Community Poetry Journal

Community Poetry Journal

A collaborative journal for poetry YWS-ers have read!

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  • alliyah Admin
    alliyah · Jan 9, 2022
    Was reading some editions of Poetry Magazine and thought this poem was really interesting. It's "line dance for an american textbook" by Keith S. Wilson. link You'll have to click the link to read - but the poem is written sort of in the form of sentence diagramming / note-taking and I've been puzzling through it. Anyone have any thoughts on it?

    Questions if you want em ~
    1. initial impressions?
    2. how did you go about reading this?
    3. any interpretations?
    4. would you ever write a poem in this form? does it add / confuse / distract?

    BluesClues replied · Jan 9, 2022

    Ooh, I like this! I like the way the diagramming/boxes made me start reading repeat "lines" as if there were a chorus, like I kept repeating "my country is almost tougher than I know" (bc that's the order in which I read those words once boxed up) each time I moved on to a new stanza.

    (Basically, I read the entire original stanza and then with each successive stanza I would automatically pick out all the words in all the same-colored boxes and fit them together. Fitting them together got harder as I went on, but maybe that's the point since history is a tangle of forgotten people and stories written by the victors!)

    Definitely a bit confusing, especially as more and more diagramming was added, but I actually really liked it and I think I'm likely to keep returning to it to puzzle it out more.


    Spearmint replied · Jan 10, 2022

    this is so neat! :D It was fun to trace the arrows (it adds some action to the poem), and it seems like a really unique style. I would've liked it if the lines were written out in order at the end, just for clarity, but the arrow form is also wonderful by itself. I kind of want to print it out and just look at it from time to time, like a pocket-sized piece of art. ^-^ Definitely a poem to remember!
    Also, I like Blues's idea that the messier stanzas could represent the tangle of history-- that makes a lot of sense! Thanks so much for sharing, alliyah <3


    rida replied · Jan 10, 2022

    Oohh this is an amazing poem!!!!!
    (Enspoilered is me de-puzzling this poem)

    Spoiler
    my country is almost
    tougher than I know,
    A suspect I see from fear
    From blood- sorrow,
    To the lift (?) of history
    Grandfather, cotton is nothing but a photo


    Liminality replied · Jan 10, 2022

    1. initial impressions?

    It felt a bit like a game. Like a really 'artsy' point-and-click. The themes seemed very recognisable. History, memory (and collective memory), distortion, fear.

    2. how did you go about reading this?

    At first I tried to break the rules, and read things in a slightly different order than the arrows recommended. That was entertaining for a while, then I went back to following the arrows. I find that the arrows layer on top of each other ina really geometric fashion, so my eyes ended up retracing paths I had gone before.

    3. any interpretations?

    The lines read left to right, ignoring the arrows

    Spoiler
    I think the speaker means to express how they cannot fully understand the suffering of their grandparents by looking at a photo? With how "blood is tougher to lift from cotton" compared to the "sorrow" from a "photo". Maybe that it's easy for them to feel sad thinking about that history than it was for the people living through it? Ahh, it seems to me like the sentence comparison should be straightforward because of the comparative being right there but it's not.

    Then there are the words to do with 'not knowing', like "suspect", "know almost nothing" and "fear", as well as syntactically how the last phrase is written in question form - "is this american history" and not "this is american history"


    Following the arrows

    Spoiler

    "my country is almost/
    tougher than I know"

    ^I'm not sure how to go about interpreting 'tough' here. Is it ironic, 'tough' to be an implication of 'cruel'? Or is it 'tough' as in 'tough to live in'. Though the 'almost' carries over that feeling of uncertainty I got from reading left to right.

    "a suspect I see from fear/
    from blood sorrow/
    to the lift of history"

    ^ "blood sorrow" is kind of interesting - it combines a concrete image blood with an abstract one like sorrow - I'm not sure if I should parse it as "from blood" and then "sorrow to the lift of history" or "from blood sorrow/ to the lift of history" hmm . . .

    Random thought: I wonder if "lift" here is just the motion or an actual lift . . . probably the former, since it's American. Though I did imagine a lift/elevator when reading. I think the arrow also goes up from 'the' to 'lift' as well? That was a neat effect.

    "grandfather cotton is nothing but this american photo"
    ^I think this one supports the theory of 'the speaker finds it hard to grapple with this historical event' as saying that "cotton" is a "photo" sort of implies that it doesn't feel 'real' in the same way it would have felt real to their grandfather. It's a 'photograph', a reminder, and maybe the speaker is disturbed by that.




    4. would you ever write a poem in this form? does it add / confuse / distract?

    Me? Probably not. I think it does add layers to this poem's effect, even if the fundamental message didn't change that much for me. The scramble of trying to follow the lines kind of makes you feel what the speaker is feeling trying to come to an understanding of what happened.

    Interesting poem and fun questions! Thanks for sharing :D


    alliyah replied · Jan 31, 2022

    I forgot to reply to this D: but thank you all for engaging with this really interesting poem!

    as Bluesclues said "Fitting them together got harder as I went on, but maybe that's the point since history is a tangle of forgotten people and stories written by the victors" <- I also found the form fairly challenging to get a coherent picture out of, but once I sat back and accepted that was part of the message / process then enjoyed the poem more. I liked reading how everyone deciphered the different directions and tangles.

    @Spearmint and Lim brought up that the poem was almost an art piece - and I really appreciated that blend! I wouldn't necessarily try this form of blending art + grammar + poetry, but I do love when people push those boundaries a whole lot.

    @BluesClues - I liked that you called the repeating stationary parts almost a chorus - it makes me wonder if other poetry concepts that are traditionally understand in one concrete way; could be experienced in different ways in these poetry + art hybrids. ie. could you call two blue words "rhyming" words / or envision "stanzas" as two bird wings rather than two areas of text. ~ it's just interesting to me.

    @Liminality I really liked reading your interpretations and thoughts along the way - and how it's possible to break out of the suggested arrow reading, and read it in different ways too. You maybe know this too - but I thought I'd add for context in America cotton is heavily linked to slavery as when people were brought into the US to be sold into slavery often cotton-picking was the work they were forced to do. It's interesting that just using the single word "cotton" can be this whole abbreviation to that larger theme. I really like that you highlighted the phrase "blood sorrow' there were a lot of word pairings that stood out as interesting to me in the piece, and I love unexpected ones like that especially.

    Glad people enjoyed reading / interpreting!



Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
— George Orwell, 1984