English 2100 x 90: Fall 2020

Author: judah

_________

When tragedy strikes, it can tear a community apart, or it can bring it together. But reconciliation and/or restoration cannot and will not begin if the tragedy isn’t even seen for what it is. The statements and reports by officials, whether they be the commander in chief or local PD, are a claim; when not made truthfully, they create chasms of confusion and hopelessness across America. But the people that stand to benefit or be endangered the most from these statements aren’t the authorities– it’s the communities that fall into the cracks. Balko and Parker’s frustrations begin with the tragedy, but they truly culminate at the moment when a public official approaches the opportunity to unify, squanders it, and persistently and violently rocks the public into a dark place of ambiguity.

By placing the significance on what’s not said through long blanks, Parker intends to illicit anger and cynicism simultaneously. The reader can feel the anticipation the nation felt. That clawing, climbing up to the hopeful standard, word by word, until you reach for a blank and plummet back down into the reality that too many people live in. When people in power only see “visions” of these events that statistically and historically burden the black community without at least giving them the nation’s ear, they further and further shatter the US and shove it’s citizens into the cracks away from any hope of a solution.

“38”

“Everything is in the language that we use.”

I thought this unconventional poem represents the senseless dichotomy of mankind’s relationship with language. With self-aware, cold and informative diction Layli Long Soldier draws similarities between the language she uses to write a poem, the language used by the United States government to disenfranchise the Dakota people, and the “language” used by the Dakota 38 during the Sioux Uprising. She purposefully avoids the usual rhythm and structure of what most consider to be crucial to a poem and instead chooses to simply tell a story. For every action made on the behalf of the government, there’s two words; one that actually describes the action, and one that conveniently paraphrases it the same way the government did. Through writing a poem with no rhymes or syllable scheme, she begins to challenge the perceived role language plays into the humanity of our race. At it’s most basic level, is not language supposed to be a reflection of reality? And yet it so often isn’t. And what’s the goal of poetry? It seems to be another reflection of reality but revealed through metaphors and symbolism. Soldier makes it clear how the US government rarely honored language’s tie to reality through lies and deceit. The Dakota 38 refused to allow this. Maybe leaving Andrew Myrick with his mouth full of grass was their way of forcing him to honor his word. I believe in the same way the 38 wished for the base function of language to come to fruition, Soldier avoids the regular poetic flourishments as a way of bringing her words as close as possible to the factual reflection of reality that was the uprising. I believe this re-evaluation of language’s functionality is vitally important for humans who live in a society that’s over flowing with double-speak, misleading nuances, and verbal powerplays. While poetry has its place and time and is beneficial in many ways, what the Dakota 38 understood and what Soldier reveals is that when dishonest language is all that remains in any given institution, maybe all that’s left is action.