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Undocumentaries
Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. "If poetic episodes can act as gauges of social role-playing and role-disruption, what might lie 'outside' the roles 'we' 'inhabit?' What remains undocumented, but hardly silent? What are the sensed and projected traces of 'identity' that are ideologically eviscerated, and minimally verifiable? Rosa Alcala calls up a most magical theater when exploring these quandaries. The tipping (flash) points she constructs continuously build up toward the (touched, handled, engaged) experiential moment, all the while resisting an object-status art. This is a poetics that's prologue + epilogue to incidence, and never the 'it' itself. Sweet tin on tawny brass, flesh-toned, radio-worthy"--Rodrigo Toscano.
- GenresPoetry
86 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2010
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 3, 2024
The struggle here is understanding the arrangement of facts. Or how to document the facts. Or how to write a poetry that is aware that some facts have been well documented, and other facts have been left undocumented. And if those undocumented facts are related to you, or your family, or to people you identify with, then there is a struggle to identify with who you are, or what you stand for.
And how does a poetry think about this, insisting the reader consider this not just as an academic exercise where a poet describes her background, and the reader nods along with the telling. Alcalá can stand at the edge of facts, she can uncover facts, but the poems are often more of a quick glance at facts, then a quick juxtaposition to other thoughts that might say something more about those facts (or any facts), or might indicate the poet’s feeling that she can only offer a quick glance rather than a sustained consideration. Meaning, rather than narrative poems that explain how the poet’s family worked industrial jobs, and that background affected her childhood, which affects the adulthood she is writing from, the poems make oblique references to industry, then arrange that beside a girl with a bicycle. It can be confusing.
But this approach also feels important for the book. Which is especially conscious of the media necessary to capture a life. You have to do things for that capture, like take pictures. You have to write things down. And all the information that would necessarily be missing, or would be falsely filled in by innuendo or speculation. That is part of documentary, and if it’s absent it might lead one to explain it as an undocumentary. Consider, especially, the lives of women, who seem often to be marginal characters in a drama centered on the men they might be around. And, in the case of this poet, a mother who participated in many men’s dramatic narratives—men who weren’t likely to acknowledge her role in their lives. And then consider how that would influence the poet who grew up with that mother.
And how does a poetry think about this, insisting the reader consider this not just as an academic exercise where a poet describes her background, and the reader nods along with the telling. Alcalá can stand at the edge of facts, she can uncover facts, but the poems are often more of a quick glance at facts, then a quick juxtaposition to other thoughts that might say something more about those facts (or any facts), or might indicate the poet’s feeling that she can only offer a quick glance rather than a sustained consideration. Meaning, rather than narrative poems that explain how the poet’s family worked industrial jobs, and that background affected her childhood, which affects the adulthood she is writing from, the poems make oblique references to industry, then arrange that beside a girl with a bicycle. It can be confusing.
But this approach also feels important for the book. Which is especially conscious of the media necessary to capture a life. You have to do things for that capture, like take pictures. You have to write things down. And all the information that would necessarily be missing, or would be falsely filled in by innuendo or speculation. That is part of documentary, and if it’s absent it might lead one to explain it as an undocumentary. Consider, especially, the lives of women, who seem often to be marginal characters in a drama centered on the men they might be around. And, in the case of this poet, a mother who participated in many men’s dramatic narratives—men who weren’t likely to acknowledge her role in their lives. And then consider how that would influence the poet who grew up with that mother.
Displaying 1 of 1 review