9-25-08 Week Four Thursday

In our haste to get the Author Packet together I missed the deadline for the class discussion questions for Tracy K. Smith. So...since I did the work and want to do something with them I figured I would post them as my Thursday Journal:

1) When smith was asked why she titled her book of poems "The Body's Question" she responded: "the title was something that came to me only after I started thinking of my individual poems as a unified body of work. I realized that, more and more, the poems were valuable to me as sites of questioning and exploration rather than for their ability to lead me to answers or resolutions."
How does this affect the meaning of "apatite", do we think the title was pulled from the poem to make a clever name for the collection, or visa-versa? How does this affect the value of that particular poem in its relation to the work, as we were discussing last class?

2) In Elizabeth Alexander's blurb of Tracy K. Smith she comments "If duende were wine, it would certainly be red; if edible, it would be meat cooked rare, coffee taken black stinky cheese, bittersweet chocolate."
If "The Body's Question were wine or food...what would it be? Do you think all poets should be reviewed using food metaphors? (the right answer is yes)

3) In an interview when asked about her use of the personal in her work, the speaker often being an I in her poems, and when this happened in the world of poetry (e.g. post modern?) Tracy responds:
"When I think about how truth that [writing in modernist style] is and has been in African American poetry, I realize the America has never been the same thing to whites as it has been to blacks. Modernism was born in part out of the shock and disillusion and shattering of the self, brought on by the atrocities of WW!. Maybe the biggest shock was the fact that, as Americans, these writers were somehow implicated by all of this- were responsible on a systemic level. But African Americans were never that complicit; they weren't allowed to forget that a division existed between American and themselves. SO while the nuances of self were guiding the modernist aesthetic, the energy at work within and upon the poems of the Harlem Renaissance was much more aware of the context within which the poems and speakers existed. And that context become a large part of the subject of those poems. This is simplification, but I cant help thinking that these key differences have never gone away." (Smith)

Do we see the same "awareness of context withing which the poems and speaker exist" In the body's question as Tracy attributes to the African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance?

How does Tracy situate herself in relation to the legacy of African-American literature is she implying this awareness was constricting or did it allow Africa American lit more options than the whit modern writers of the time?

4) In his introduction of the Body's Question Kevin Young writes:
"Desire here often means the desire for desire, and a desire for language itself"

What does this mean? How would YOU articulate what he is trying to say? Do you agree? Where in what poems, do we see a 'desire for desire'?

5) Commenting on Duende Elizabeth Alexander writes:
"Writers and musicians have explored the concept of Duende, which might in English translate to a kind of existential blues.Smith is not interested in sadness, per se. Rather in the strange music of these poems.

How does Tracy's work value and utilize the Lyrical? If the title could translate to 'existential blues' is there an inherent musical quality of her work and where does it come from?

9-22-08 Week Four Monday

Today in class we discussed The Body's Question which I have only read about half of, but so far I very much like. I had not heard of Tracy K. Smith, or any of the authors in the VWS, before this class and I feel very privileged for this opportunity of exposure. In the introduction given by Kevin Young he briefly explains her poetry in a way that made me appreciate the pieces more.

In other readings for this "reading journal" of mine I am reading Shakespeare's tragedies for a course I am in with Professor Venturo. We have a paper due tomorrow, which is difficult in that 'first paper of the semester way'. I have Hamlet on my mind. Whenever I am studding old Literature intensely I start to unconsciously shift my thoughts into whatever style I'm reading, like my internal monologue starts to sound like Austen etc. Anyway lately I've found myself composing self-pitying soliloquy's about my existential woe without really meaning to, the word 'thou' is being used a lot. But through all of this I love Shakespeare of course, who doesn't hes like the Elvis of writing, and I secretly love writing papers so its a stressful but fun time.