{"id":2558,"date":"2019-11-14T08:25:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T13:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2558"},"modified":"2019-11-14T08:25:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T13:25:06","slug":"taylor-archive-post-post-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2558","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Archive Post, Post #7"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Shange<\/a>

Shange Flow Poem. \u00a0The photo above is reproducing a journal entry by Ntozake Shange in which it seems she began a poem she titled\u00a0\u201c Flow\u201d the Poem is written on \u00a05inches x 8 inches white paper. \u00a0Note: I am working on changing the orientation of then photo, apologies!<\/p><\/div>\n

An exciting aspect of the Archival search, is that we can potentially find really important works of literature that aren\u2019t accessible otherwise. I think\u00a0that the archive also helps us gauge the context of Ntozake Shange\u2019s work in ways we could not have otherwise, simply by trying to google or look up what her timeline and life and projects were like.<\/p><\/div>\n

Finding the \u201cFlow\u201d poem was exciting because as soon as I saw it, the first things I read were the first and last words, \u201cFlow\u201d and \u201cWorld\u201d. These two words are already some that come to mind when I consider Shange\u2019s body of work, choreographically and literarily.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0My first thought in reading the poem was to connect flow to this sense of erotic we were exploring earlier in the semester. I connected in one of my previous blog posts a part of Shange\u2019s Nappy Edges <\/i>and Audre\u00a0Lorde\u2019s Uses of the Erotic,<\/i>\u00a0as many of us did. In Nappy Edges, <\/i>Shange\u00a0writes \u201ca poem shd fill you up with something\u2026a poem shd happen to you like cold water or a kiss\u201d (24). First of all, the phrase reminds me of her journal poem in which she also references a \u201c cool liquid embrace\u201d. Beyond that the phrase connects to parts of Audre Lorde\u2019s \u201cUses of the Erotic\u201d in which she writes that the erotic is a sense of fullness and a question of \u201chow acutely and fully we can feel in\u2026doing\u201d. In writing Flow, I ams seeing an extension of thoughts developed within Nappy Edges<\/i>\u00a0and even more connections with Lorde\u2019s Uses of the Erotic.\u00a0<\/i>The imagery that these lines surface in me is imagery of overflowing from being so full. It harkens back to the biblical phrase “my cup runneth over\u201d.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Shange also writes in the poem of an \u201cumbilical\u201d connection to our \u201centry into the world\u201d and once again she is drawing our thought to the breach between this world and another perhaps, or at the very least she is drawing our thoughts to concepts of birth and the birth of worlds which has been a central theme in a lot of her writing especially within Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.<\/div>\n
This poem has really helped me connect these understandings of fulness and the birth of new worlds (and beyond that the idea of thinking critically and deeply about ones positionally and entry point into this world, and perhaps the next).<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0While the photo is being displayed in the post for educational reasons and without the purpose of dissemination I believe we have permission form the archive under Fair Use to reproduce this photo for one another. However if I were to pursue any external publishing I would need permission from Shange\u2019s estate.<\/div>\n
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Metadata associated with this photo can include:<\/div>\n
-The date the poem was written<\/div>\n
-The type of paper Flow is written on<\/div>\n
-The type of journal Flow is written in<\/div>\n
-How Ntozake Shange bought, received, came by this journal?<\/div>\n
-The place that Ntozake Shange was when she wrote the Flow Poem<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I do not at present have the information necessary to cultivate that metadata however, ideally this would be information I could provide. Otherwise I can state where and when I personally engaged with the data for the first time, Barnard College, November 7, 1:12pm<\/div>\n
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Citation<\/div>\n
Ntozake Shange Papers, 1966-2014: Box 17 Folder 3; Barnard Archives and Special Collections, Barnard Library, Barnard College<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An exciting aspect of the Archival search, is that we can potentially find really important works of literature that aren\u2019t accessible otherwise. I think\u00a0that the archive also helps us gauge the context of Ntozake Shange\u2019s work in ways we could not have otherwise, simply by trying to google or look up what her timeline and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}