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Myself and Strangers: Fragments and Thresholds in Sahar Muradi's听[ G A T E S ]

Keegan Cook Finberg

搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Sahar Muradi,听[ G A T E S ]听(Black Lawrence Press, 2017).

惭别苍迟颈辞苍别诲:听Anne Carson,听If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho听(Vintage, 2002).

The title of Sahar Muradi鈥檚 chapbook听[ G A T E S ]听is hard to type because there are spaces between each of the letters and also spaces between the letters and the brackets. The word is tender, segmented, open. On the surface, this formatting might make you think of something like听L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the journal after which Language poetry is named. Like the poets associated with Language poetry, Muradi uses techniques of found language and collage. She also gives us a few philosophical gems about language itself.

In a poem that considers the names of places in Afghanistan, specifically the name of the northeastern valley Panjsher:

The difference between a poem and a lion is an alphabet. The difference between five poems and five lions is slight.

As the notes explain, in Dari,听panj听means five and听sher听means lions; the word for 鈥減oem鈥� is also 鈥渟her鈥� but spelled and transliterated differently. In keeping with this ferocious animation of language, a little later in a poem about British colonialism in Central and Southeast Asia:

a word is legged,
听听听听听听听听听听听 听 armed

迟辞听retreat, move back
from a forward or threatened position
听 听 听 听 听 听 as in chess, a piece

And then, toward the end of the book in a poem that seems to take place within the U.S., but as if to illustrate the power of Panjsher inside the power of Muradi鈥檚 own poetry:

The Director is called in to write the opening.

Instead he writes a resignation letter:听From line to line, we lived together.

Language dismantles the dwelling.

Muradi鈥檚 work, perhaps like Language poetry, makes us think about the materiality of language. But even more so it prompts us to think about the materiality that is not language. Those spaces! Those empty gaps. I venture to say that it is actually this notion of dismantling鈥攖he dismantling that language can do, that war can do, that colonialism has done鈥攖hat is most interesting about听[ G A T E S ].听In the听Poets & Writers听column 鈥�,鈥� Muradi explains, 鈥淪tillness is necessary. I listen, let things pass, and try to accept all of life, including the stuck parts.鈥� This book contains a lot of stillness and silences. Silences between letters, between stanzas, between scenes. These silences are so full, so necessary to the collection, that they seem to take us somewhere.

For example, one of my favorite poems in the collection is written in two columns on the page. Both columns tell the story of butterfly farms, but enacted in the cavern between the columns is the history of settler-colonialism, its echoes of oppressive effects, and the attitudes of U.S. jingoism. On one side, the butterfly cocoons are golden, on the other side invisible; one side flies, the other survives.

Echoing the spaces in the title, and packing the collection with these transporting silences, each poem is entitled 鈥淸 ].鈥� I have seen brackets like this in poems before: It is one way that transcribers and translators mark gaps in poetry that survives only in fragments. For example, it is that way that Anne Carson translates the 鈥渋mpression of missing matter鈥� in the poetry of the Ancient Greek poet Sappho. For Carson, 鈥淏rackets are exciting鈥� because they 鈥渋mply a free space of imaginal adventure.鈥� Brackets delimit the silence and they give it importance, or as Muradi might say, brackets show that silence is 鈥渘ecessary.鈥� Blanks can make us anxious. People often see that something is open鈥攐r, hear silences鈥攁nd feel the need to produce, fill, and close, moves that evoke patterns of colonization. This is the way that Sappho鈥檚 poems were often published before Carson鈥檚 translations, with editors filling in the pieces.

