The first thing I notice is that there is no dedication for this poem. After reading the poem I speculate that this is because there is no one left to dedicate it to.

This poem has a unique perspective of Columbus as a person. The speaker is a native of the island that is being approached. Each stanza or section (denoted with a special character “c”) starts with what Columbus can see from his “after-deck” and then flows into a contemplation of his motives. 1. he is fearlessly sailing for discover, 2. did he intend to massacre the natives in such a gruesome way? 3. Is this a discovery or a slave trading endeavour?

Also, throughout the poem the speaker contemplates the above motives but the language suggests that he/she already knows the answers. The vivid descriptions of the violence and murder but also the continual use of “his and him” and “my and our” showing that the speaker sees a very distinct and important division between the boat off the shore and the native people.

The end of the poem seems to seal the deal in terms of whether it is an endeavor of violence or discovery. In the lines, “Now he was sure/he heard the soft voices mocking in the leaves,” and, “I watched him pause/then he was splashing silence/crabs snapped their claws/ and scattered as he walked toward our shore.” These lines say to me, knowing the history of Columbus’ journey to the Carribean, that this was the moment when Columbus decided to make his first journey one of conquest instead of discovery.

I found this poem pretty powerful. It was one of the first ones that I could actually understand the first time I read the book, but I have found more than I did the first time. There are descriptions, from a “native” perspective of the land, of how beautiful it is. I find it so powerful because so much of history could have been different if this one moment in time had gone differently, if the greed of white men, of the conquerors had not existed or not been called upon during the “Discovery he sailed for.”

I could have written two different posts, but I don’t think I want to discuss the two authors separately. I have some thoughts about Goldsmith’s Soliloquy and Traffic, but also on the narrative of race that the two artists have become a part of.

Soliloquy and Traffic: I found his execution of these projects very interesting. I think these works are meant to be contemplated from conception to final product. He said himself that his works are “unreadable” and that he does not have “readership” but “thinkership.” In relation to these two texts I think this is an interesting concept. His works did make me think about the amount of talking and language that is bouncing around us constantly. To have that meaningless? or useless? ordinary? language represented in physical form is startling. Those traffic reports will never be important again in relation to the information they give, but that is a lot of discourse and it was supremely important at its time of transmission. I think his works, both Soliloquy and Traffic, speak to the amount of “stuff” that is thrown at us each day. At least for me it reminded me of how tedious and grueling the process is of wading through media and language to find what is important to us.

This leads me to both Goldsmith and Place’s treatment of race in their works. I found it thought-provoking that we cannot really read any of Place’s works, only criticism (at least I am not willing, at this time, to venture into her book). I found that Place and Goldsmith had two very different ways of causing discussion, despite the fact that they both received similar reactions.

After reading a few of the articles about Place, I think I have decided that she was attacked because of what Natasha Stagg spoke of the “twitter mindset”

“Instead of acting as a warning, Place’s GWTW was being warned against, a trigger more traumatic, apparently, than the original text it parroted. It also seemed to say a lot about the snap judgments we’re all so used to now because of our chosen sharing habits. It’s the nature of Twitter to not research further, we all know, but if that nature is influencing the way we run museums, school lectures, and conferences, the future might be more bleak than any of us dared to predict.”

We see something and decide if we like it or not. If we do we retweet, like, or share. However, if we do not it is quite obvious how severely others can act. I tend to agree with Place’s question of why people are questioning her actions and not the text’s meaning. The reaction is to lash out instead of reflect upon and discuss why something like this might make us angry. Why is it insulting to have the racist narrative is pointed out, but it does not seem to be insulting that the narrative exists?

As for Goldsmith, I have to agree with the various texts provided on his performance. While I see that both authors are appropriating, in this case, black suffering, I find Goldsmith a bit less forgivable. I think the piece opened up a discourse about the topic of race and police brutality, but it was tactless. I tried to even position it in the form of a biography, in that very often biographers talk about things that perhaps the subject would not have liked, but even from that perspective the idea of this reading makes me feel icky. I guess I could say the same about Place’s book.

