Tocqueville Part 1

This week, we discussed Toqueville by Khaled Mattawa. This book is a collection of highly political poems that Mattawa wrote. I like how his style is and the images he uses to get his point across, when there are points. Sometimes there are different interpretations, and that is what poetry is, your own interpretation of the poem themselves. So, I will pick two that I really like.

The first one is called "Terrorist", where the poem is filled with some grotesque imagery. For example, "I have cleansed my body with the soap of his fat.", and "Rubbing the ashes of his bones unto my face I become his blue screams at birth." Both have not pleasing imagery to the eye, but at the same time they're strong images. I can imagine him rubbing his brother's ashes, and at the same time, washing himself with his fat (how is that possible though? Do you cut out his fat and then use it as soap? Did I miss something?), and continuing on the legacy of his brother. As I continued to read this poem a few times over, it started making more sense.

I made the connections of this poem to post 9/11 terrorist attacks until present. Racial profile is where  I mainly connected it. Within in the text of the poem, Mattawa mentions this: "Will I be a victim again? And again a murderer?" This line here made me think about the racial profiling that has been occurring (if I remember correctly a bit before then) since the attacks, until now. The "victim" could mean the narrator who has been victimized into being profiled as a terrorist by the way he looks, or it could be someone who themselves were a victim of an attack. "Murderer" has the same meaning, just based on how he looks, does that mean he "looks" like a terrorist, ready to blow something up? This misidentifying is still happening today.

Another two that I really liked, but I'm combining them, "Power Point I" and "Power Point II", but the reason is not for imagery or for the language but simply the style of how they are done. Within both, there are aspects of what you expect there to be within an actual power points. In "Power Point I" though, there are "flashbacks" and "cut to's" that really put your own imagination into it. You're getting a back story within the poem itself and it is really interesting to see. For "Power Point II" there are those "insert images here" which in a power point, you insert the image that you want to enhance what you are trying to say. Just these types of things keep you really looking for the next poem to have this type of depth within it.