writersreadconcordia How Poems Work, poetry, Uncategorized

The Things We Tell Each Other: A Response to Claudia Rankine’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely”

In anticipation of Claudia Rankine’s visit to Concordia University this week we will feature writing that responds to Rankine’s works Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. Rankine will be giving a public reading at 7pm, March 10, 2017 in the DeSeve Cinema in Concordia’s Library building on de Maisonneuve. Books will be for sale by the Co-op bookstore and Rankine will be available for signing after the reading.

The Things We Tell Each Other: A Response to Claudia Rankine’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely”

By Eli Lynch

DontLetMeBeLonelyMy therapist tells me it’s important to understand that something can be more than one thing at a time; multiple truths can exist at the same time.  This is a hard fact I need to learn, and as I reread Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), I feel Claudia Rankine’s speaker reiterating this to me, “I could choose that […] or rather I could be all that I am – fictional,” (104) and the complexity of being, the choices and the differences, all become part of this fiction. The things we tell each other to feel better or worse.

Z texts me “truths are multiple” and sends me a juggling emoji. This reiteration grounds me, reminds me that I’m here, with this book, existing in multiplicities. I start looking for more grounding truths. I start carrying Rankine’s book around, rereading passages whenever I feel sad or lonely or lost, in the metro, at work, during parties.

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely feels relevant every time I read it, which speaks to the strength and multiplicity of Rankine’s poems, of her words, of her perspective. In times when the inherent racism and misogyny of the world is becoming more obvious even to people not directly affected, the subtleties of Rankine’s criticisms of class, race, and privilege are  particularly important. When the speaker says, “In third world countries, I have felt overwhelmingly American, calcium-rich, privileged, and white,” Rankine is addressing the privilege money and class afford her. While the idea that a black woman feels white initially confuses, given the historical and ongoing mistreatment of black people around the world, the comparison of the nursing home and the third world country works particularly well. While I could paraphrase Rankine’s words, it is important to share the exact quote. I read these words  to my friend while they bake at a café, on the phone to my best friend, I copy them down for you: 

Here I feel young, lucky, and sad. Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it’s been a martyr for the American dream, it’s been neutralized, co-opted by our cultures to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy, it meant exceptionally bad, deplorable, shameful, it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant falling heavily, and it meant of a colour; dark. It meant dark in colour, to darken. It meant me. I felt sad. (108)

The first time I read Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, I had just made the choice not to  fly to the Middle East (I later rebooked my flight due to convincing on my sister’s part). I had grounded myself here in Montreal, in the appearance of safety. In what appeared to be living. Having meant to fly to Lebanon that day, with a layover in Turkey, I sat staring at my phone in my new and empty apartment, wondering how I might have just missed death.  A couple of hours before I was supposed to fly into Turkey, a bomb went off in the Istanbul Atatürk airport, killing forty-five people. At the time, I didn’t feel much. But later, questioning my continued mourning, my survivor’s guilt started to sink in. This phenomenon happened a lot during 9/11; a documentary was made about people who weren’t on the plane that day, who were supposed to be, who missed their flight, and also missed their death. They felt immense guilt. While initially you may read this and wonder how someone willfeel bad when they have been afforded the chance to live, but imagine the weight of death hanging over you the way it hung over them. The weight of death hung over me, hung over the 9/11 survivors, hangs over Rankine’s speaker throughout Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. Rankine’s speaker, addressing the loss around them, seems to feel survivor’s guilt. Maybe this is the speaker’s sadness. And loneliness. However, despite the death permeating through Rankine’s book, the poems are alive, and the feeling one gets when reading them is a moment of alive.

DontLetmebelonely_Here        

But isn’t being alive just holding on to something that will keep you going and spark some feeling in you, whether you understand it or not? Another way of thinking about being alive is being grounded. When your partner holds your hand while you’re having a panic attack, when you drink water after crying, when your best friend tells you “I am here for you,” when you make a decision that feels right for you. Rankine’s book uses these same grounding methods, the end of the lyric articulating this sentiment. The speakers says, “Here. I am here,” grounding their body in the immediate, an image of a billboard stuck into the ground with the word HERE on it accompanying the text. The speaker continues, “This conflation of the solidity of presence with the offering of this same presence perhaps has everything to do with being alive” (130). The lyric is ends saying, despite all of this, despite the fatigue and the loneliness, the hope, the family, despite capitalism and racism, I am here. You are here. “Why are we here if not for each other” (62).

hannahjosepha poetry, student driven

How Poems Work: “The Stricture” by Lisa Robertson

From Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip.

 

‘The 69 heads of Messerschmidt cast in lead are not heaven.’

‘The magnetic cures of Mesmer on the plastic soul are more

difficult to characterize.’

