<\/p>\n
Javier Zamora\u2019s \u201cLet Me Try Again,\u201d is concerned not only with the politics involved in the process of migrating but also with the politics of relaying a narrative about migrating. The poem begins with the speaker\u2019s direct address to the audience: \u201cI could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted \/ after so many days without it,\/ the trees, the breed of dogs…\u201d (61). This introduction relays the speaker\u2019s belief that the sensory details he lists will risk boring the reader<\/span>\u2014<\/span>yet, the speaker\u2019s consciousness of this \u2018risk\u2019 does not impede the speaker from listing them. What this reveals is that though the speaker is aware of his audience and of his storytelling, he is not necessarily invested in \u2018convincing\u2019 or swaying an audience; rather, the poem\u2019s progression demonstrates the speaker\u2019s own relationship to the very story he tells<\/span>\u2014<\/span>both in what he tells and <\/span>how <\/span><\/i>he tells it. The poem\u2019s structure is divided by addressing these two distinct aspects. While the formal structure reflects the speaker\u2019s multiple attempts to tell the story, the poem\u2019s narrative content is more invested in pointing to the multiple attempts migrants make to cross the U.S.\/Mexico border. <\/span><\/p>\n In connection with the poem\u2019s title, the speaker\u2019s awareness of audience in the first line indicates that this poem is not the speaker\u2019s first attempt to tell this story i.e. this is a poem that is just as much about the speaker\u2019s attempt to \u201ctry again\u201d to tell the story, as it is about the speaker\u2019s attempts to migrate. The poem\u2019s final stanza illuminates further significance of the poem\u2019s title, as the speaker reflects on the officer\u2019s reasoning for advising the group: \u201cHe knew we would try again \/ and again, \/ like everyone does,\u201d (62). The narrative within the poem leads us through the speaker\u2019s journey and moves us from the specificity of his experience and consciousness of relaying it, all the way through to the collective experience he shared with other migrants. In the poem\u2019s title, it is the \u201cme\u201d who will \u201ctry again\u201d and the actual action here is left open to interpretation, while in the poem\u2019s final stanza, it is the \u201cwe\u201d who will \u201ctry again\u201d and the action here unambiguously refers to crossing the border. <\/span><\/p>\n The poem\u2019s first three stanzas reflect the speaker\u2019s attempts to recall detail or otherwise to decide upon how he will relay this story. These three stanzas are marked by the speaker\u2019s hesitation and confusion, as indicated by language like \u201cI can\u2019t say,\u201d \u201cI couldn\u2019t remember \/ there were only five,\/ or seven people<\/span>\u2014<\/span>,\u201d and \u201cThe rest…I don\u2019t know.\u201d The speaker\u2019s flustered tone is reflected not only through this language but also formally through frequent enjambment and scattered spacing on the page. The stanzas are structured in such a way as to reflect the speaker\u2019s own uncertainty about how he relays the story of what occurred during this moment in his migration journey. For example, \u201cThe rest…\/ I don\u2019t know. \/ They weren\u2019t there,\u201d progressively move in a downward diagonal pattern away from the page; the distance created physically on the page reflects the speaker\u2019s distance from the thirty-six people from which he was separated, and perhaps also his distance from the full knowledge of what happened to them. <\/span>It is not until the poem\u2019s fourth stanza that the poem settles into a more direct, grounded storytelling pattern and adopts a more stable form. Although frequent enjambment and dispersed lines continue through the end of the poem, the stanzas are consistently two to three lines, which eases the narrative flow. As the poem stabilizes formally, the speaker\u2019s tone shifts to encompass a wider political awareness as he analyzes the officer\u2019s identity and how he defies the expectations of his occupational role in order to warn the migrants. The poem slows to enable further emphasis on instances of enjambment, as in: \u201cHe must\u2019ve remembered his family \/ over the border,\u201d which functions to give a double meaning to \u2018over the border\u2019 as it indicates both the family\u2019s physical location as well as the officer\u2019s prioritization of his family over his prioritization of his duty to the Border Patrol.<\/span><\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/strong> Javier Zamora\u2019s \u201cLet Me Try Again,\u201d is concerned not only with the politics involved in the process of migrating but also with the politics of relaying a narrative about migrating. The poem begins with the speaker\u2019s direct address to the audience: \u201cI could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted \/ after … Continue reading \u201cLet Me Try Again\u201d by Javier Zamora, from Unaccompanied (2017)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3612,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3612"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nZamora, Javier. <\/span>Unaccompanied. <\/span><\/i>Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2017. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"