Class Blog

Dirty-haired boy, my rascal, my sacrifice. Never

an easy dream. I watch him wrestle my shadow, eyelids

trembling, one fist ready for me.

Sacrifice is an often repeated message in Jones’ work. These lines reveal irrepressible struggle, creating the impression that “sacrifice” is not necessarily a choice. While canonically within the context of the biblical father/son struggle, I read it differently. To live truely gay men exchange one happiness for another, the pretend bliss of being closeted and accepted for that of their joy being known. “Eyelids trembling” is an example of the contrast, the struggle Jones draws. “Trembling” as a word often implies fear, but eyelids may tremble also when one is falling asleep, fighting it, falling. “Never an easy dream”. Fear as well as rest. The “ready” fist could be prepared for attack or protection of the narrator; perceived protection of self expressed in striking out at him, he who draws back the blinds over vulnerability. These lines can be interpreted to convey the intersection of bliss and utter violence, physical and not, that can be within gay love.

I think the poem “Kudzu,” by Saeed Jones, is about how he feels as if he does not belong within his society. Kudzu is an extremely fast-growing invasive plant species that is native to Eastern Asia. Kudzu was introduced to the United States in the late 19th century, and the plant completely took over the South of the United States. The poem is shaped on the page to match the nature of vines, in a wavy line down the page.  

Jones, who was born in Tennessee and grew up in a rural Texas town, alludes to Kudzu because he also feels as if he does not belong due to his sexuality. Jones conveys the theme of estrangement within the poem with the lines, “Pines turn their backs / on me. They know / what I can do / with the wrap of my legs” (30). The pines in this passage are symbolic of the people in Jones’ life, and the metaphor suggests that the people in Jones’ life are turning their backs on him due to his sexuality. Jones also makes indirect references to his estrangement in the poem, including, “I won’t be forgiven / for what I’ve made / of myself” (30). With this passage, I think Jones references his sexuality as what he has made for himself and will not be forgiven by those around him. The passage is also written in such a way that he blames himself for his sexual deviance rather than the people around him, showing that Jones also battles with his own internalized homophobia. He suggests, by using the word “made,” that his sexuality was an active choice that he made, rather than it being completely natural. 

I believe Adrienne Rich’s poem “In Those Years” is a striking acknowledgement of the inherent politicalization of queer identity. It calls attention to the expectation that queer people have a responsibility outside of their own happiness, and that to focus on only finding themselves would be selfish.

Rich states that “people will say, we lost track / of the meaning of we, of you” and that “the whole thing became / silly, ironic, terrible: / we were trying to live a personal life”. I interpret this to mean that she believes there to have been judgement directed towards queer people just being queer for the sake of it being who they are. Although obviously queer people are just as entitled to the experience of self-discovery and contentedness as straight people, “people,” perhaps meaning society, find that to be unacceptable. She also uses the phrase “the great dark bird of history” when referring to those who dissent to the act of self-discovery. This mention of “history” is what makes me think there is a political tone to this poem.

When queer people are putting themselves out there in a way that can be commodified for the sake of progressiveness, it is perhaps more palatable to straight people. They can view queerness as an abstract political concept they can gain moral “points” for supporting. Sedgewick discusses the idea I am trying to get at in the chapter “Queer and Now” when she points out the popularity of her class with straight students.

On the other hand, when queer people engage in self-expression simply to be at peace with themselves, it is “silly, ironic, terrible,” otherwise translated to uncomfortable for society, which I believe to be the crux of this poem.

“Climb the broken stone stairs into the hills. / Climb them into the night’s throat.” (23)

This poem makes me think about the point of view of the speaker, one apparently from the point of view of a coyote. Likening the coyote cry to a lost woman evokes a sense of longing for company while maintaining the sense of fear induced by a coyote howl. Yet, I don’t find this coyote-speaker to be coming from a place of ill-intent.

Jones’ poetry in this collection balances a fine line between a sort of unity with the rest of the world and an incredible isolation from anything beyond the immediate self. (By immediate self I mean the self unencumbered by external social pressures—for Jones, these pressures often include his own family, unfamiliar lovers, or the heteronormative structures of society as a whole.) The lines “She needs you / like I need you” (23) sort of lead me to thinking about the hedgehog’s dilemma with a small caveat; rather than the hedgehog’s pricks keeping people from getting close, people’s own fear of the coyote prevent them from interacting with the coyote in the way that the coyote needs.

The effect of this point of view is that the poem is able to bring about a sense of identity with the feeling of being feared. These two lines (“Climb…”) in particular almost feel demanding from the speaker, pleading for the reader to face what unnerves them.

The poem “History, according to Boy” is a collection of poems that exposes the feeling of guilt, invisibility, physical and psychological violence that pervade the lives of LGBT people. The sections are episodes that remained ingrained in Saaed Jones’s mind during his teenage years.

