{"id":169,"date":"2021-02-08T13:01:34","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T18:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/?p=169"},"modified":"2021-02-08T13:25:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T18:25:01","slug":"blog-post-1-extended-close-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/02\/08\/blog-post-1-extended-close-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"In Those Years: Finding Identity in Isolation"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Those Years<\/strong>
\nIn those years, people will say, we lost track
\nof the meaning of we<\/i>, of you<\/i>
\nwe found ourselves *<\/p>\n

reduced to I\u00a0<\/i>
\nand the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible:
\nwe were trying to live a personal life
\nand, yes, that was the only life
\nwe could bear witness to<\/p>\n

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
\ninto our personal weather
\nThey were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
\nalong the shore, through the rags of fog
\nwhere we stood, saying I<\/i><\/p>\n

I think this passage* is about individuality and being caught up with oneself as opposed to looking outwards into the world. There is a focus on introspection as seen with the words \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cyou\u201d as opposed to \u201cI\u201d. The first line speaks to a contemplative stance that looks back on a time where individuality became the prime focus and became all-consuming (we see this in the wording \u201cwe lost track\u201d). The second line speaks to what was lost, which was a collectivist view (we see this with the use of \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cyou\u201d). The third line is so interesting because it both implies a collective \u201courselves\u201d but also implies an individual finding of oneself, as the sentence uses \u201courselves\u201d instead of \u201courself\u201d, implying this discovery is individualistic.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The passage relates to the entirety of the piece in the way that the whole piece shares a theme of a dichotomy between collectivism and individualism. The first stanza is used to introduce the second stanza, which focuses on \u201cpersonal life\u201d being the only focus of one\u2019s life and perhaps one\u2019s existence. Perhaps this solitary existence symbolizes a coping mechanism for queer individuals who feel alone in their sexual orientation and identity because they exist in a time where heteronormativity was overpowering. The words, \u201cthat was the only life we could bear witness to\u201d indicates how one\u2019s oppressive, ignorant, and uneducated external environment affects one\u2019s knowledge about one\u2019s queerness, convincing them that something is inherently wrong with them. This then leads into the third stanza, which focuses on how, as much as one tries to remain \u2018in hiding\u2019 and isolated because of fear of how others will view and treat them,\u00a0 past wide-held beliefs about queerness will constantly affect how someone exists in the world, whether that \u2018advice\u2019 is welcome by the individual or not (\u201cBut the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think this poem relates to our class discussions and concepts in that it focuses on how one\u2019s identity, specifically one\u2019s sexual orientation, is impacted by those who came before (\u201chistory\u201d) as well as experiences of abnormality and isolation that can come with identifying as a member of the LGBTQ individual. It speaks to the exhaustion and fountain of emotions that comes with the all-encompassing and overwhelming feelings of confusion (\u201cwe lost track\u00a0<\/span>of the meaning\u201d) and of feeling like an outcast (\u201creduced to <\/span>I <\/span><\/i>and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves * reduced to I\u00a0 and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and, yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But … Continue reading In Those Years: Finding Identity in Isolation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}