american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

EMBODIED AGENCY 55
The rhetorical strategy of “The True Import” falls squarely within
this debate. The poem fails as anything beyond an example of a poem
of authoritative agency not because of its refusal to compromise in a
way that would please von Hallberg, nor because the poem is
unequivocally racist as Redding would have it, but precisely because of
the poem’s unyielding authoritative voice. This particular figure of
voice makes the poem appear as a literal appeal for blacks to kill whites
rather than the figurative injunction pointed out by Jennifer Walters
in her essay on Giovanni and Dove. Walters implies that the notion of
killing in the poem is both symbolic and literal such that the poem can
be understood as advocating “ ‘killing’ the white values imposed on
Black America” (214; my emphasis) rather than as indiscriminately
killing white people. However, her claim is more wishful thinking than
rigorous reading, as a brief exposition reveals.
The inflammatory rhetoric of “The True Import” includes short,
repetitive lines devoid of punctuation but for two resonant question
marks. The fifty-line poem includes “nigger” twelve times, “kill” twentyfour
times, “you” twenty-five times, and “can” thirty times, rhetoric that
clearly diverges from most poems of experiential agency. Giovanni’s
experiences as an African American woman presumably authorize her
to address with vitriol her black male audience, 12 and she has claimed
that her “vitality” (rather than “role”) as a poet is based on a “trust”
borne of personal experience. According to Giovanni, a poem says of
its author “ ‘I saw this through my eyes’ ” (Elder 71), which is a claim
that resonates with (and justifies) poems of experiential agency. But,
importantly, her experience does not appear in the poem, just the
authority borne of her experience as a black woman. The first three
lines have provocative voice: “Nigger / Can you kill / Can you kill.”
Because the poem has no punctuation and it relies for its rhythm on
the impatient, fast-paced spoken voice, these lines repeatedly challenge
the audience. The repeated “Can you” creates an insistent oral demand
within a “vernacular performance” as an “immediate, communal form
to be experienced in public” (Smith “The Black” 101). Here, the
provocation twice reaches a spoken climax with a powerful “huh?,” not
as markers of confusion but as demands for an answer as in a fast-paced
game of the dozens that encourages immediate responsive action.
These techniques seem to create a demand to act against white people
rather than a figurative injunction to “kill” white institutions.
This claim is fulfilled by Giovanni’s own comments. She has said
that this poem concerns her distaste for hearing “talk of going out to
die for our rights.” Dying, she says, “is not the hardest thing to do.
It’s harder to go out and kill for your rights.” She claims that