Muradi resists filling in, and she creates a theory of history鈥檚 lived experience, a theory of the transformative power of fragments, in听[ G A T E S ]. When talking about her book,听听that the brackets in fact are gates themselves, making the text a collection of connections as much as absences. The first poem of the collection, a lyrical list of gates, illustrates this connection most clearly. Muradi鈥檚 experience of leaving Afghanistan with her family during the Soviet invasion, which embroiled the country in war throughout the 1980s, and her childhood as an immigrant in the United States, create these connections and these gaps. In fact, the personal and the political鈥攖he individual and the social鈥攁re often woven so tightly in the collection, they are inextricable. Some poems detail scenes from Afghanistan, characterizing cities and people. In these poems, the gaps create travels between locations and perspectives. In other poems, spaces probe Muradi鈥檚 relationship with her father, her ambitions as a writer, fears of belonging, and moments of recognition.

In a poem that seems to press on the meaning of 鈥渞efuge鈥� in a post-9/11 United States, the themes of patriotism, estrangement, and the frailty of the body, create an injured world through a series of heroic couplets. The couplets are worlds apart from each other but held together through openings:

I will wear my wounds in chapters.
I will use the Internet to build a home.

Who gave their life the most?
Who fought the longest, the hardest? for like ever?

My body in the waiting room of public medicine.
No one cares where you have to be.

Noting the jade leaf that cracked and did not fall.
I woke with chiclets of dreams.

I am not real. I am just like you.
If you were real, you would have some status among the nations.

奥丑补迟听[ G A T E S ]听shows us is a history in fragments, a home in pieces, a theory of identity that is open, painful, and bright with vulnerability. But Muradi also gives us a glimpse of what these blanks might look like as thresholds鈥攊n听[ G A T E S ]听we pass through them.

Myself and Strangers: Surviving 2017 with Poetry

Keegan Cook Finberg

Reviewed:听Nicole Sealey,听Ordinary Beast听(Ecco, 2017); Sheila McMullin,听诲补耻驳丑迟别谤谤补谤颈耻尘听(Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2017); Layli Long Soldier,听WHEREAS听(Graywolf Press, 2017).

Mentioned:听Solmaz Sharif,听Look听(Graywolf Press, 2016); Ocean Vuong,听Night Sky with Exit Wounds听(Copper Canyon Press, 2016); Donika Kelly,听叠别蝉迟颈补谤测听(Graywolf Press, 2016); Sara Ahmed,听Living a Feminist Life听(Duke, 2017)

Hello. My name is Keegan Cook Finberg, and I am the new Reviews Editor for the听Southern Indiana Review. I鈥檒l be writing a column about books for the site. The title of my column comes from Gertrude Stein鈥檚听The Making of Americans. It鈥檚 a sentence that Stein herself quotes in听The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 鈥淚 am writing for myself and strangers.鈥� To say this is an important moment in poetry for myself and strangers would sound like a platitude. It would sound like not enough. But this is why I wanted to start a review column, and further, I am finding that this is why I write.

For this first column, I thought it would be appropriate to think about first books. And, as we are nearing the end of the year, I鈥檓 thinking about books published in 2017. Some of my favorite debut poetry collections of 2016 resisted placement into standard poetry camps, and this is a theme for 2017 as well. In 2016, we were given Solmaz Sharif鈥檚听尝辞辞办,听which contains difficult avant-gardism woven with personal tenderness and scathing political critique. Ocean Vuong seems a card-carrying confessional poet, but听Night Sky with Exit Wounds, with its flare for image repetition, broken lineation, and collage, does something decidedly different. Donika Kelly鈥檚 boundlessly intersectional听叠别蝉迟颈补谤测听also came out last year, full of magical animals and hybrid poetics.

Speaking of books about beasts, and of debuts, Nicole Sealey鈥檚 new collection听Ordinary Beast听does some of my favorite things. Exuberant in its testing of forms and boundaries, the poems somehow manage to be both urgent and meditative. For example, 鈥淗ysterical Strength鈥� one of the many poems in the collection that is听almost听a sonnet, begins with a hitchhiker surviving being struck by lightning and ends this way:

my thoughts turn to black people鈥�
the hysterical strength we must
possess to survive our very existence,
which I fear many believe is, and
treat as, itself a freak occurrence.

