Sonia uses diction very purposefully throughout the poem “blk / rhetoric.” She creates a poem that is based on “the Black condition as I see it” (66). Using her preface of the poems and pairing that with how she leaves out letters in black, using the abbreviation for this every time she references the word black. With white, she uses wite, which I looked up a definition for. I find it incredibly interesting that one definition for it is “a fee demanded for granting a special privilege” (Dictonary.com).
This poem feels deeply personal. She seems to be begging for better role models with the new movement of Black is Beautiful. Using the word heroes then describes the current role models that seem to focus on either not serious ideas like catch phrases or incredibly serious matters like drugs, helps the reader distinguish what she does not want yet what has been available. She is speaking to the reader using the term we, including us in her call for help. She understands that the future of any group of individuals and their values depend on the young, therefore calling for the people who are actively being role models for the young is her wake up call to those who are actively transiting from young to role models.
The spacing on the page helps with the tempo and pacing. Sanchez seems to use this spacing to slow down and focus on specific ideas and the language of her poem. She does not use traditional proper English, but more of the way people speak to each other, such as “u dig” and “who’s gonna give our young.” In each of these lines, it feels as though you are talking to a friend or peer, someone who understands the importance of what you are saying in a casual way. This piece feels very conversational.
The way she writes this poem helps emphasize her ideas through the separation of individual words such as “like” and “selves” but also her inclusion of the “/“ which indicates a line break in poetry when writing. Her purposefully placing lines like “toward the enemy” separately from “( and we know who that is )” gives a sense of almost looking at the reader and whispering to them. Yet when she moves to the next section with parenthesis, she is giving us a list starting each line with the same word helping create a repetition with both space on the page and rhythmically. This repetition links back to Crawford’s writing of the power of chant in the Black Arts Movement. As she is using this power of chant, she is also reaching out from her “inner consciousness to the outer realm of collective action” (95). At the end she is literally calling for collective action from the group of people she wants change from.
Throughout the poem she uses periods very sparingly. Every time it is placed, she does it to emphasize the word prior. At the end, she uses periods in a multitude as an ellipsis representing a waiting period just as she is waiting for the change she is asking for. The repetitive use of parentheses creates a deeper understanding of what she is referring to. As parentheses are used as inferring an afterthought or information that is not necessary to how one understands the writing, the thoughts she includes give us specific examples to what she wants changed. In addition, she uses the backward slash as a way for the reader to pause or create space in the lines without separating ideas. The first time we see this is “blk / rhetoric” which then the entire poem is about persuading her readers to action. The next time is “blk / is / beautiful” which is based on the cultural movement of the Black Arts Movement. With these backward slashes, she creates pauses in the middle of words and phrases without forcing a new line break. This not only slows the reader down but adds importance to those words and phrases such as “take all the young / long / haired/ natural / brothers and sisters.” This emphasized the youth to which she is begging a change for but also for the Black Americans to whom she is speaking to.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/wite
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.charleston.edu/dist/6/907/files/2019/02/Sanchez-Poems-246xfhv.pdf
Thank you for this close reading! I was very interested in your explanations of why Sanchez used “blk” for black. I also appreciated your other observations on her choices of vernacular and how they reflect her social constructs. Another key point you make is her use of grammar, such as periods and parenthesis to speed up and /or slow down the reader. Also, how a poet uses punctuation really helps me to better engage with the poem so I appreciated your observations here.
I appreciate your attention, here, not just to the poem’s message, but how its formal approach–abbreviating words, using slashes between words yet within lines, sparing use of the terminal stop–contributes essentially to the poem’s meaning. In a way, she uses all of these things beyond words create a dynamic score for the poem–to break it out of typical “mere” rhetoric and into the world of action. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!