In-Depth Look: Bernard Ferguson – “Love Does Not Want This Body”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“How we were made to bleed, and then made a nation out of dying.”
In workshops and cyphers, we talk sometimes about clarity of meaning; the question usually revolves around how important it is that the audience (a loaded term) “gets” the poem right away. Especially with spoken word, where the hearing of the poem is the only chance to absorb it– as a writer, what is the value of clarity? What are the dangers of seeking it at the expense of other stylistic impulses? Complicating things, “clarity” is definitely a relative term– poems outside of our specific experience as readers or listeners may feel confusing or abstract, when what they’re saying is actually perfectly clear for some other audience.
This poem might be a good entry point into that conversation, since it is perhaps a little less straightforward than a lot of the other poems featured on Button’s channel. But while that lack of straightforwardness might mean that this poem doesn’t go viral and rack up a billion YouTube views, it powers the poem in other, perhaps more important, ways.
Note how this poem is driven by a dialogue between abstract and concrete: the swirling, dynamic juxtaposition of big ideas/concepts like Love, Country, God, Heaven, Nation, and Lineage, next to concrete, imagistic words like Body, Mist, Wind, Bleed, Sea, and Reflection. Some of their pairings are explicit, and some only manifest beneath the surface of the poem. This gives the poem a dreamlike quality, that forces the audience to reckon with the larger ideas relating to home, grief, and loss in a new way, to seek to understand from a new angle. I would argue that that challenge– to push the audience to reconsider/revisit/reckon with ideas– is one reason we write poems in the first place.
“I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike. Scared, but reckless. With no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Michael Lee, Kristen Jewel, & Rudy Francisco. Congrats poets!
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
Because my biggest poem is a “number poem,” people often ask about that approach with regards to their own writing. In that question, though, there’s often a hint of suspicion, as if poems built around numbered sections represent some kind of poetic cheat code, an easy way to sound deep without really justifying the structural conceit. And sure, that happens.
This poem, however, is a great example of how a number poem can work, and work beautifully. At its core, a number poem is a way to fragment an idea; to use a visual metaphor, I think of number poems as less photorealistic and more impressionistic. Rather than offer some big, authoritative thesis statement about a topic, you can build an idea out of smaller pieces; the substance of the poem is contained both in those pieces and in how those pieces relate to one another.
In this poem, the separation of the main idea into smaller sections allows Smith to deploy a whirlwind of concrete images– the fire, the tampons, the stitches, the gallbladder, the hurricane, the bones. Because the poem is already fragmented, those images get to stand on their own as they appear. That fragmentation also allows different sections to provide context for one another. For example: …when I was reminded to be humble, when I was taught to be polite, when I was raised to be a Christian, all forgiveness and long suffering, when I was beaten into being a good girl… connects the deeply personal to larger ideas about society and culture, expanding the “work” of the poem in a powerful way.
“If you tear the part that says ‘peanut’ off of a peanut butter jar, that does not make it butter. That does not make it any less brown, any more yellow.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: T. Miller, Patrick Roche, Raych Jackson, Ephraim Nehemiah, & Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Congrats poets!
In-Depth Look: Bianca Phipps – “When the Boy Says He Loves My Body”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“I find my body is a locked door. I find I locked myself out.”
This whole series is built around the idea of “sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times” in order to come to a deeper understanding of and appreciation for that poem. That process, however, is so much bigger than poetry. The basic idea of thinking more critically about our language, our actions, our culture– everything– is valuable whether or not you have any interest in writing and performing poems.
This piece captures some of why that is. The entire poem is built around a “catalyst moment:” there is an action (when the boy says he loves my body, but does not say he loves me), and a reaction. That reaction is full of imagery, metaphor, and a deeper analysis of the catalyst, even if nothing really “happens” on a literal level– the poem is a meditation, an opportunity to cultivate within ourselves a fuller understanding of that line that kicks everything off.
Some of my favorite poems are built like this– give us a scenario that does not at all seem special, and then illuminate why it is special. Give us a “simple” image, and then show us its complexity. In this poem’s case, give us a “throwaway” bit of dialogue (as something like this catalyst statement could potentially be interpreted, at least by its speaker), and then explore its layers, its nuance, its impact.