In this white supremacist environment, black people must muster unreasonable strength鈥攖heir perseverance is not a freak occurrence, but rather an act of studied will. With our country鈥檚 history of racism embedded into everyday institutional fabrics, and a political environment where being black can prove fatal depending on who you happen to run into or what street you鈥檙e on, Sealey turns to hysteria for the means to survive. 鈥淗ysterical鈥� of course means uncontrollable or impassioned, but it signifies a feminized illness as well. The word not only recalls frail Victorian women, sick and bed-ridden because of their nerves, but also it comes from an Ancient Greek word that means 鈥渨andering womb.鈥� It refers to a malady that supposedly affects only women, specifically women who cannot control their uteruses. Here lies the source of power鈥攚hat makes people 鈥渟ick鈥� can make them strong. The notion of 鈥渉ysterical strength鈥� mirrors 鈥渇reak occurrence鈥� in that it plays with ideas of institutional misdiagnoses and oppression through pathology. Despite who pseudoscience, institutional bias, and systems of control have told us is smartest or strongest, this poem reminds us that studied hystericals and freaks are the ones that survive this sick earth.

If the collection is urgent, it is also full of play. Sealey shows that the ordinary state of the world is its destruction, and yet she creates gorgeous centos, erasure poems, sonnets, and sestinas out of the rubble. The title of the collection comes from Sealey鈥檚 version of Albert Camus鈥檚 philosophy that we must 鈥渋magine Sisyphus happy,鈥� that we must move forward with our small work and daily tasks. We may perhaps take one night of being 鈥渋nconsolable,鈥� but when we wake up in the morning, we must be glad to be alive and to toil at meaningless work, just so that we do not die of unhappiness. There is nothing magical about it:

We fit somewhere between god
听听听听听听听听 and mineral, angel and animal,

believing a thing as sacred as the sun rises
听听听听听听听听听 and falls like an ordinary beast.

At times the collection seems to mock the futility of poetry, despite the ways in which听Ordinary Beast听exhibits poetry鈥檚 very power. 鈥淯nderperforming Sonnet Overperforming鈥� parodies poetry about poetry, for example. But as a whole,听Ordinary Beast听points out the violent and the unrelenting, the horrible and the scorching, and also uses poetry as a reason to keep living. As Sealey puts it, tonight we 鈥渃ut/ and salt the open,鈥� tomorrow, we 鈥減romise to circle to ascend鈥�; we 鈥減romise to be happy tomorrow.鈥�

***

Sheila McMullen鈥檚听诲补耻驳丑迟别谤谤补谤颈耻尘听lets poetry cast its spell without question. It gloriously indulges. The book combines and recombines grammars, working with, through, and against language in ways that place it squarely within the great feminist avant-garde tradition鈥攚e read Stein here, we read Alice Notley. Yet we also read something terrifying, tender, and totally new. The poems are about surviving sexual abuse, assault, cervical cancer, everyday misogyny, and they are about asterisks, parentheses, quotation marks, brackets, blanks, and toggling font sizes.

This interest in the marks of words, reminds me of what Claudia Rankine (another poet whose debut collection was on Cleveland State Poetry Center, by the way)听听who asked her if it was hard to write about race: 鈥淚 find it interesting to look at language itself and think about what language can do.鈥� McMullen looks to the limits of the lexicon.听daughterrarium鈥檚 women are bad women in variation. They are 鈥淏ad Women, thought drawer variation,鈥� 鈥淏ad Woman, planning someone鈥檚 falling variation,鈥� 鈥淏ad Woman, in the beginning variation,鈥� 鈥淏ad Woman, beneath vision seaweed variation,鈥� 鈥淏ad Woman, reverse ghost variation,鈥� and more. McMullen runs out our grammars to reveal something, to see what they can do about women, for women.

