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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38 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY<br />
some key features of embodied agency and how lived experience and<br />
poetic creation can work toge<strong>the</strong>r.<br />
Carolyn Forché’s The Country Between Us (1981) and Yusef<br />
Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau (1988) are two sem<strong>in</strong>al volumes that<br />
deal <strong>in</strong>timately with poets’ first-person experiences of war: Forché as<br />
an Amnesty International aid worker <strong>in</strong> El Salvador, Komunyakaa as a<br />
soldier <strong>in</strong> Vietnam. Despite some critical differences, especially <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir<br />
poetic gestation processes—Komunyakaa did not publish <strong>poetry</strong><br />
deal<strong>in</strong>g explicitly with his Vietnam experiences until thirteen years<br />
after <strong>the</strong> war officially ended, whereas Forché spent 1978 to 1980 <strong>in</strong><br />
El Salvador and <strong>the</strong>n published <strong>the</strong> book <strong>in</strong> 1981—<strong>the</strong> poems of <strong>the</strong><br />
two volumes establish <strong>the</strong> speak<strong>in</strong>g voice of first-person lived experience<br />
<strong>in</strong> similar ways. Two poems illustrate a pr<strong>in</strong>cipal manner <strong>in</strong> which<br />
<strong>in</strong>dividual experiences anchor a poem’s mean<strong>in</strong>g, context, language,<br />
and strategies for mak<strong>in</strong>g <strong>political</strong> <strong>poetry</strong>. They both depict <strong>the</strong>se<br />
experiences as illum<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>g as well as confound<strong>in</strong>g.<br />
Forché’s “The Colonel” and Komunyakaa’s “We Never Know”<br />
are dramatically different poems formally, <strong>the</strong> first a prose poem, <strong>the</strong><br />
second a brief imagist poem. Though both poems turn on dramatic,<br />
visceral images, <strong>the</strong> self-conscious first-person speaker is <strong>the</strong> key component<br />
of both poems, as it is for many poems discussed <strong>in</strong> this<br />
chapter. Both poems, moreover, echo <strong>the</strong> observations of Samuel<br />
Beckett’s Molloy, a character whose <strong>in</strong>ternal monologue is <strong>in</strong>separable<br />
from his <strong>in</strong>teraction with <strong>the</strong> world and with o<strong>the</strong>r people. Molloy<br />
says, “I speak <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> present tense, it is so easy to speak <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> present<br />
tense, when speak<strong>in</strong>g of <strong>the</strong> past. It is <strong>the</strong> mythological present” (34).<br />
Based upon past experience, Forché’s and Komunyakaa’s poems relate<br />
<strong>the</strong> details of experience <strong>in</strong> past tense verbs, but personal experience<br />
and <strong>the</strong> experience of writ<strong>in</strong>g about it are both foregrounded via<br />
<strong>the</strong> present tense, “<strong>the</strong> mythological present” of <strong>the</strong> poem’s production.<br />
This technique foregrounds <strong>the</strong> retell<strong>in</strong>g and poeticiz<strong>in</strong>g of<br />
experience, as if highlight<strong>in</strong>g any slippage or fissure <strong>the</strong> poet sees<br />
between <strong>the</strong> orig<strong>in</strong>al event and <strong>the</strong> event of <strong>the</strong> poem’s mak<strong>in</strong>g.<br />
“The Colonel,” which relates <strong>the</strong> speaker’s experience of eat<strong>in</strong>g<br />
d<strong>in</strong>ner at a Salvadoran general’s house, beg<strong>in</strong>s with a blunt assertion<br />
of first-person experience and a demand for <strong>the</strong> reader to see <strong>the</strong><br />
poem as “true”: “What you have heard is true. I was <strong>in</strong> his house.”<br />
The l<strong>in</strong>es that follow <strong>in</strong>clude a selective, detailed description of <strong>the</strong><br />
even<strong>in</strong>g’s events and <strong>the</strong> house <strong>in</strong> which <strong>the</strong>y occurred. The l<strong>in</strong>es that<br />
anchor <strong>the</strong> self-conscious strategy move auspiciously from <strong>the</strong> poem’s<br />
most shock<strong>in</strong>g images and its past tense verbs to <strong>the</strong> present tense:<br />
“He spilled many human ears on <strong>the</strong> table. They were like / dried