Conflict With Self

I think that poetry, like any art form, offers its readers and listeners a contact zone. In fact, this characteristic of art is what gives it power. People can read a poem, look at a painting, listen to a song, and find points of contact, points of empathy. The dynamic interaction between “art” and “the beholder” arises because of art’s openness. I always envision a work of art as having a core from which thousands of strands extend from, forming different “contact zones” with different people.

The line “we...love...a fermenting tribe.../all [that] came before you" allows everyone to empathize, question, challenge, or relate to it in different ways. It reminds me that my thoughts and actions can never be divorced from my lived experiences and my history. This can create conflict within a person’s sense of self--some people so desperately want to be removed from their history, their childhood, their “tribe”. Like we saw with Kanai in The Hungry Tide, he distanced himself from his culture and effectively separated it from his self-perception. Human beings often feel torn between “the one and the other”, but in reality, we always exist in (and act on) both.