On the first day of class, Dr. Sherwood said that we would all have difficulty with at least one of the readings for this class, and mine is with Zolf’s Neighbour Procedure. I feel like ninety percent of the references are going right over my head, and I only have a vague understanding of the other ten. That being said, I did find some points of the book remarkable. First, “Did not participate in hostilities” is a very powerful poem. It consists of a list of mundane activities that people were doing, presumable before being killed by a military or terrorist action. I was especially intrigued by the dictionary entries on page 34 and 51. They give English definitions for words in Hebrew and Arabic, but they are obviously not there to help the reader in any way, because we don’t know what words they are referring to, and the beginning and end of the lines are cut off. I’m not sure what to make of it. I like the similar poems “Messenger” and “Mixed crowd,” in which Zolf takes a line from the Quran and shows different translations, which reminded me of Caroline Bergvall’s “Via.” One difference is that Zolf highlights some of the words that are unique to a particular passage, by making them bold, drawing our attention to the differences between the various translations.
“They give English definitions for words in Hebrew and Arabic, but they are obviously not there to help the reader in any way, because we don’t know what words they are referring to, and the beginning and end of the lines are cut off.”
I did notice something with the afterword, where Zolf appeared to be explaining her poems but often the explanations only led to more confusion and estrangement. I wonder if she is making a statement about the differential nature of texts or she is being playful with the reader trying to interpret her text?
Ben, although I’m familiar with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since I am from the Middle East and have been always educated through media and in school about it, I can assure you that Zolf’s poetry makes me confused as well.
I tried to find the pronunciation of the words in Hebrew (dictionary entries) I thought may be they have similar pronunciations as Arabic words but I could not find any Hebrew dictionary with an audio pronunciation.
Yet, I think Zolf uses specific words like CF (light-minded) to refer to killers and their crimes (Israeli’s murders). On page 42, she states “to commit an offense\ in my crrem opinion\ similar to Arabic\ be light\ light-minded”. Zolf also uses the other dictionary entries inside the same poem, I believe, as an attempt to emphasize the significance of these words.
Ben, I feel the difficulty you talked about, and I felt the same when we studied Brathwaite’s Middle Passages, especially when he uses Creole or Spanish, the languages I do not know. However, for me, maybe the situation is a little bit different in this book; it is very interesting book because, during my life, I witnessed some of the events Zolf talks about and heard about some. I totally agree with you, to understand the book’s significance and themes, the reader needs to have a comprehensive knowledge about Arab-Israeli conflict and traces its history; maybe in such case, appreciating the form and the poem aesthetics is a good start to approach the book.
OK, I agree background knowledge helps. And there are notes in the end of the book. But I also am not sure that we are supposed to “take away” a full-fledged political message from a book like this. I mean, if that is your goal, then a historical book or political manifesto is a better tool, right? So what is it that the mode of poetry (beauty, ambiguity, allusion, ellison, etc.) can contribute in this space?