Muse and Drudge

Harryette Mullen beautifully incorporates the individualistic everyday occurrences of numerous black women from all around the world into a seamless compilation and summation of the life of black women in her collection of poems, Muse and Drudge. By including no titles with the poems, Mullen is able to create an almost prose like collective narrative within her writing.

Her use of dialect, word play and fashion create a witty and truthful outlook on the consumerism which occurs in the United States and around the World. However, I find myself agreeing with Geoff’s remark in class on Friday during our discussion of the cover art and how consumers do by books by their covers. Perhaps Mullen could be said to be calling black people only eager to purchase a book because it has a black woman on its cover. This not only questions the intelligence of her fellow race, but also forgets to mention that white people might benefit from reading this collection of poems so as to understand the collective feelings of oppression. By placing a black woman on the cover of the book, perhaps a white person would fail to pick up the book. If Mullen’s aim was to create an open space and feeling of understanding on all sides, she should have picked a more neutral cover picture, or even no picture at all, just letting the title Muse and Drudge speak for itself. Indeed the title of the collection is very compelling and encompasses many different meanings for many different people, which is what Mullen wanted. So many questions arise in my head when I think about the meaning of the title. Is it white vs. black? Is it a description of the struggles of black people? Does it have Greek connotations? All are possible and truthful in their own ways.

I really enjoyed reading Muse and Drudge, especially after analyzing and discussing the poems with the class. Now that I have reread many of the poems and discussed the book in its entirety, I really see Mullen’s use of a collective narrative. This narrative, much like Rolling the R’s, is so seamless that it really drives home her message and feeling that all black women have come resemble a single identity to the outside society. Every person must be instead celebrated for their individuality.

Rolling the R's

When thinking about the ways in which the “Judith Butler Reader” ties into the themes and happenings in Linmark’s, Rolling the R’s, sexuality is an obvious commonality that comes to mind. I think this is especially evident when examining Edgar and his persona as a homosexual. Edgar is very open about his sexual ways, flaunting it to his friends and even letting his friends like Vincente watch. The scene in which readers discover that Edgar lets Vincente watch he and the janitor while in the janitor closet reminds me of the idea that Butler poses to her readers about the concept of coming out of the closet and how by saying that you are coming out still signifies and proves that the closet still exists, except now you are kept out of it. When Edgar is with the Janitor he is acting outwardly with his homosexuality, yet he is keeping the sexual act itself within the closet. With that being said, is Edgar really out of the closet? This is something that is really troubling for me to answer, yet I find the question very intriguing.

This same sort of confusion about closets and coming out of the closet exists in Edgar’s relationship with the priest. When Edgar and the priest play and sleep with one another they are making a sexual confession to one another, yet typically confession within a church occurs within a closet like structure. Thus, I think it is kind of ironic that, through their acts of homosexuality, the priest and Edgar are coming out of the closet sexually and confessing their “wrongs” when a confession to a priest occurs in a closet. Once again I am wondering if Edgar is being portrayed as in or out of the closet or is Linmark demonstrating like Butler, that the closet, whether one is in or out of it will always exist as a barrier.

Lyn Hejinian

Two of the main things that stuck with me throughout reading Lyn Hejinian’s poems and essays was the use of doubleness, as well as opposites. These two things combined, create the emotion and meat of her works. While reading, I often felt confused and frustrated, but when looking back on her writings as a whole I saw the truth in her writing, as well as, a very true representation on life. I think that Hejinian sums up these feelings and life with her quote, “Rarely one follows a thought to its conclusion” (504). This idea not only emphasizes her style of writing but also the lives that we all live.

Although life may be death bound, such an ultimate “conclusion” is hardly ever seen mirrored in any conversation or activity in everyday life. The same is true for the verse of Hejinian. When one finishes reading one of her poems or essays they are perhaps more confused than when they started and questioning if it all really makes sense. I think that this is a proper representation of life, in that life is a conglomeration of all sorts of interactions, reflections and experiences that somehow all fit together, but yet do not make sense, thus keeping life interesting and everyday as an unknown.

Hejinian also stays true to this style and concept of life in her frequent admissions of uncertainty. This allows readers to take and understand her works as opinions rather than facts. In doing so readers not only appreciate the beauty of literature, but also understand that there are very few hard facts in life. Life and literature is open to many different interpretations and no one person contains all of the answers. It is the never ending interactions we have that instead allow us make our own individual decisions.

White Noise

After reading Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise and witnessing the ever present theme of death in the novel, I got to thinking about how I view death. Death, as a topic is intriguing no matter the circumstance because it is the unknown. In many regards the fear that Jack and Babette have of death is because it is the unknown, yet as a college student about to graduate my future is unknown and yet I see it as a new exciting challenge that I am eager for. In many senses this is how I see death, obviously I would rather not die and don’t want to die any time soon, but I am not afraid or preoccupied with that point in my life.
Almost as intriguing as the subject of death, is the character Murray Jay Siskind and his philosophical take on life and death. The conversation that he and Jack have at the end of the novel, I thought was one of the most important scenes in the entire book. The way in which Murray intertwines death and technology is so disturbingly honest, yet it is still beautiful in a philosophical way. The paragraph on page 272 in which Murray states, “You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immorality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature,” is one of the most poignant and important in the entire novel. The last sentence in the quote really emphasizes society’s dependence on technology and gives me the feeling that my life and its natural occurrences and interactions are almost all fake because they are in some way shaped by technology. Is the life we live today actually natural and are we meant to live this way?
He then goes on later to mention that we focus our lives on something bigger and attach ourselves to it as a form of identity that sweeps us away from the reality of the world. It seems almost ironic that we spend so much of our lives fearing death and its obscurity, latching onto something or someone else to absorb our fear and yet death is the only thing that is sure in “life.” Should we instead embrace death for its assuredness, or are we subconsciously already doing that so that we don’t live every single day of our life in fear of what it might bring?

