I think this poem is about failed love via racialization (but who knows what a poem is “about," and who knows if a poem is really “about” anything). What I find most interesting about it, long after its composition and motivating circumstance, is the speaker’s half-hearted attempt to feel seen despite the lens of the camera. But art probably isn’t about identification, anyway. Maybe that’s why the poem instead collapses into “touch” and “breath” at the end. Tawanda Mulalu on "Film Studies III" |
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"Amanda Gorman Has Big Dreams"
"Gorman’s interest in art was matched by a passion for politics. But she sees poetry as part of political work. Poets, she says, 'are working with a few syllables. We get the fewest amount of stones to throw to make the most impact. How can I say the most by saying the least?' She has stated often in interviews that her ultimate goal is to become president of the United States."
via HARPER'S BAZAAR |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Jeevika Verma on Reginald Dwayne Betts' Felon
"He claims the label prison gives him—felon—and says, look, I did make mistakes, and now I am dealing with the consequences. But look, also, at how we lend ourselves to the system. How we dehumanize the incarcerated man. How every time he tries to love, we remind him of when he didn’t—'What name for / this thing that haunts, this thing we become.'" |
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