{"id":2418,"date":"2023-10-11T22:38:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T02:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2418"},"modified":"2023-10-11T22:38:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T02:38:43","slug":"radical-repetition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2023\/10\/11\/radical-repetition\/","title":{"rendered":"Radical Repetition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps one of things that makes Qwo-Li Driskil\u2019s poem <\/span>For Matthew<\/span><\/i> so devastating is the use of repetition throughout the poem. This technique is used in five different ways throughout the writing. The first being the repetition of various US cities and their acts of protest against the treatment of Matthew: \u201cIn Seattle\u2026\u201d, \u201dIn San Fransisco\u2026\u201d, \u201cIn DC\u2026\u201d, \u201cIn Laramie\u2026\u201d. This emphasizes the sheer magnitude and national outreach of the protests following incident and highlights the presence of the queer community in one man\u2019s story. Repetition is then used in two different ways simultaneously; first, in form through the use of parentheses and also in the anaphora within these parentheses with the phrase \u201cI wanted\u2026\u201d echoing the speaker\u2019s internal anger. The parentheses act as a way of showing that these desires the speaker express are suppressed and secondary (or possibly complimentary) to the cities that precede these statements. The use of couplets in pairing cities with these angry and almost violent thoughts allows the cities to be separated in poetic form in addition to being geographically separated in a more literal sense. The contrast between the calm protests in each city, and the enraged desires of the speaker is quite powerful and, in my opinion, speaks to the idea of peacefully protesting in order to preserve the integrity of a movement, even when the movement itself is fueled by rage within the protesters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Even when this pattern of cities and desires breaks away, we are still left with even more repetition: \u201cThousands upon thousands say <\/span>Never Again, Never Again<\/span><\/i>.\u201d Once again tying emotion and personal experience with community and numbers; the movement is pushed forward by the people, their simple message emphasized over and over again, from city to city, protest to protest. Then to end the poem, the speaker brings together all previous repeated ideas with the use of the pronoun \u201cwe\u201d, merging the personal parenthetical thoughts with that of the protesting cities and, perhaps most importantly, the relationship between Matthew and the speaker. \u201cWe have no more time\u201d is a statement of fact, one repeated three times, but never losing impact. The continuous repetition reflects, not just on the death of Matthew, but also upon that of many other queer people fallen victim to hate crimes and ignorant acts of violence. The kinds of widespread protests sparked by what happened to Matthew are nothing new to the queer community, and though the person being memorialized or the means of protest vary, the situations somehow seem very repetitive. The use of the Audre Lorde quote at the top of the poem \u201cI have died too many deaths that were not mine\u201d solidifies this underlying theme of connection and widespread feelings of grief felt across large parts of queer communities across the nation (world?).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps one of things that makes Qwo-Li Driskil\u2019s poem For Matthew so devastating is the use of repetition throughout the poem. This technique is used in five different ways throughout the writing. The first being the repetition of various US cities and their acts of protest against the treatment of Matthew: \u201cIn Seattle\u2026\u201d, \u201dIn San … Continue reading Radical Repetition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}