Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-02T09:17:58.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transparent Eye, Voice Howling Within: Codes of Violence in Lawrence Joseph's Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Frank D. Rashid
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the early quatrains of “Rubaiyat,” a poem in Lawrence Joseph's fourth book, into it, The poet adopts a curious perspective for an American poet of Arab ancestry who is intensely critical of American military aggression. Taking on the “eye” of the aggressor, he pulls up the “satellite image of a major / military target, a 3-D journey / into a landscape of hills and valleys.” He follows the lens as it zooms closer to the ground:

Zoom in close enough—the shadows

of statues, the swimming pools of palaces …

closer—a garden of palm trees,

oranges and lemons, chickens, sheep. … (41)

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1611 - 1620
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abraham, Nabeel, and Shryock, Andrew. “Introduction: On Margins and Mainstreams.” Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Ed. Abraham, and Shryock, . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2000. 15–35.Google Scholar
“Embassy News: U.S. Embassy Beirut Memorial.” Embassy of the United States: Beirut, Lebanon. U.S. Dept. of State. 11 Jan. 2008 <http://www.usembassy.gov.lb/embassy/TCIP.htm>..>Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Spiller, Robert E. and Ferguson, Alfred R. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1971.Google Scholar
Gettleman, Jeffrey. “A Soldier's Return, to a Dark and Moody World.” New York Times 30 Dec 2003. Common Dreams.org News Center 16 May 2007 <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1230-02.htm>.Google Scholar
Graeber, Charles. “Pulling the Words from the Ruins.” Downtown Express 4 Nov. 2005. 9 May 2007 <http://www.downtownexpress.com>.Google Scholar
Joseph, Lawrence. Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems, 1973–1993. New York: Farrar, 2005.Google Scholar
Joseph, Lawrence. E-mail to the author. 6 Jan. 2008.Google Scholar
Joseph, Lawrence. Into It. New York: Farrar, 2005.Google Scholar
Joseph, Lawrence. “Jeremiah and Corinthians.” Communion: Contemporary Writers Reveal the Bible in Their Lives. Ed. Rosenberg, David. New York: Anchor, 1996. 467–78.Google Scholar
Joseph, Lawrence. “‘Our Lives Are Here’: Notes from a Journal, Detroit, 1975.” Michigan Quarterly Review 25 (1986): 296–302.Google Scholar
Krivak, Andrew. “The Language of Redemption: The Catholic Poets Adam Zagajewski, Marie Ponsot, and Lawrence Joseph.” Commonweal 9 May 2003: 12–16.Google Scholar
Lerner, Sharon. “When Crazy Is Normal: Portrait of a Grieving City.” Village Voice 10 Oct. 2001. 15 June 2007 <http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0141,lerner,28892,1.html>.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. Ed. Bidart, Frank and Gewanter, David. New York: Farrar, 2003.Google Scholar
Steinman, Lisa M. “So What Is Poetry Good For?” Michigan Quarterly Review 45 (2006): 544–59.Google Scholar
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Wojahn, David. “Maggie's Farm No More: The Fate of Political Poetry.” Writer's Chronicle May 2001: 21–31.Google Scholar