I will defend their right to create whatever they wish as artistic pieces, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy them. I don’t like the idea of sanatizing the literary world or things that people don’t like. The would be a complete erasure of the literary world. I like that their are author’s that push the boundaries and make people squirm, but I am not sure that I want to participate in the squirming…

As the title suggests, this was quite a journey. Honestly, I had not idea what to do. I sat and stared at the graphics of “in absentia” until I had determined that this seemed to be completely out of my schema…I had no idea what to do. This lead me to her home page and instructions! After reading those the experience became very exciting for me. I grew up right when computers were being introduced into schools and we had super awesome educational games to play! I had a very nostalgic experience clicking through all the images, finding pictures, poems, and moving graphics. It was exciting to discover the pieces in my own way. Carpenter’s work has really solidified what the term “differential text” means in practice. I think we probably all read and expored her pieces in different orders, but still got what she was intending.

As for the content of the poems, I found the overarching themes of loss or of things being stolen. In “in absentia” it is quite obvious that the community is losing itself, piece by piece their physical space is being taken away and that is causing their emotional attachment to the community to disentagrate as well.

“The Cape” expresses a loss of memory or the past? (still working on this idea) . The poem is a cluster of memories about a place, and the images that accompany it create a sterile tone. My expectation was to find a nostalgic retelling of childhood, what I got was an encyclopedia-feeling experience.

Finally, “…and by islands I mean paragraphs.” I found this one the most difficult to follow. I am still not sure if I saw everything there was to see, in fact I am sure I did not. The parts of this piece that struck me were the parts that described: goods, population, plant life, etc. This struck me because, again, it is such a textbook description paired with accounts of personal encounters on the islands. I feel the loss of scenery and place in this piece. I have descriptions of life and events paired with a black and white drawn map, the place I want to see is not there.

further musings I don’t have time to write about:

–the use of maps
–better understanding of the french verses
–gaining a better grasp of “…and by islands”
–such a contrast between formats for the different pieces

Initial Reactions: It feels like story time. I enjoy listening to him speak about the most, seemingly,random things. It feels like a lecture of some sort. But after listening I am left with near nothing. Turning to the transcribed text, it is easier to read this after having listened to him. The lack of any kind of punctuation or capitalization makes things a little difficult, but it also feels like a conversation. I get the overwhelming feeling that I am supposed to learn something very important from this.

Attempt at Understanding: What exactly is he trying to “frame?” I think that a part of the answer is understanding. Creating new ways of processing the world. The image created is one of a picture frame, his experiences (stories) are all frames that needed to be “resized” to help him understand the world around him. His stories in this…poem, musing, stream of consciousness… Are all about a frame of mind that he is unable to relate to either at all or until he changes his own way of thinking to be able to understand the actions of others. The woman who is haphazardly driving with no regard for other drivers;the museums with narrow definitions of what is appropriate/what is art; the father-in-law who does things to do them, not to finish in a succinct way, just to enjoy the doing. Antin’s position in these stories shows outright that he does not understand the behaviors being exhibited by others.

This story of the roulette table and the old man is a different hurdle. Up until this point I have been able to suspend belief enough to see the first three anecdotes as possible and understand at some level the kind of changes he had to create in his own mind to comprehend the actions that others have demonstrated. I suppose that the roulette table story is a way of showing how expanding one’s way of thinking can lead to some profound new knowledge. Dropping the glass and following the woman is an extension of the frame; the idea that “this isn’t probable but is slightly possible, so just go with it.” By expanding the mind’s way of thinking, the knowledge that “winning is also losing” is gained. An understanding that might never have been achieved in a narrower frame of mind.

I think I have posed more questions than I have found answers to. However, I hope you can find something of value within the jumble of my attempt at creating meaning!