In reading the materials for this week I found my recent research of post-identity to be relevant to the discussions we will have in class this week about hybrid poetry and the diversity of black identity in poetry. I have been looking through the archives of the now out-of-print journal Post Identity and have found it […]
Author Archive | sheace
The Moving “I”: Post-Identity in Asian American Poetry
This project will look at the matter of identity in Asian American poetry. Identity is a difficult thing to pin down, especially in a country made up of immigrants. Generalizing identities based on ethnic or racial groups is difficult because of how varied, and often nebulous and always personal the matter of identity is. The […]
Personhood and Language in “I Do Not”
Michael’s Palmer’s short biography sets him apart from the Language School of poets as one who still uses lyricism because he believes that narratives are inevitable in poetry. In his poem, “I Do Not” however, we still see the kind of evasion of directness that puts him firmly in relation to this school, as the […]
Maxine Hong Kingston and New American Poetry
James Edward Smethurst’s “Foreground and Underground: the Left, Nationalism, and the Origins of the Black Arts Matrix” intrigued me to read more into the Asian American constituent, specifically Maxine Hong Kingston. Born and raised in California’s Central Valley to Chinese parents, Kingston attended Berkeley in the 1950s where she studied English and became exposed to the […]
My Confession: The Silent Year
I was drawn to the Confessional poets not for their mental struggles or the Freudian undertones and experience in psychotherapy, but because they offer real and true accounts of life, ugly as it is at times. I began writing this poem in my head before even diving into any of the confessional poets’ work and it […]
The Not-So-Unlikely Influence of Herman Melville on the Beats
In his essay “Herman Melville as the ‘Hip’ Icon for the Beat Generation,” Mark Dunphy draws what, after having read it, seems to be the obvious comparison between Melville’s work and that of the Beat generation. Melville’s style, both in writing and in life, set him far apart from his contemporaries, Dunphy begins, and explains […]
[the bath] Mt. Tamalpais
The beat poets, many of whom use West Coast landscapes as their setting, piqued in me not only a sympathetic ear but also a flood of memories, emotions and sentiments about the place itself. Having lived in Berkeley for a brief two years, these readings were rife in memory associations with the objectivist bent of […]
The “Uncertain Promise” of Jewish Youth During the Great Depression
The Objectivist poets, a title they reluctantly assumed, led me into deeper research of an era I have previously taken great interest in due to the writings of David Brooks. Raised in Manhattan by two liberal Jewish parents of the bohemian culture, he was educated at a traditional Jewish school in the city and developed […]
The Rise and Fall of The Harlem Renaissance
The literary and artistic influencers of the Harlem Renaissance were facing a similar theme to one that was central to the greater modernist art movement. Many of the modernists explored life through the lens of greater global reach, and the frequent melding of cultures the world round. The Great Migration that resulted in the Harlem […]
On “Poetry”
Marianne Moore’s “Poetry” reads like an essay and addresses the otherness of the genre, as well as the inability to clearly define what its role is as art, culture, and social criticism. The opening lines distinguish this poem as a sort of confession – and a personal one at that – at the pains of engaging poetry. […]