Over Thanksgiving break this year, I went home to visit my family, relax, and celebrate the holiday. While I was sitting on the couch lazily watching television, my mother called out to me to come help in the kitchen and make her family-famous mac and cheese. Now, while this may seem like a simple task, it was an incredibly intimidating feat at the time. What if I messed it up and everyone at the Thanksgiving table disliked it? This wasn’t normal mac and cheese! This wasn’t the simple task of boiling water and adding macaroni! My mom’s recipe was both a long and complicated process. When mac and cheese has bread crumbs, you know it’s serious. Continue reading “Deconstructing Mac and Cheese”
Artist Intention
When viewing artwork, I tend to search for the artists’ message within the piece. In doing this, I neglect the thought of the process behind creating the piece. Garth Freeman helped me realize the importance of the creation process with the print activity done in class. Our class separated into groups and created prints, which is the first time I have done this. At first, I was not too excited for this activity because I do not think of myself as an artist. By the end of the class, I started to think more about how an artist gets to their final piece of artwork. Continue reading “Artist Intention”
For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend- Pat Parker
Within the packet of poems that Dr. McCoy presented to us, a few of them stuck out to me immediately. Similar to what Analiese stated in her blog posts, I would not usually go for poems if I were. There are certain poems, however, such as Pat Parker’s that draw me in almost instantaneously. Parker’s poem gave me a conversational feeling which sparked more of an interest than poems usually do. I found myself making commentary while reading along because I could relate all too well and there were certain aspects of it I found to be humorous.
Continue reading “For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend- Pat Parker”
Culture and Property
Over break, I re-read a prompt that Dr. McCoy provided for us that talks about culture and how it relates to property. I’ve talked before about Bernice Johnson Reagon and her ideas about how church is the black community’s property. Recently in class, we have been talking about how the concept of culture can be a kind of property. In Pat Parker’s poem, “For the white person who wants to be my friend”, she expresses how blackness can be seen as a property, but not just property as an object, rather property as an idea.
DuBois and Sociology
I don’t like to admit when I’m struggling, but I have to say, I have been having a difficult time with The Souls of Black Folk recently. I didn’t realize that I was until we read “Of the Passing of the First Born;” part of the problem with reading the book both not in order and in a manner that breaks up the work into smaller chunks makes it difficult to grasp the work as a definitive whole, which is something I have been trying to do recently. While it is a collection of essays and thus some discrepancy in tone is expected it is still worth considering the work in its entirety; after all, DuBois chose to publish these essays together, not separately.
This past week, I sat down and actually thought about the work as a whole and the crux of my struggle with the tone of the work is this: certain chapters, such as “Of the Passing of the First Born,” are incredibly personal and the ways that the way that the Veil and Double Consciousness affect DuBois personally are so clear. However, some chapters are so deeply impersonal that they read more like an anthropological or sociological survey than a work that deals with fundamental societal issues that the author himself experiences. This divide makes it difficult to grasp the work in its totality, especially as the more anthropological sections come across as almost judgemental (more on this later). Continue reading “DuBois and Sociology”
Commodification and Gentrification
After class a few weeks ago and the many discussions that were had about power and commodification, I began to think about how these concepts could be related back to texts that were involved in the course thus far. I thought about the poems that were read and the song that we listened to, and the discussion that happened in my small group. The definition that Dr. McCoy provided us is that commodification is, “the transformation of relationships, believed to be untainted by commerce, into commercial relationships, relationships of buying and selling”. In my small group, this was related back to the idea of gentrification, defined by Merriam Webster as, “the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents” and how in major cities such as New York City this is becoming more prevalent. Different communities, such as the lower class black and the upper-class white that have been known to not get along are now having even more strains put on their relationship due the upper-class coming into the neighborhoods and possibly removing the residents or making it impossible for the residents to afford living here by doing things such as raising the rent. Sarah brought up a great example of how the upper-class is coming in and buying property and opening coffee shops, yoga studios, etc. that does not take into account the needs or wants of the neighborhood.
