I've always been taught that commas tell you where to breathe. Commas indicate a pause, a separation, a split, a moment of reflection. After reading Whereas, I'm beginning to think they might be the most emotional of all punctuation marks. They tell us where to slow down, where to turn quiet, where to turn inwards on ourself -- as if through elaboration on a given phrase, we get nearer and nearer to the core of it: "When I write comma I come closer to people I want to know comma to the language I want to speak."
"Wahpanica" (I apologize - I couldn't find the right accent marks) was the poem that made me feel like I had finally landed in the collection. Once I read it, I was like, ohhhhhh, that's what she's going for and it's so fucking brilliant. Longsoldier is probingly inverting the conventions of English language to expose how much they can and cannot hold. But it's just an much an exposé as it is an experiment. What happens when we isolate or remove these conventions? What is gained and what is lost? What I love so much about Longsoldier's approach to these questions is that they're not abstract or purely intellectual endeavors. They are so deeply personal, an attempt to strip away not only the excesses of grammar, but also its pillars, and then see if it brings her any closer to the truth of herself.
The answer, of course, is not easy to come by. Using a metaphor from "Wahpanica," Longsoldier is like that child bonded intimately with its parent, aka. grammar. It is yet another sphere in which she inhabits a dual existence: speaking both tongues and trying to operate in both modes. Though the unfortunate truth - "the meta-phrasal" ache -- she acknowledges is that the Lakota dictionary is much less familiar to her than the English one: "This is a spill-over translation for how I cannot speak my mind comma the meta-phrasal ache of being language poor."
This experiment in stripping away made reading the Whereas section of the book all the more powerful in its overwhelming absence of commas. We are consumed in text, without instruction on how to breathe, where to reflect, how anything fits together. This highlights to me the crudeness of the legal jargon she is imitating, void of emotion and breathe and self-reflection. Yet in some ways the rejection of the comma is itself a way of taking the power back: a comma can splice things into very tiny parts, almost like "hanké" (a piece or part of anything), yet without resulting in a larger sense of wholeness. For comma is both connector and severance: "Some but not all, still our piece to everything."
Arya!
ReplyDelete"For comma is both connector and severance" holy moly! I really think your reading of Whereas is beautiful and I love the direction you took in this response. I found the relationship to punctuation (specifically commas) intriguing as well. So much of language is in the pauses, the stops, the breath. Language is not only the words we speak but the way in which we speak them. Long Solider conveys so much in the punctuation and the lack of it. Thanks for your post.
xoxo,
Rai
Thank you for talking about the "Whereas" section of the book: the difference in the language, the sparse pauses denoted by commas, and the format Long Soldier uses in it. While the whole collection resembles the format of a government treaty, the "Whereas" section of the book further imitates the format of a treaty by using government jargon and formatting. I looked at treaties in the National Archive
ReplyDeletehttps://www.docsteach.org/documents?rt=5E2Qs3X2zeZf&start=20 located on the website docsteach.org and found one poem in particular imitates this more closely: the poem "We." It is divided by a line down the middle, like the type-set treaties the government drew up, and is meant not to be read across, but as separate sections. Long Soldier writes "We" so that it can be read across or within the divided sections. The cold governmental grammar and its sparse pauses indicate our governments lack of need to communicate; its autocratic and arbitrary way of deciding matters relating to the true landowners of America: its native peoples. The obtuse language used in the treaties designed to mask mal-intent and thievery. Long Soldier brilliantly brings this in as subtext in the formatting and language of her poems.
the lack of commas does leave you breathless in "Whereas", I felt like each iteration of "Whereas" was like a gasp. As Hannah Jane touched on, commas are a pause that might be taken as a place to interrupt, but "Whereas" demands not to be interrupted. The continuous flow of speech does create no space for interruption, but also no space for reflection. The use of legal jargon and structure in Long Soldier's work is really intriguing, as the form of poetry and the form of a government treaty seem so incongruous. Poetry is meant to reveal and emote, to convey something genuine. Treaties are meant to conceal. That she uses the language of government treaties in her work is (I agree here with Mstef) brilliant. Thanks for this insightful post and comments!
ReplyDeleteGreat comment Maggie!
Deletethe language of contracts and treaties is the master's word, the words of colonialism and erasure. You show how the punctuation verifies the insidious nature of "agreement" and the comments you inspired are great. e
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