Jones had a blue journal in which he would eternalise these moments through his writing. It wasn’t always easy for him to write these thoughts, though. In the essay “A Poet’s Boyhood at the Burning Crossroads”, Jones said “There was no one moment in which I was suddenly able to shatter silence into language (2).” He had never had space to talk about his sexuality with his family. Silence was the rule. The constant silencing made it difficult for Jones to process his own feelings and write about how he feels.

In the essay, we learn that Jones has starting writing about himself as a gay man when he came out to his close friends. In section 5, however, he was only 12. In “History, according to Boy”, Jones is the “Boy”. He talks about various micro-violences that had happened to him, but which are universal in the sense that they represent the silencing and hurt that LGBT people have to go through since they are kids. The micro-violences can be blatant (when D., a classmate, calls Jones a fag, for example) or very subtle. The one we see in section 5 is subtle, but has managed to remain in Jones’s mind.

Jones’s father dims his smile when seeing his son hopping after shooting precisely.  This second-long action, so subtle, has survived in Jones’s mind through the years. The poet was very young and hadn’t come into terms with his sexuality, but this micro-violence instills in him the poison of self-shame and guilt.

“Cold air / dries her muddy footprints to a path / of hard, open mouths. If she retraces her steps, / the footprints will eat her” (Jones, 23). 

Coyote Cry narrates a man speaking to an unknown person by telling them the story of a woman running through hills. The unnamed woman cannot retrace her footsteps because doing so would obscure her story. Her feet would not fit into the original prints neatly, creating a shapeless and unidentifiable blob. She would lose her story—her footprints—by trying to come back the way she came. These lines seem to urge the reader away from retracing their own footsteps, either literally or metaphorically.  

Along with her footsteps holding a story, nature is also holding her story. Eventually, the footsteps will wash away with the rest of the mud, debris, and grass of the hills. However, she will have forever impacted the story of the hills with her steps. The mud will build over differently if she walks back over her steps, changing the way the world keeps her story. Jones writes, a line later, “Ragged pines snatch her cries and keep them. / That’s why I cry” (23).  

Perhaps Jones is saying that, much like her footsteps in the mud, her cries and steps will later impact the narrator. Despite the narrator never visiting these woods nor knowing if this woman exists outside their imagination, they know that the way nature holds stories will later come back to tell another story. Her cries influence his cries, and her steps may influence his as time goes on.  

The poem itself is quite a disarrayed piece of work, yet it implies brilliant queer masculinity. The dress was essentially used as the main topic to portray the queerness of a man, yet it hides the qualities that synchronize with what of a woman – femininity. The dress – being the most repeated word in this poem: provides a general viewpoint of a woman and how a man usually treats the woman, but the implication here it’s the love of the man for the man in the dress; and that love is treated for the dress, which “ruined everything”.  The final part of this poem hints at the confusion of a queer man in this position, he wanted to be loved by a man like how he loves his woman, but should he be himself, or be the woman for the man to love.

My thoughts on this poem I mostly regarding the identity topic, as it shows the confusion between masculinity and femininity – the dress, while masculinity is the person in the dress. “I don’t even know what I am” – what I am really trying to say here, according to this line is that I think these lines are a portrayal of the confused position of a queer man between masculinity and femininity, and ultimately identity. The matter of identity should have something to do with the title as well, since “Drag” definitely relates to the phrase “Drag Queen” – a male with exaggerated feministic features/decorations. In this context, this feature is the dress. The expression of confusion in the sense of gender identity throughout the poem and the femininity hinted in the dress was the brilliance that defined his current state: a man with a mix of unwitherable emotions.

In Saeed Jones Poem “Don’t let the Sun Shine on you” in his collection of poems Prelude to a Bruise there is a repetition of the phrases around the sun setting. One of the lines reads “Thank God it’s not dark…yet” (Jones 19). My surface level interpretation is that the sun is setting and it’s getting dark but the person who the story is about, which I assume to be Jones, a black man, is fearful of this. His fear is shown in the fact that he is thankful that it’s not dark yet. Jones reads a sign where the first part of it says, “N*GGIER DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU” (Jones 19). These words make it more clear to me that Jones is afraid of what will happen when it gets dark. The words leave an impending sense of danger in the narrator since the sun has not set yet and the sign. In another poem “Jasper, 1998” Jones details an event where I’m sure that a pair of white men seem to have given him a ride and then beat him up. This poem and the other one mentioned seem to be alluding to the racism that Jones faced. The poem takes a second person view and continues to refer to “you” throughout the poem; this is similar to how the sign speaks in second person as well. It is speaking to the person reading it, specifically the black person reading it. So I think that with this Jones making the reader become him in that moment after reading the sign-that frightened black boy who is hopeful that he will get somewhere safe before sundown.