{"id":2624,"date":"2019-11-28T17:54:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T22:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2624"},"modified":"2019-11-28T17:54:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T22:54:17","slug":"archive-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=2624","title":{"rendered":"Archive Find"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something that caught my eye upon one of my first visits to the archive was an edited draft of Shange\u2019s \u201cFirst Loves\u201d (then called \u201cFirst Love\u201d) as a part of the early edits for Some Sing, Some Cry<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Copy of “First Love” 2009 draft with edits.<\/p><\/div>\n

Written in prose, this piece is not itself a work of poetry, but instead an exploration of her relationship with the art as she\u2019s grown as a writer and as a lover. This piece caught my attention because I, like Shange, \u201calways knew I liked poetry more than anything,\u201d but seeing the piece beyond its first line forced me to rethink my rather privileged relationship to the English language. This draft of \u201cFirst Love\u201d made me interrogate how and why Shange\u2019s mastery of the written word looks and feels so starkly different from other poets of her time. It became clear that this is no ordinary love story \u2014 Shange\u2019s first love was one characterized by both hardship and liberation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother, Eloise, had benefited from what were then called ‘elocution’ lessons privately given in the home of a striking yet demure Southern woman once removed to the Bronx. There she mastered Whitman, Whittier, Wheatley, Shakespeare, Dunbar, and Paul Laurence. This eclectic mix of word crafters were my lullabies, soothing rhymes, and demonstrations of slowly garnered memorization skills. This, I suspect, is where my love of poets began.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Shange\u2019s love is not for poetry, it\u2019s for poets \u2014 the \u201cword crafters\u201d themselves. Shange\u2019s use of the word \u201ccrafter\u201d here is fascinating in that is suggests the need for action in reclaiming language. This allowed me to reflect on the scope of Shange\u2019s own vernacular writing surpassing the restrictions of \u201c\u2018elocution lessons\u2019\u201d and making language her own. This draft, and its published body in 2010 reinforced the notion that there is no correct way to speak or write, just as there is no single correct way to create art. Wheatley\u2019s English was crafted for her, as was the memorized lexicon of Shange\u2019s mother, Eloise. Shange, though, is the crafter \u2014 the lover.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These word crafters were her \u201clullabies,\u201d highlighting the role of the unconscious as an incubator for Shange\u2019s language. When one dreams, their words are unfiltered and untouched by history and hierarchical social structures. Shange\u2019s unfiltered love is her love for language, as she evolves as a subconscious poet herself. Given Shange\u2019s own interest in and encounters with, not just psychoanalytic theory, but psychotherapy, this evolving romantic connection between poetry and the unconscious is vital in that it moves beyond the restrictions of language. When Shange wrote, \u201cbut mine was no constant love. I flirted with Baudelaire and Artaud because I longed for some immersion in dream,\u201d she touches upon the deeply introspective nature of poetry \u2014 latent love residing in one\u2019s unconscious.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something that caught my eye upon one of my first visits to the archive was an edited draft of Shange\u2019s \u201cFirst Loves\u201d (then called \u201cFirst Love\u201d) as a part of the early edits for Some Sing, Some Cry.\u00a0\u00a0 Written in prose, this piece is not itself a work of poetry, but instead an exploration of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","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\/2624","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\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}