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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40 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY<br />
represent possible worlds, actions, and communities. In <strong>the</strong> above<br />
poems, perceptions of experience re<strong>in</strong>vest past actions with new imag<strong>in</strong>ative<br />
possibility even as <strong>the</strong> poems <strong>the</strong>mselves become new actions.<br />
Massumi’s suggestion that an action must “produce” an “outward<br />
effect” and “disengage possibilities” (106) is highlighted <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong>se<br />
poems as <strong>the</strong>y catalog both <strong>the</strong>ir speakers’ <strong>in</strong>teriority and <strong>the</strong> “outward<br />
effects” of both <strong>the</strong>ir actions and <strong>the</strong> actions of o<strong>the</strong>rs. Additionally,<br />
accord<strong>in</strong>g to Massumi, an agent’s movement is always primary and <strong>the</strong><br />
positions <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> social world he or she assumes are always secondary to<br />
movement. Any agent’s subject position, he says, “is an emergent quality<br />
of movement” (7–8). This notion allows for <strong>the</strong> primacy of experience<br />
<strong>in</strong> poems of embodied agency: poems can be thought of as<br />
“emergent qualities” of <strong>the</strong> speaker-poet’s experiences. As Massumi<br />
foregrounds <strong>the</strong> body <strong>in</strong> motion, so <strong>the</strong>se poems foreground <strong>the</strong><br />
speaker-poet <strong>in</strong> motion through <strong>the</strong> empirical world.<br />
Although both Forché’s and Komunyakaa’s poems are based upon<br />
<strong>the</strong>ir experiences (albeit experiences <strong>the</strong>y re-imag<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong> verse), <strong>the</strong> <strong>political</strong><br />
poems discussed <strong>in</strong> this chapter—both of experiential and authoritative<br />
agency—do not necessarily assume that all experiences must be fully verifiable.<br />
In <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>troduction to her anthology of <strong>poetry</strong> of witness,<br />
Aga<strong>in</strong>st Forgett<strong>in</strong>g, Forché writes that poems of witness to events of<br />
extremity must be evaluated differently. She says that <strong>the</strong>y should not be<br />
submitted to any test of “accuracy” or “truth to life.” Such poems, she<br />
rem<strong>in</strong>ds us, are de facto “evidence” of what has happened, and <strong>the</strong>y<br />
may be “<strong>the</strong> sole trace of an occurrence” so that <strong>the</strong>re might not be an<br />
<strong>in</strong>dependent account with which to verify whe<strong>the</strong>r or not <strong>the</strong> poem is<br />
“true” (31). In <strong>the</strong> case of “We Never Know,” where a Vietnamese man<br />
dies at <strong>the</strong> hands of an American soldier, it matters little if <strong>the</strong> speakerpoet’s<br />
own experience is verifiable because millions of Vietnamese were<br />
killed by American soldiers. 4 Fur<strong>the</strong>r, Forché’s formulation also rightly<br />
suggests that imag<strong>in</strong>ation, metaphor, <strong>in</strong>direction, and figurative<br />
language play key roles <strong>in</strong> poems of embodied agency ; after all, both<br />
Forché and Komunyakaa create figures of voice that emphasize <strong>the</strong>ir<br />
experiences. Experience may be <strong>the</strong> prime mover of a poem, <strong>the</strong> greet<strong>in</strong>g<br />
that extends outward <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong> world of complicated socioeconomic<br />
and <strong>political</strong> conditions, but it is only one tool at <strong>the</strong> disposal of poets.<br />
Poems, most importantly, are not newspaper articles; <strong>the</strong>y are not by<br />
convention bound to accuracy, truth, or empirical verification.<br />
Experiential Agency<br />
Hélène Cixous has long stumped for <strong>the</strong> primacy of experience both<br />
<strong>in</strong> literary texts and <strong>in</strong> our read<strong>in</strong>g of <strong>the</strong>m. Because experiences of