Sula

Toni Morrison’s, Sula beautifully melds the relationship entities of friendship and family. A friend can seem more of a part of a family than certain members of that family. I think that Morrison shows her readers the importance of friendship, especially between two girls, and how the love of a friend can be more meaningful and stronger than the bond between a mother and daughter. Yes a mother does give her daughter her life blood, but perhaps it is this fact that creates a certain barrier between a mother and child. The bond seems too forced at times and almost submissive. Perhaps mothers and daughters, especially those depicted in Sula separate their selves from one another because they are too afraid of the other learning secrets or the shameful recognition that they are one in the same person.

A mother always wants more for her a child, but I think Hannah demonstrates the fears a mother has of a daughter turning into the mother when she declares she loves Sula, but does not like her. In this time period, town and racial divisions, Hannah does not see Sula as capable of becoming more than what she (Hannah) is. This hurts both Hannah and Sula, causing them to further emotionally separate their selves from one another. This emotional separation is seen as Sula just stands aside and watches Hannah burn to death and be smothered in boiling water.

On the flip side, a friend is not someone that a person is born into or onto. They are an acquaintance that a person grows to love and appreciate for who they are as a whole person and that they can share and learn the secrets of life together. Both Sula and Nel love one another despite their family differences and grow to long for one another to fulfill their emptiness and share their lives with, never afraid to shame or judge the other. An example of this careless, open and everlasting friendship is seen on page 105 when Nel shares with readers that although Sula just slept with Jude she does not seem shameful or naked. The experiences the girls have shared and trials of growing up hold the girls true to one another because they are all the other has to recall every smile and tear they shared in the private and most meaningful instances of life. There is an unspoken need for one another. Both women demonstrate this need in each of their final scenes in the novel. Sula leaves the earth in the most peaceful and beautiful manner, all the while thinking of and wanting to tell only Nel of this experiencing and what she was thinking and going through. In the closing of the novel, although Nel is still alive, the reader leaves her crying and calling to Sula, her one true love in life, the only person that understood her and her feelings.

Borderlands - Gloria Anzaldua

In Gloria Anzaldúa’s novel, Borderlands she portrays a sense of orphanage and loss for both women and the Mexican/American race. Her life, along with other women and Chicanas exists in a borderland, a third country in which she is a semblance of a fractured body and land. Living in a borderland creates the exact image that one sees when they hear the word border. Each day she encounters all sorts of barriers and borders which restrict her way of life.

Readers learn that since a young school child she was kept from using certain words and language when she spoke, for she must speak like an American. Anzaldúa truly is the embodiment of her language. She carries it where ever she goes and it bubbles inside of her, just waiting to be let free. Yet she must suppress both herself as a woman, Chicana and as woman, as well as the language that lets her express all of these identities of self. Her language, both inside and outside of her is representative of cultural collision and a violence that exists at the borders.

The concept of the borderland existing as a third country in this book reminds me a lot of the Langston Hughes’ poem, “Cross.” Both the speaker in “Cross” and Anzaldúa live with an everlasting internal feeling of confusion as to where they belong. When a person lives along the border or at a cross, there is always the question as to which side they belong to or identify more strongly with and whether or not these individuals make a decision one way or another, there still remains a burning inside which asks them daily whether or not they made the right decision.

Borders like those on a map mark off where certain states or towns exist. These borders help people define who they are and gives them a sense of belonging, but Anzaldúa and the speaker in “Cross” will never have that sense of belonging, comfort and definition because they exist in the gray area of the line that divides two nations and races.

Frank O'Hara

Unlike many of the other works we have read by other poets, I am still in the dark as to whether or not O’Hara himself is the speaker in his poems. Although he uses “I” in his writing, it is unclear as to whether or not “I” is him or another person that he is bringing to life. O’Hara like Plath, seems to be concerned with the creation of self in his poetry, yet unlike Plath’s poems, it does not seem that the experiences occurring in the first set of poems we read are happening to him. Sometimes I think that his writing is either meant to be a sort of play on words or a joke or even a criticism of other poets and people. For instance, in the poem “Autobiographia Literaria,” O’Hara gives his readers this childish and rather obscure outcry that seems Sylvia Plath like when he writes, “If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out ‘I’m an orphan.’” The images of these four lines create in the readers head remind one of the crazy and outlandish images that Plath’s poems create.

Later, in the second group of poems we read there is another reference or mimicking of another poet. In the poem, “To the Film Industry in Crisis” the very long and list like style of writing O’Hara uses is very similar to Whitman. These similarities seen in both poems seem to make me think that he is trying to utilize another person’s voice to either poke fun at that writer or to use the other writer’s voice to criticize society. Perhaps O’Hara is afraid to criticize another using his own voice, thus removing a somewhat personal aspect from his poetry. Rather than embodying the I in his poetry a sense of sarcasm and negativity is established instead.