Transparent Eye, Voice Howling Within: Codes of Violence in Lawrence Joseph's Poetry
| Autor: | Frank D. Rashid |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2008 |
| Předmět: |
Literature
Linguistics and Language Epigraph Middle East History Literature and Literary Theory Poetry business.industry Vantage point 05 social sciences 0507 social and economic geography Arab americans 06 humanities and the arts 060202 literary studies Event (philosophy) 050701 cultural studies Language and Linguistics Politics 0602 languages and literature business American literature |
| Zdroj: | PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 123:1611-1620 |
| ISSN: | 1938-1530 0030-8129 |
| DOI: | 10.1632/pmla.2008.123.5.1611 |
| Popis: | In drawing attention to a source?the satellite's camera?for this "real-world data," the poet emphasizes that he is writing at a distance about war and violence (41). As the book's title and epigraph from Henry James (by way of Wallace Stevens) suggest, Into It aims "to live in the world of creation?to get into it and stay in it?to frequent it and haunt it" (xii). How does a poet get "into it" when the imagery is received electronically and filtered by the politics of war? What does an Arab American poet have to contribute to the discussion of the politics arising from Middle Eastern conflict? Throughout his career as a poet, Joseph has been developing strate gies for addressing these issues, strategies that gain intensity precisely because they rely on a vantage point both Arab and American. He con cludes "Then," the opening poem of his first book, Shouting at No One, with the recognition that the "voice howling" within "was born" amid the violence ofthe 1967 insurrection in Detroit (Codes 8), an event that he experienced through the lens provided by the distinctive economics of being Lebanese American.1 Later in Shouting at No One, the poet con textualizes this event?as he has in all his subsequent work?by seeing it as a code for "burning cities" elsewhere, including those of Lebanon, past and present (29). His poetic impulse may be intensely individual, but, by establishing various codes and correspondences, his poetry is also theories and methodologies |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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