When pondering on the example that was given during class, I went back and took a look at the poem by Jayne Cortez, ‘How Long Has Trane Been Gone’ from 1969. I found that the lines, “You takin- they givin/ You livin- they/ creatin starving dying/ trying to make a better tomorrow” truly related to the idea of gentrification. With the “you” being the white upper-class and the “they” being the black lower class. There could be much discussion as to whether or not gentrification is beneficial to the revival of suffering communities. I think it is safe to say (although I hate to make assumptions on her part) that Cortez would not be a fan of the idea. She would most likely say that the upper-class is not worrying about the needs of the lower class and that they are simply doing it for self-benefit, going back to the line “You takin- they givin”.
Respect the Difference
The other day my friend told me she had to evaluate an album for one of her classes and she had no idea which album to choose. The first album that popped into my mind was Aretha Franklin’s album “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.” I suggested she write about what Aretha Franklin represented as a black woman singing soul music in the 60s in the height of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements. Specifically, the song “Respect” (1967) which empowered many people during this time to fight for their personal and political liberation.
I showed her the page in Call and Response that includes this song and said “see it’s in my book, so it must be important” and then I saw it. “Respect by Otis Redding as interpreted by Aretha Franklin”. You can imagine my reaction given my last post about the ownership of songs by repeating them. I do not know a single person who would tell you that this song is Otis Redding’s and yet every time it is played he is the one getting paid. While listening to his version on YouTube, the comments are filled with people who did not even know it was his song, they thought it was Aretha Franklin’s. This sparked my interest in the difference between the two versions of the song and the impact that these differences have on the meaning of the song.
W.B. Yeats and Carl Phillips in Conversation
I was thumbing through Angles of Ascent over the weekend and noticed a single dogeared page. Page 379, I had annotated a poem by Carl Phillips “Leda, After the Swan.” In the small group discussion a few weeks ago we were asked to discuss our favorite poems, this wasn’t mine, but we discussed it in length and after our conversation I found myself interested in the origins and the poem is it based off of.
“Leda and the Swan” was published in the mid 20s, by W.B. Yeats about the myth of the rape of Leda by Zeus who took the form of a Swan. In our group we discussed the controversy surrounding the poem. Yeats focuses on the act itself and alludes to the Trojan War as well. In the rape, Leda becomes impregnated with who will become Helen of Troy. Yeats posits that the rape of Leda leads to the Trojan War and thus the end of Greek civilization. When “Leda and the Swan” was published it stirred up controversy due to its explicit nature. More recently however, it has upset feminist activists because of the way in which Yeats chooses to show the rape of Leda by Zeus, or the swan. The poem remains Yeats’ most commonly anthologized poems. Continue reading “W.B. Yeats and Carl Phillips in Conversation”
Light and Shadows, Dope and Paint, Sociology and Art
When we speak of a “diamond in the rough,” are we being ironic? For when we say this do we not ignore the dark and organic geologic history of the shiny diamond’s formation? A diamond comes from the rough; it is of the rough. The relationship of the diamond to the darkness from which it emerges is necessarily symbiotic as there would be no diamond without the immense pressure placed on carbon deep beneath the earth’s surface. My coach likes to use this analogy a lot when talking about training, but it is also useful when thinking about the negation of binaries. I believe, after all, that the development of the both/and is, in fact, not so much a destruction of the either/or but the reconstruction of it. It is important not to do away with the tension entirely, but to play with the tension to see how both elements might be more similar, more “in each other,” than previously thought. Continue reading “Light and Shadows, Dope and Paint, Sociology and Art”
How D’Aguiar Breathes Life into His Protagonists
When I went to the D’Aguiar reading, I wasn’t sure what to expect. At previous poetry readings I’ve been the audience to mainly women, who were mainly white, who were reading poems about love and heartbreak and growing up in small towns. This isn’t to talk down on these poets, because by many of them I’ve been brought to tears, but rather it shows that my own background has informed the readings that I’ve been able to attend. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and my, mostly white, high school would have Java Jive, a poetry and live music event, yearly. Most of my experiences listening to poetry read aloud have occurred in that unilateral arena.
I’d like to approach D’Aguiar’s reading of Bullet, an excerpt from a piece he’s working on now about the Virginia Tech Massacre which he has a close connection too, using a course epigraph: “Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.” Continue reading “How D’Aguiar Breathes Life into His Protagonists”