Author: chameleon

Verse novels are actually pretty amazing

I was struck by our conversation in class surrounding the ending of chapter 1, “Justice” from An Autobiography of Red. I was wary of this book specifically because I thought it might be hard to understand due to its verse, but that hasn’t been true so far. I believe that the primary reason for this retelling’s coherency and poignancy is actually Anne Carson’s choice to write in verse. I am going to look briefly at how poetry can bring us closer to the text, and how this serves this particular story well. I would also like to compare An Autobiography of Red to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, to emphasize how the verse form is a powerful tool in the literary world.

The excerpt from An Autobiography of Red that I would like to focus on is, “gripping his new bookbag tight/ in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,/ while the first snows of winter/ floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced/ all trace of the world” (l.55-58). Geryon is able to recall these moments in great detail because of the verse form. What’s so intriguing about poetry is its ability to draw the reader in extremely close. In some ways, there is an expectation that this is what poetry will do— make the reader truly understand the human experience through detail. There is a focus on slowness and careful examination, as poetry often doesn’t need to be as expansive as an entire novel. In that way, it allows for lines like these that don’t explicitly further the plot, but provide sensory details that suggest Geryon’s isolation.


 When looking for connections to make with this text, I kept coming back to The Buried Giant. I’m currently reading this novel for another English course, and one of the themes it discusses is memory— or the loss of it. Set in a post-Arthurian England, the characters are haunted by a mist that robs them of their memory. Essentially, it is a collective loss of memory regarding the traumas they faced during war. The writing style in this book is starkly different from that of An Autobiography of Red. Although much of the prose is detail-oriented, it is difficult to slow down on a single memory, because there are so few. Here, the story needs the ability to move forward while still describing all that has happened in the present. Where prose works to convey the themes in The Buried Giant, it would be unlikely to serve An Autobiography of Red well. Yet, verse is sometimes less enthusiastically read because of its apparent differentiation from traditional prose. The retelling of this myth, which draws itself in closely to Geryon as a character, begs for the reflectiveness that poetry can bring through the examination of details. Verse, however arduous it may be to read, is a crucial component of literature, and one that Carson was masterful in choosing for this story.

 

More than a caricature

The section of Qwo-Li Driskill’s “(Auto)biography of Mad” I found myself coming back to is titled “Fear.” The poem in its entirety is harrowing, it rather clinically recounts the symptoms of the systemic oppression of indigenous Americans. “Fear,” however, seems to slightly deviate from some of the hard-hitting words and phrases that come before it, like the opening: “Abuse, Physical, ii, 3; / Sexual, Age 4; 28” (l.2-3). In some ways, it may seem counterintuitive to have some sort of incongruity in a poem of this magnitude— maybe it should all be unequivocally dark. I think that Driskill’s intent in including this section is to emphasize that people really are much more than just their trauma and life circumstances. Not every facet of a person is a direct result of their traumatic experiences. This is significant as it can help us in further humanizing, and aiding, minority groups of which we are not a part. 

The section of “Fear” that I would like to point to is, “of hairs on the backs of hands, 14; / of loud noises, 19-28; / of men, 4, 14, 46, 128; / of pencils, ix, 4, 14, 26-28; / of people hiding in laundry piles, 3-28” (l.56-62). What first struck me about this section was the fact that I could make a clear link between some of these fears and the possible trauma that the narrator underwent. Loud noises and men as triggers are often attributed to trauma, and we can more readily understand why those would evoke an anxiety response. What about “hairs on the backs of hands,” or “pencils,” or “people hiding in laundry piles?” I believe those bring a sense of humanity to the poem that was intended to make this section even more impactful. While these fears could be related to trauma, they could also just be the result of being a human. People who have undergone horrific violence and trauma are still humans. They may have an irrational fear of “hairs on the backs of hands” for no particular reason. By attributing entire beings to their worst experiences, we reduce them to caricatures, rather than people.