‘The heavens of Flanders are like textile in lustrousness –

a bridal textile.’

‘We see the classic theme of a woman suffering, with pearl-

sized nipples, pink cotton billowing or nacrous skin

sprouting feathers.’

‘Here is a perfume burner of Khorasan, a bird sitting on top.’

‘Birds perch on heaven habitually. They are not certainty-

seekers.’

 

I wanted to think into the stricture of appearances.

There was a time when I came close.

To help the problem I changed into a clematis, I changed into

a dog, I changed into a perfumed smoke.

Some of my organs were outside history, which gave me an

advantage.

Place here the idea of a necessary inconspicuousness.

 

‘This is wrong’

‘This is beautiful’

‘This is social’

‘This is not thinking’

 

It is the handiwork of appearing only.

 

This is the topic we discussed in your kitchen this winter.

I said I didn’t know what thinking is.

You said you were trying to understand your sense of an

inner voice, which was separate from thinking.

I didn’t understand.

I let myself go blank.

 

I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing

it out, like sand.

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*Information about a live marathon reading of Debbie: An Epic and Lisa Robertson & Laura Broadbent’s reading at Concordia on Friday Oct. 21st is below.

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The poem opens with nonspecific claims from at least one unidentified, quoted speaker. We are told that “the…heads…are not heaven,” and “the magnetic cures…are [even] more difficult to characterize.” We do not know what the heads are, but we know what they are not, and we know that the cures are more difficult to characterize than these heads that are only characterized by their lack of description. These claims are presented as truths, and we are meant to accept them despite not knowing much and not even knowing the identity of the speaker, the authority. The first stanza is full of allusions to different times and places, pulling the reader from Flanders, to Khorasan (pre-2004 Iran), to heaven. We are inundated with images that increase in lushness, beginning with the heaviness of lead, the smooth synthetic of plastic, onto textile—bridal textile—and “pearl-sized nipples, pink cotton billowing” (here, Robertson names the textile and brings in colour). Then we are met with images of birds: the suffering woman sprouts feathers, a bird sits on a perfume burner, birds perch on heaven…

I was intimidated by this sensorial blitz at first; it is confusing. However, confusion is not a negative state in which to encounter a poem. It provokes thought, it is a productive feeling—like the birds, who are “not certainty-seekers,” Lisa Robertson welcomes uncertainty in her poetry. The speaker admits uncertainty in trying to think about the stricture of appearances and can only “[come] close” to thinking about it. Consider the relationship between the images in the first stanza and the stricture of appearances. A stricture can mean either a simple restriction, or a critical or censorial remark or instruction. We know that information is being censored, but how are we to engage with a poem called “The Stricture?” Is the whole poem, itself, a stricture, and in what way?

Robertson employs gendered language and imagery to explore the historical trajectories of women’s oppression; the theme of a woman suffering is, after all, “classic.” The suffering woman who sprouts feathers parallels the speaker’s metamorphoses in the second stanza. In this initial transformation, in the growing of feathers, the woman almost becomes a bird (another “classic” theme), seeking uncertainty and freedom from suffering. In order to even try to think about the stricture of appearances, which is deeply engrained in both sociocultural ideologies and in the body, the speaker transforms into different bodies and defies the stricture of her own body: she becomes a flower, a dog, and even smoke (perhaps the “perfumed smoke” from the Khorasan burner), which is not living, has no organs, is not even a solid. The stricture of appearances is so entangled in impositions of womanness or womanhood that one can only come close to understanding—or even thinking about—it if one’s organs, specifically one’s reproductive and sexual organs, are outside history. History dictates how we perceive things like standards of beauty, for example, so the stricture is historical and history itself is a stricture, critical and censorial. Confusion is necessary because confusion disrupts.

The next stanza makes firm claims but, again, we do not know who is speaking. Is this a dialogue? A series of remarks from one person? The speaker, or a judge? What follows is more gendered language and imagery: we read “handiwork” and think “handicraft,” or what is traditionally written off as “women’s work.” We are brought into the space of the kitchen, the pelvis of the house, which is a gendered space, also a stricture. Space, in Robertson’s poetry, is never incidental. Time and space seem layered and nonlinear, from the transient images and temporalities in the first stanza, to the modalities of occupying space, either as a shape-shifting smoke cloud or a dog—how do these bodies penetrate space differently, and isn’t the idea of “penetration” also gendered? We must also consider the space of the page, another stricture, upon which the elements of the poem exist.