I admire this collection鈥檚 risk, and it is so risky that it is at times opaque. For example, it begins with 鈥淭apering鈥�:

The day woke with a (*)
not a star, but a satellite

The poem will use this evocative * several more times but this jolting morning is our first clue for *. Things don鈥檛 orbit around *, but rather * is in orbit. As 鈥淭apering鈥� continues, the * morphs, and takes on its own logics. The * becomes the satellite that orbits the speaker, her mother, her sisters, all women. It is depression, pain, the aftermath of abuse, the orbiting material that ultimately becomes the survival that women must muster. It haunts, it won鈥檛 leave:

My sister also said *
we think because of our mother; (I)
feared * and (I) held *

(I) interrupted *:

For all its moments of experimental opacity鈥攆or example, the repeated refrain 鈥淥lgy, oh olgy olga, there are far too many people/ In the world to love you and only you鈥濃�攖he collection has candor, a straightforwardness that is at times nauseating, especially in scenes of sexual abuse. It is political, direct, and militant. In italicized sections, the speaker (a daughter captured in her terrarium of sweet flowers of condescension) grows up:

For me I realized

I realized I was angry
and realized late

听

It was like
that time at Halloween
We were at the bar
I heard screaming
A movie was playing
There was a man simultaneously
raping and murdering a woman under a sheet

Before I would crawl into myself
or would know not to look

But this time
I didn鈥檛 know
This time
I clawed at the screen
and it felt good

This is the awakening of the speaker, of a daughter; it is a woman coming into anger. She is angered not only at her own sexual abusers (鈥�Others took joy out of my body/ when I did not鈥�) but at the representations of women that surround us. She is furious at what is entertainment in a bar on Halloween, and in this moment, she grows claws. In听Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed writes that feminism 鈥渃an allow you to reinhabit not only your own past but also your own body.鈥� She tells us that feminism allows you to 鈥渆xpand your own reach鈥�we might learn to let ourselves bump into things; not to withdraw in anticipation of violence.鈥� In this poem, before our eyes this daughter with claws begins to figure out how to feel good. At the end of听daughterrarium, the horizons change. The daughter may be surrounded by flowers but also, as the daughter puts it, 鈥淚 put the ginger flower into my mouth./ Orchards bloom inside me.鈥�

***

A dodging awareness about the power of poetry and its unlikely alchemy is a theme that also runs through Layli Long Soldier鈥檚听WHEREAS. 鈥溾��Real鈥� poems do not 鈥榬eally鈥� require words,鈥� Long Soldier whispers in her poem 鈥�.鈥� Like McMullen鈥檚 book, there are passages written in square political directness (for example 鈥�,鈥� the story for the largest 鈥渓egal鈥� mass execution in U.S. history, showing the impossibility of telling a direct, true story through a directness so true that won鈥檛 show the truth). The book has been hyped so much already that I feel a little sheepish singing more praises (it was recently named a finalist for the National Book Award) but it fits into this feminist debut power trio beautifully.

In Long Soldier鈥檚 collection, I see Gloria Anzald煤a, Nourbese Philip, Solmaz Sharif, Harryette Mullen, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, and it is influenced by several indigenous works as well鈥擫ong Soldier pulls language from Zitk谩la-艩谩, for example, and she mentions gaining inspiration from Simon Ortiz in听. 听Like Whitman鈥檚听Leaves of Grass, it is a collection about grass and about North America and its varied people. But unlike Whitman鈥檚 work, Long Soldier鈥檚 book is about 鈥済rassesgrassesgrasses,鈥� and the systematic genocidal oppression of native peoples in the U.S. Long Soldier is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the poems provide a portrait of North America that is not the one we usually see. The official guidelines for how people should conduct themselves at the Standing Rock camp are tenderly explained, President Obama鈥檚 almost secret 2009 apology to all Native Peoples is revealed and interrogated throughout the book, and we are reminded of the many injustices we might not know about because they have been covered up in our retellings of history. For instance, 鈥渢he signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was included in the film听Lincoln; the hanging of the Dakota 38 was not.鈥� By referencing acts of state-sponsored genocide, Long Soldier tells a history that is also an experience of people and of the earth.

