The poem that I am posting is a meditation on conventional language, and when and how we might or might not begin to impose those conventions upon a writer told to write a personal narrative. My attempt with this poem is not to try and interpret or translate the session, but it is an attempt to step back and observe and hope that something emerges for the reader about the difficulties a Responder might encounter when possessed of the desire to encourage conformity as a way to conjure the writer's desired success.
Insult
He writes, when I grabbed
a little part of my gift,
I felt like I was in the air,
a little peaceful feeling
of happiness of being born.
Words in homage to well-
cooked pork, meat intended
as a gift that would become
an insult to his Muslim roommate.
Does the success of his story
depend upon correct English?
In his country, his Muslim friend
eats pork. In Senegal,
his college roommate is outraged
by what he is offered, and angry
moves out.
If I were to edit his work
what would that imply, under-
mine, destroy?
He describes people, who savor
the spiced pork at market,
saying, they were quiet as though
they were dumb.
Ray Melvin
Winter Quarter 2008
1 comment:
I love how this poem enters on the personal - with both the responder's feelings and some of the detail in the writer's essay. The third and fourth stanzas set the dilemmas - again, within the essay and returning to the responder, but then the poem ends quietly, entering back through the content of the essay to establish an image of a marketplace. The poem ends ambiguously, but matches the responder's meditative state at the beginning. Effective bookending to the concrete gravitas of the weighty middle stanza.
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