“You” enters the poem in the second last stanza—but who is “you?” Perhaps “you” is the inner voice of the poem, which is otherwise thinking. We know that, in her poetic practice, Lisa Robertson researches ferociously before writing. So while the content of the poem can be very cerebral, very complex and layered and factual, perhaps the “you” is the opposite. The “you” is here to induce confusion and to disrupt. The speaker responds to “you” with, “I didn’t understand,” and claims uncertainty within their own narration. In throwing everything out that is doubtful, the speaker “[goes] blank.” Therefore, everything is doubtful, and uncertainty inhabits this limitless, liminal space. However, “[going] blank” is perhaps not entirely possible. In order to go blank one would have to free one’s organs from history and escape the body. Language functions in the poem like it does on the body: language is also a stricture and lives both on the page and within us. We are left with the image of sand, which, in relation to history, evokes the hourglass, time in flux, unfixed and uncertain. The speaker’s time is up, the poem is up, but the poem remains. Even if all the copies of this poem were to dissolve into smoke tomorrow, the poem continues to exist, at least in the context of this exchange, immortalized in this way and defying the stricture of time.

-HJK

Come to an evening with Lisa Robertson and Laura Broadbent tomorrow, October 21st, at 7pm. York Amphitheatre, EV 1.605, 1515 Rue St. Catherine. Robertson’s Debbie: An Epic will be performed in its entirety on Friday, October 21st in LB 671.05 at Concordia University’s LB building from 2 PM – 5 PM.

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writersreadconcordia poetry, prose, text

Lisa Robertson on Dionne Brand (2001/2013/2016)

brandbook

In another place, not here, a woman might touch
something between beauty and nowhere, back there
and here, might pass hand over hand her own
trembling life, but I have tried to imagine a sea not
bleeding, a girl’s glance full as a verse, a woman
growing old and never crying to a radio hissing of a
black boy’s murder. I have tried to keep my throat
gurgling like a bird’s. I have listened to the hard
gossip of race that inhabits this road. Even in this I
have tried to hum mud and feathers and sit peacefully
in this foliage of bones and rain. I have chewed a few
votive leaves here, their taste already disenchanting
my mothers. I have tried to write this thing calmly
even as its lines burn to a close. I have come to know
something simple. Each sentence realised or
dreamed jumps like a pulse with history and takes a
side. What I say in any language is told in faultless
knowledge of skin, in drunkenness and weeping,
told as a woman without matches and tinder, not in
words and in words and in words learned by heart,
told in secret and not in secret, and listen, does not
burn out or waste and is plenty and pitiless and loves.

from No Language is Neutral, Dionne Brand, (McClelland & Stewart)

How is it possible to inhabit a political environment that absolves itself of the responsibility to sustain life? For those constrained to the economic and racial margins, finding paths through a city or a language has always been a political act. This poem charts such fragile paths.

Here is language that honours the ethical impossibility of achieving a single position, and the necessarily vulnerable climate of that impossibility. In the face of irreparable injustice, the poem calls on the fragile dignity of the skin and the body, the fragility of the continuous present.

The title cites a line from Caribbean poet Derek Walcott’s Midsummer. Elsewhere, in his 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Walcott reminded: “The history of the world, by which of course we mean Europe, is a record of intertribal lacerations, of ethnic cleansings.” In such a world, “spiritual stubbornness, a sublime stupidity, is what makes the occupation of poetry endure, when there are so many things that should make it futile.” Dionne Brand is blessed with such spiritual stubbornness. Against the reductive and decisive expletives of mass-media language, her lines are thick, layered, and multivocal. They act out the self-interrogating dialectic of the dramatic soliloquy, rather than the symbolic clarity of the visual image. Like a soliloquy, they demand that we slow and extend the rhythm of our listening. There is no aesthetic consolation, no softening of the “hard gossip.” These lines ask us to enter into irreducible complexity as a form of attention.

Formally, that complexity expresses itself by pushing grammar beyond simple closure. From the fundamentally unstable ground “between beauty and nowhere,” “back there and here,” Brand crafts a descriptive density. Ambivalence flickers through it like a pulse. It negates as it names: “not here,” “not bleeding,” “never crying,” “not in words.” Out of this staccato negation, it forges the burning rhythm of the will to continue. But for Brand the will is not an accretion of power focused and exercised upon the other. Rather it quickens the register and resolve of perception as a meditative engagement with the world. Like “a girl’s glance” it gives the world its serious gorgeousness. And it shows the world as an irrevocable braiding of the sensual and the historical, a braiding repeated in the poem’s own stuttering patterns – “not in words and in words and in words learned by heart.”

“Each sentence realised or / dreamed jumps like a pulse with history and takes a / side,” Brand writes. What side, then, do her sentences take? The side that, in order to live, must continuously reverse and thus witness itself, like a breath, or a spinning coin. That willful recognition of fragility is resistance.

–Lisa Robertson

Originally published in the How Poems Work series in the Globe & Mail, September 22, 2001
poem from Brand, Dionne. No Language is Neutral, Coach House, 1990