On Election Day

In the first stanza the imagery is thick with descriptions of working class people and communities, there is a lot of despair in these images. The interesting thing about them for me is that this neighborhood is universal. This neighborhood could be Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Belgrade, Tehran, or any other working-class neighborhood.

This feeling of commonality evoked through the images Bernstein uses continues throughout the poem, which is not to say that it is not a good poem. What I am saying is exactly the opposite of that. Bernstein’s poem allows for everyone to believe that he is talking to and about their personal experiences on a daily basis, because for many people “election day” is just another day.

Tribes of Dr. Lacan

Bernstein’s reading of this poem, which I listened to him read from the links provided for us, was interesting to me for two different reasons. After listening to the audio portion of this poem, I jumped from the critical perspective of the words on the page to the poetic perspective of knowing, that as a poet your lines never stay the same, they are always moving, changing, and evolving. I felt this evolution in hearing Charles Bernstein read.

The other interesting aspect of listening to the audio before I read the piece is the knowledge of the space in which it was taking place. I was literally listening to it on my laptop with my headphones on, but as I closed my eyes I was in that space, I could hear the audience fidgeting in their chairs, papers rustling, and could even smell the coffee brewing.

Against National Poetry Month

The essay “Against National Poetry Month” was something I knew I had to read, not just as a poet, but also as someone who tries and has yet to be successful at fully participating in the ideas and festivities of it. I was curios if or when my own thoughts and ideas would align or intersect with Bernstein’s. For me it was also a must read because it is National Poetry Month (and no I didn’t even try this year to participate).
I was very excited to read this essay and find out that I am not alone in the 4 week struggle of National Poetry Month, hopefully one day when I’m retired I will actually survive the challenge, but for now there are papers to be written, bills to be paid, and exams to study for.

A Virtual Play

In the first act or section of this piece I was intrigued and uncomfortable at the same time. In the beginning I could not help but have the same uncomfortable feeling of playing “Galatea” for the first time. I felt uncomfortable in places of the play because it was not set up in what I think of when I think of a play. I think this is exactly the twist Mark Americka was intending to do to us, his audience. He wanted us think of plays in the traditional sense and take this ideal and spin it on its head. This seems to me to be a prime example of what all or most postmodern writers were attempting to do as they took the old canonical ideals and spun them on their head.
I felt the unfamiliar, uncomfortable “Galatea” feeling in the short lines. Now I realize this experience with the play and my experience with “Galatea” were similar only for me, because that was the singular struggle that I had. The difference between “Galatea” and the play is that everyone is supposed to feel a little lost and discombobulated, it is part of the process when you are learning from and being inserted into the play. Over time I’ve become comfortable in being uncomfortable.
For me it always reminds me of being at an amusement park and riding a rollercoaster. The heart starts pumping as you make your way through the line. Then you reach the front and you hear the people I front of you getting strapped in. Finally, it’s your turn and the sounds get louder and you start to really feel the “butterflies” in your stomach.

Writer As

The writer as section reminded me of the same discombobulated feeling. However, there was words and ideas that I was very familiar with from my time at Naropa University. One of those ideas is about repurposing, which also brings to mind Kenny Goldsmith. Repurposing as discussed in the section on the virtual play, which I realized after reading and writing about it was not necessarily the section we were supposed to read. However, it was my favorite section and I noticed parallels between the sections.

As I was re-reading “Citizen” by Claudia Rankine so many different ideas, thoughts, and questions were running through my head. The first of which was all of the imagery that is evoked in each poem. These images helped create a photo album of sorts in my mind’s eye. I keep coming back to the section on the Williams sisters over and over again. These images are so powerful, not because I can see them in there bright colored tennis outfits running back and forth across class and grass courts all over the world, that’s there too. However, what struck me most about the prose poems (if I must attempt to classify them), is how much I never considered them as game changers or outsiders. This is not because of that cliché response to racial injustice “I just don’t see color or sex,” it has more to do with perspective. I sadly came to the realization that part of me never once even considered how tough it must be for them, to go into certain arenas or certain countries and do something they have loved to do their entire lives. Having arrived at this realization I was more than a little upset at myself, because, I couldn’t believe that after all of these years I finally saw something that was looking us all right in the face. The other half of my new consciousness was very happy to have arrived at this point, even though it took longer than I would have liked.

Rankine gives many other examples of injustice from many different perspectives. I was excited and more than a little intimidated by all of these different perspectives. I felt at different points in the collection that I was in complete agreement and understanding with her. Than all of a sudden I thrown into something else completely. I would have to again find my bearings and would be okay again.

I started to wonder why she would consciously make the effort to put all of these images and sections into one collection. After thinking about this question sporadically for a few days, I believe I came up with one of many answers to my own question. I believe she is attempting to show that we are all citizens on this planet and we are all going through something that we must overcome. Rankine is also brings show many different injustices to the table, which will hopefully bring a voice to the voiceless and cause people to want to do something about them.