Taylor Post #3

by Thompson 2 Comments

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives” (Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider 36)  

A through line I would like to bring forward in this post that I found salient in all three of our readings is this concept of consciousness raising as well as the very function of art and poetry as means through which to facilitate a generative and essential fullness in our lives–which is perhaps a facet of liberation itself. In Lisa Gail Collins rehearsal of the Black Arts Movement and the Feminist Art Movement, Lisa meditates on the importance of consciousness raising as a means for crafting ones imaginary for liberation and for learning how to self define oneself and be more responsible about the ways one moves through the world. I read this as an effort to deliberately and “responsibly” shed light on the affective map of ones life and see the ways in which it overlaps, clashes, and exists in space and with others. 

In Nappy Edges, Shange writes that “we ourselves suffer form a frightening lack of clarity abt who we are. my work attempts to ferret out what i  know and touch in a woman’s body” (21). Here I read that she values the ability to self reflect and self reflect with clarity and quality about the way that we move through space. Shange goes on to articulate that poems are “essential to our existence” and moreover, when ruminating on ‘what poetry should do’ she writes that “poems should fill you with something” (24). 

Audre Lorde in “Poetry is Not a Luxury” of course argues that poetry is not a luxury. Instead she argues that it is a “revelatory distillation of thought” which brings forth ideas that are ‘felt but not yet birthed fully’. In its revelatory nature, it functions as a “quality light” which allows us to better understand ourselves and the world through teaching us to listen and read for what affects us. What moves us, what makes us feel full and feel fully (in a world where we were “not meant to survive, not as humans” and how to do we facilitate that fullness as ritual?

Poetry.

These readings intersected at a critical juncture of affect, the erotic (Lorde) and self-consciousness—three things that the academy within which we function does not value. As Lorde urges us to learn to respect what affects us, respect our feelings and that which does not yet have language and furthermore, demand more of our institution of learning I begin asking myself more and more how I can turn to poetry and art making as a medium for articulating certain facets of liberation and liberatory praxis how I can facilitate art as a medium for connection. 

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    Taylor, I really appreciated the clear throughline you drew out of the three pieces for today and I particularly loved your line, 'shed light on the affective map of ones life." I'm wondering if, instead of moving to a lorde piece we didn't read, you might dwell a bit more on Ntozake's language or your own. For example, your comment on P3 rightfully picks out the issue of self-reflection, but it feels like you need to figure out how embodiment works here. How is the body a source of self-knowledge here?
  2. Thompson
    I really want to take a moment to expand and develop my prior comment based on what I've learned over the past week and also take a moment to integrate these thoughts with the actual reading for last week "The Uses of the Erotic". First, I thought immediately of 'The Uses of the Erotic' when reading "Nappy Edges" primarily when Shange writes that “poems should fill you with something” (24). It immediately brought me to Lorde's respect for fullness and for feeling fully. I confused "Uses of the Erotic" with "Poetry is Not A Luxury" for many reasons, but a particularly salient one is that Lorde often writes about how those two essays are part of the same argument and are really two co-constitutive works. In the same way that we must learn to value our feelings and how deeply we can feel, we have to learn to value the rituals that facilitate the fullness and facilitate radical change in our lives. Sometimes that ritual is poetry, and by 'poetry' I don't know that I mean the act of writing or journaling or making great works of literary esteem--rather I think I mean poetry as the praxis of art production-- and beyond written or oral language I mean poetry as a practice of making art out of whatever you have at your disposal. Sometimes it is words, sometimes it is your body movements, sometimes it is sound and your voice, a "laying of hands", a thoughtful conversation, and sometimes it is silence and a well timed entrance. That is where the embodied potential of poetry enters my consciousness, this idea that poetry has to function beyond the often violent-settler-colonial-language forced into my mouth--it has to be bigger and fuller than that.

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