (1938; New York: Perennial, 1993). See also
The Best of Nina Simone (New York: Polygram Records, Inc. 1969).
12. In “The Black Arts Movement and Its Critics” David L. Smith
suggests that “Black Arts writing directly addressed a black audience.”
As such, it “demands of its reader (or listener) a sympathy and familiarity
with black culture and black idioms” (102). In contrast, Phillip
Brian Harper’s essay “Nationalism and Social Division in Black Arts
Poetry of the 1960s” claims that “The True Import” has its
“maximum impact” when “understood as being heard directly by
whites and overheard by blacks” (247; original emphasis).
13. See U.S. congressman and former SNCC leader John Lewis’s memoir
of the civil rights movement for an excellent interpretation of the
tension between working within existing political structures and an
unyielding and uncompromising dedication to social change. See
Lewis with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the
Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
14. Rich’s strategic use of apostrophe is both clever and perhaps selfdefeating.
It certainly challenges readers to understand the import of
their inactions; however, Rich’s audience is likely already acutely aware
of social justice issues. This poem might be an example of “preaching
to the choir.”
15. Many readers remotely familiar with hip-hop may instantly object that
hip-hop is no longer a “fugitive means of expression” because it is so
commercially successful, ubiquitous in many different media, and
supported heavily by suburban white kids. These readers have a legitimate
point, one that I explore in chapter four.