This idea of fear as a natural byproduct of humanity is important to the overall theme of Driskill’s poems, which in turn relates to much of our course content. Yes, the narrator in Driskill’s poem “Map of the Americas” is angry about the cruelty their people have faced, but is also able to love a white man. In “Cherokee Love Haiku,” the narrator recounts a loving encounter, where, in “For Matthew,” the narrator, “…wanted the city to burn” (l.11). Indigenous people, queer people, people of color, women— they’re all people. They all deserve the space to have irrational fears, to mourn, and to love. In understanding that, we can then make appropriate space for all types of people, and dismantle oppressive systems. 

Dissecting Words

In the reading, “Losing Home,” Eli Clare treats words the same way he treats people— with incredible patience and a need to understand their nuance. It seems at times as if Clare’s unrelenting curiosity about a world that has betrayed him is almost un-human— that one should not want to analyze an environment that abused them. Yet, Clare’s words have a healing power in the way that they are treated with such grace. I think Clare dissects words in this chapter to show how words, and the bodies to which they are ascribed, are deeply multi-faceted. This is significant as it shows how the ever-evolving nature of language can allow for reflection, acceptance, and healing— especially in queer spaces.

This chapter in particular centers around the exploration of three words that all relate to Clare’s experience of “losing home.” They are: “Queer. Exile. Class” (Clare 31). Clare’s description of “exile” is poignant: “Let me return now to exile. It is a big word, a hard word. It implies not only loss, but a sense of allegiance and connection– however ambivalent– to the place left behind, an attitude of mourning rather than of good riddance” (Clare 35). Too often, words are thrown around without paying attention to their meaning. People often assume that everyone knows a word to carry the same definition. Clare takes the time to break down and show that “exile,” something that often has a larger-than-life, sometimes “mythical” feel of casting out the “bad guy,” can actually imply allegiance and grief. To say that a person has been exiled may not just imply anger and wrongdoing, but also a profound sense of loss. Language is a way of attempting to convey unique experiences in a universally comprehensible way— so it is no surprise that one word can have various connotations.

Humanity has a tendency to categorize words, people— bodies. If a word like “exile” can have a whole host of implications, what does that say about race, class, or queerness? This ambiguity allows space for healing. This way, “queer” does not imply solely joy or pain. It is evolving, encompassing the experiences of each person to which it applies, in the same way “exile” does. There is altogether universality and individuality in language. Clare’s analysis of language allows people to subvert their categories and accept that their bodies exist at once in many different spaces. This chapter pushes us to allow ourselves grace— if language has copious complex meanings and descriptions, and we define ourselves with language, then so do we. Accepting this can be a comforting, healing thing.

Closeness Regardless of Gender

Jeanette Winterson’s decision to avoid using pronouns for the main character is glaringly obvious through the entirety of the novel. As humans living in a society obsessed with categories and the concept of binaries in regards to gender, it is easy to project a certain gender onto the main character. This decision could be based on context clues that are typically associated with gender roles, or personal internal struggle. Just because the main character does not use gendered pronouns does not mean that this text is devoid of them. In fact, the repetition of pronouns in reference to the narrator’s lovers reveals that the text as a whole is about the experiences of closeness with the body that all types of people can have. There is no definitive mandate of who can and cannot experience physical and emotional closeness with a person. 

When yearning for Louise after they have left her, the narrator muses, “Her smell. Specific Louise smell. Her hair” (110). The short sentences at the beginning of the paragraph highlight these sensory details. Instead of going into great detail about what Louise’s specific scent is, the narrator choses to leave the reader with fragments. These fragments actually serve to enhance the closeness between the reader and Louise– they emphasize Louise’s femininity that is essential to her smell, to her hair. They let the audience know that the narrator is experiencing and admiring Louise for all of her, regardless of who the narrator may be. The narrator’s gender is not crucial in appreciating and experiencing another person. 

These details also allow the audience to imagine what scents or sights might be associated with femininity in their minds. “Her smell” could be anything. Is it traditionally feminine, floral, fragrant and fruity? Or is Louise’s smell something else, like linen, mahogany, or patchouli? It could be any of those, that is a decision the reader must make using what they know of Louise, and their conceptions of femininity in general. What does “her” mean when isolated from the influence of the narrator’s gender? This allows the reader to insert their own ideas, and forge their own closeness with Louise independent of how they themselves might identify.