This portfolio is comprised of
three pieces, each drawing from different prompts given throughout the
semester. The first, “Promises” is drawn from daily writing practices, “The One”
is in apprenticeship to Aimé
Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the
Native Land, and his use of anaphora and lists. The final piece, The
Blanket Game” is from a prompt given in class about taking what is over-used,
cliché or corny and making it into something authentic, such as Kevin Killian’s
Argento Series. From the very first
week of class, we have been discussing the idea of self-description, how it
impacts our identity as writers, and how it is presented in our writing. Each
one of the pieces focuses on identity, politicizing our writing, and how our
social constructs uses interpellation on us on a daily basis.
The
piece, “Promises,” was comprised of daily writing, pulling from the prompt of
memories of church, or church events. I started thinking about seventh grade
when my Small Group (bible study) would meet at my best friends house, and that
one night when I was reminded of the promise I made my cousin, Stephanie, make
to me. This promise has stayed with me
growing up, and has shaped my identity because although she is my mother, and I
care for her deeply, I still have those memories, and the feeling to not want
to be like her, and to do better. The piece takes what is private, and
personal, and once again makes it social. Taking place in a setting like a
bible study, a place where people tend to think that these things, these types
of promises, and bad memories of our parents should not be brought up or cross
our minds. Yet, there we were, trying to figure out who I am in relation to my
mother, who my friends think I am in relation to my mother, and where my
identity lies when I am separated from my mother. In her introduction, “Words of Selves”, Denise
Riley says about identity “the resulting politics of identity are, by their
nature, bound to fall short of their promised redemption” (5). So trying to
find the identity away from my mother, and through all these different avenues
of who people are saying I am in relation to her, was bound to fall short from
actually answering the questions of identity in relation to my mother,
especially on the page. However, Riley continues,
“In this sense, my awkward
navigations to become, coupled with
my constitutional failure to fully be
are what actually enable political thinking and language rather than marking
some lamentable shortcoming in my ‘politicization’. This makes briefly for an
air of paradox: that some lack of politicization (where that term is taken in
contemporary sense to imply the keen embrace of some progressive identity)
might be needed, in order for there to be mobility, and life within political
thought” (5).
What
Riley is stating is that my failure to answer these questions of “who am I away
from my mother?” and “who am I in relation to my mother” (and so on), is what
enabled the ability to make this piece move from that private night on the
trampoline when I made Stephanie promise it the first time, to something social
like a bible study. And Riley argues that some lack of politicization might be
needed for the piece to move, and to give the piece life within our political
thoughts, and I would agree with her. The piece is holding back on
politicization, if it were not, the first time the promise occurred would not
have been so private. However, it was private, and then the situation was
brought into a public atmosphere. Showing politicization, but at the same time,
a lack there of.
The
second piece “The One” is taken from apprenticing Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land,
in his poem he uses anaphora and lists in a way that makes the reader question
if the language really has the ability to escape them. However, instead of
questioning if the language can escape the lists and anaphora, I wanted to see
if I could escape what my teammates think of me. Each of those, “I am”
statements are things that I have heard talked behind my back, when friends
confide in me about others confiding in them about me. I am the one who Katie
is leaving behind, and she doesn’t seem to care, I’m the one who kissed Mason
last year, and he still holds it against me, on and on. These roles, are labels
that I have been called into by people who are supposed to be my friends.
The
frustration that comes from this kind of personal interpellation comes out on
the page, and in Poetry and Knowledge, Aimé
Césaire says, “it is not merely with his whole soul it is with his entire being
that the poet approaches the poem. What presides over the poem is not the most
lucid intelligence, or the most acute sensibility, but an entire experience:
all the women loved, all the desires experienced, all the dreams dreamed… All
lived experience. All the possibility” (47). So when approaching an apprenticeship
to Césaire, it meant not just leaving the little things out, but giving the
poem every piece that it deserved. Not just the grudges, the frustration, the
regrets, the questions, but bits and pieces of the stories. When the freshman
ask where our rooms are, what time the party is at and all of those nagging
questions that I couldn’t answer, I couldn’t leave out. I had to give the
entire experience like Aimé Césaire said, and that piece is the result.
The Blanket Game was the final piece that I started,
drawing from Argento Series as a
prompt, but using Claudia Rankine’s construct of the “you.” The inspiration
came from Argento Series when we were
in class and Leah asked, “How can something so cheesy inspire something so
authentic?” From there, I looked up what makes movies clichéd or cheesy, and
nothing seemed more cheesy than a Christmas party. Although the fact that it
was at a Christmas party was never mentioned within the piece the prompt was
inspiring enough to bring it to life and make the events of the Christmas party
authentic.
The
piece not only mimics politicization, what is personal (nakedness) and turns it
into something social (such as being naked in room full of teammates), but it
also uses Claudia Rankine’s construct of the “you,” to make a politicized piece
very isolated. The blanket game is a very personal situation, very private
under the confines of the blanket where you are stripping down until you
realize that it’s the blanket that you are supposed to be taking off, nothing
else. Yet when you are reading it you find yourself surrounded in a room full
of teammates, but isolated under the blanket. Using the word “you” just
emphasizes the isolation, the idea of being the last to go in this game, and
getting naked in front of friends, but hidden also emphasizes the
politicization that is used.
While
reading the piece, there is a sense of unease, between the events of the game,
and the comments that are being made throughout it. However, the unease of the
piece, and the different emotions that it draws on, comes from the guilt that
is played around with throughout the story. In her introduction, “The Words of
Selves”, Denise Riley says, “unease lies on the verge of guilt, a condition
elastic enough to encompass all too many definitions, of which one is that
gnawing feeling of having failed according to rules that I did not make myself”
(17). When she writes that, she is talking about failing language according to
the rules that we did not write. However, this pertains to the piece because of
the guilt that is experienced while being naked under the blanket while hearing
those comments, coming from teammates. Those comments are saying that I failed
but only failed at rules set up by team members, and when this feeling of
failure becomes evident, there is unease for the reader.
The
concept of identity that is searched in this piece is the nudity, how it felt,
and the question that Mason brought up as what makes one a virgin? Many people
tend to label themselves as “non-virgin” and “virgin” but that identity is
screwed up when it comes to the argument between the two young men.
The
final aspect of the portfolio that resides throughout all of the pieces is the
lists and anaphora. Although they come and go throughout pieces, maybe with
little words of repetition, or the long list of things she threw at me, those
formal features are there, and each time that anaphora is used, the pieces seem
to restart.
Works Cited
Césaire,
Aimé, Clayton Eshleman, and Annette Smith. "Poetry and Knowledge." Lyric
and Dramatic Poetry, 1946-82. Charlottesville: U of Virginia, 1990. N. pag.
Print.
"The
Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony | Denise Riley." The
Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony | Denise Riley. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2015.
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