It is in 鈥�38鈥� that we discover that the collection鈥檚 focus on grass and 鈥済rassesgrassesgrasses鈥� comes from trader Andrew Myrick鈥檚 famous 1862 remark that the starving Dakota tribe, dispossessed of land and resources, should eat grass. Then, 鈥淲hen settlers and traders were killed during the Sioux Uprising, one of the first to be executed/ by the Dakota was Andrew Myrick./When Myrick鈥檚 body was found,/his mouth was stuffed with grass.鈥� Long Soldier writes, 鈥淚 am inclined to call this act by the Dakota Warriors a poem.鈥�

This revelation of poetry and of grass brings new understanding to poems like 鈥淟ook,鈥� This poem is in the first part of the book, 鈥淭hese Being the Concerns,鈥� which is a sort of dictionary.

the light

grass

body

whole

wholly moves

a听 green听 hill

鈥檛il听听 I听听 pull

stalk 鈥檔 root

听听听听听听听 up
听听听听听听 from
听 black matte

soil听听听听听 bed

The symbol of grass, this idea of damaging to the root, and a desire for repair or wholeness, is crucial to the collection. In the last section of the book, the speaker tells a story of a toothache. After government funding for Indian Health Services is cut, the speaker鈥檚 only option is to have a tooth pulled that could have been otherwise saved. She writes 鈥渢he root of reparation is repair. My tooth will not grow back. The root, gone.鈥� This early lyric poem 鈥淟ook鈥� ends:

whythisimpulse

to

shake 听听听the听听听 dead

light

why听听听 do

I听听 so want the听听 light

to

blink look

alive move

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 why

do听听 I听听听 so听听 want听听 it

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听still

The collection urges us to move back and forth to truly take it in. Likewise, Long Soldier鈥檚 interest in language and its connection to history鈥攖o 鈥渟haking the dead鈥濃�攔uns deep. She is bilingual (though she worries she knows Lakota only in 鈥減ieces鈥�) and has dual citizenship, being a citizen of the U.S. and also of the Oglala Lakota Nation, which she reminds us, is in our country but an alternate nation 鈥渨ith its own government and flag they raise to their own national songs and sing in their own languages, even.鈥� The last section, 鈥淲hereas鈥� is Long Soldier鈥檚 response to the听听(Obama鈥檚 near-secret apology), and it follows its form, performing a close reading of the statement and its refutation at the same time. Sometimes the poems mock its language, other times erase words or add to them to devastating effect, at each turn pointing out the futility of the 鈥渞esolution.鈥�

Long Soldier uses words to make borders, boxes, and pieces across the pages in this part of the book. Eventually, we read:

(4)听I have thought carefully about certain terms in English, the language in which the Apology is written. Likewise, since the Apology is issued to Native people, I have considered Native languages. For months, I dwelled on the word 鈥渁pologies.鈥� As you may already know, in many Native languages, there is no word for 鈥渁pologize.鈥� The same goes for 鈥渟orry.鈥� This doesn鈥檛 mean that in Native communities where the word 鈥渁pologize鈥� is not spoken, there aren鈥檛 definite actions for admitting and amending wrongdoing. Thus, I wonder how, without the word, this text translates as a gesture鈥�

And this is where the collection seems to rest, between word and gesture. Mirroring the 鈥渄isclaimer鈥� at the end of the Congressional Resolution, she reminds us at the end of the book that these words鈥攂oth Layli Long Soldier鈥檚 words and Congress鈥檚鈥攄o not support any claim or serve as a settlement of any claim. Claim here refers to money but also to assertions, to a poet鈥檚 鈥済rassesgrassesgrasses.鈥� As Long Soldier shows us in 鈥淟ook,鈥� it seems that only true action may shake the past alive. Or, as she puts it in a poem about her father apologizing to her, a true apology is 鈥渙pened bundle/or medicine.鈥� Only actual reparations, an act that opens and gets to the root, would make the 鈥渞eal鈥� poem that does not require words.