Farther investigation of poetry of witness

From Our investigation of poetry of witness last week and from reading the articles "The Necessity to Speak" by Sam Hamill and the discussion of poetry of witness by Carolyn Forché there are many great examples of the true meaning of poetry of witness. The ideas presented in these two essays also works well to help us better define poetry of witness

In "The Necessity to Speak" Hamill does a great job describing the ideas of victims and abuse in our society, this is very relevant to our investigation of poetry of witness because one of the definitions of poetry of witness is describing ones pain through the means of poetry. In this essay Hamill brings us in to the life of the abused and by doing this allows us to witness from this point of view exactly as for example The poem “Immigrants in our own land” Brings us into the life and struggles of a new inmate entering the prison system.

            In the article by Carolyn Forché Poetry is broken up into two easily defined categories, personal and political along with a third more abstract category the “social”. This categorization is a great tool to break up a poem to bring out the true meaning of the poem. This third category that she describes is related to all the unknowns and tough topics that in our society we are often sheltered from. So in this regard I agree with Forché when she says that “By situating poetry in this social space, we can avoid some of our residual prejudices”. If we only focus on the first two categories we will be limited to only the very obvious trues in a poem and never really reveal the authors true struggles.

 Sources

Image source; http://204poetryworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/at-this-shoreline-of-inarticulate.html

 

Carolyn Forché: on a Poetry of Witness, http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/forche/witness.htm