I enjoyed the poem. I think my generation and those after it (give or take, I’m in my mid-forties) were taught, either directly or indirectly, to create our identities through consumption, not through community and belonging to something bigger than ourselves. However, even with all this messaging in the broader culture, and growing up mostly agnostic, I feel fortunate to have discovered a deeper truth (which you express well in the last stanza/paragraph. Now I just hope I can give my own children that same inner sense of worth. I don’t know for sure, as I’m a very flawed person.
I like that you point out the orientation of identity around consumption. There is a great documentary called The Century of Self available on YouTube that follows the rise of the PR industry in the 1930s-60s. The founding figure, Edward Bernays, taught brands to market their products not for their practicality or longevity but as fulfillments of our deepest desires to be loved and respected. So much of advertising the promising the product will make you into a different kind of person. “She makes her whole personality about drinking Starbucks Frappuccino’s” is sort of a sly putdown today, but there’s something so true about how advertisers push us into becoming walking ads for their brands.
I like seeing the image version and the text version both. The image version has the special font and the border with the designs. Those are an integral part of the poem. Some poem can be just plain text, but most poems benefit from attention to the font of the title and text and to pictures and borders. We neglect those things.
I think identity labeling in the present - especially to the detriment of others - originates from our world's history of contact between cultures (i.e., colonialism), in which people groups were deemed inferior, labeled, and then exploited because their inferiority justified their domination. This has carried on across time, cultures, and identities, so that our human capacity to "find a toehold of understanding on the slipperiness of [human] complexity" has metastasized into a project of labeling not just to understand human uniqueness, but primarily to determine who is superior or inferior in our social, political, economic, and cultural landscape. Of course, there are also various counter-projects of claiming, reclaiming, or redefining labels (or doing away with them altogether) in order to subvert the forces that keep labels statically defined within our structures of power. But with so much in flux, we can keep ourselves grounded in the reality that the fullness of who we are, and the fullness of others, is known and loved by the God who created us, even when we lack understanding ourselves. Reminds me of 1 Cor. 13:12: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully know."
That is beautiful. I am glad you brought up 1 Cor. 13:12. I hadn't thought of it in connection to this poem, but it is so pertinent I wonder if the poet had it in mind while she was writing. @CE Erickson, did you?
“unbound by labeling—it is only me in there” I found this line troubling. It is very post-modern, there is no actual reality of being a woman, only the label imposed by others on the outside.
A lot of our modern confusion around identity probably goes back to mind/body dualism—seeing the body as a mere envelope of the spirit. But I think the author is pointing to the public and anonymous nature of our labels. They're helpful for practical reasons, but they're never adequate for capturing reality. You can think you've got the sum of a person just by being able to assess their sex, age, job, etc. for example, when really, the deeper your intimacy grows, the less you think of them in terms of labels and the more you think of them as just them. Something indescribable. If we think of Creation as God's speech, it figures that our speech will never be able to sufficiently describe it.
Thanks for commenting! I think on first read, the poem is provocative to most conservative people.
I enjoyed the poem. I think my generation and those after it (give or take, I’m in my mid-forties) were taught, either directly or indirectly, to create our identities through consumption, not through community and belonging to something bigger than ourselves. However, even with all this messaging in the broader culture, and growing up mostly agnostic, I feel fortunate to have discovered a deeper truth (which you express well in the last stanza/paragraph. Now I just hope I can give my own children that same inner sense of worth. I don’t know for sure, as I’m a very flawed person.
I like that you point out the orientation of identity around consumption. There is a great documentary called The Century of Self available on YouTube that follows the rise of the PR industry in the 1930s-60s. The founding figure, Edward Bernays, taught brands to market their products not for their practicality or longevity but as fulfillments of our deepest desires to be loved and respected. So much of advertising the promising the product will make you into a different kind of person. “She makes her whole personality about drinking Starbucks Frappuccino’s” is sort of a sly putdown today, but there’s something so true about how advertisers push us into becoming walking ads for their brands.
I like seeing the image version and the text version both. The image version has the special font and the border with the designs. Those are an integral part of the poem. Some poem can be just plain text, but most poems benefit from attention to the font of the title and text and to pictures and borders. We neglect those things.
Delightful!
"not the musician but the music itself"
I think identity labeling in the present - especially to the detriment of others - originates from our world's history of contact between cultures (i.e., colonialism), in which people groups were deemed inferior, labeled, and then exploited because their inferiority justified their domination. This has carried on across time, cultures, and identities, so that our human capacity to "find a toehold of understanding on the slipperiness of [human] complexity" has metastasized into a project of labeling not just to understand human uniqueness, but primarily to determine who is superior or inferior in our social, political, economic, and cultural landscape. Of course, there are also various counter-projects of claiming, reclaiming, or redefining labels (or doing away with them altogether) in order to subvert the forces that keep labels statically defined within our structures of power. But with so much in flux, we can keep ourselves grounded in the reality that the fullness of who we are, and the fullness of others, is known and loved by the God who created us, even when we lack understanding ourselves. Reminds me of 1 Cor. 13:12: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully know."
That is beautiful. I am glad you brought up 1 Cor. 13:12. I hadn't thought of it in connection to this poem, but it is so pertinent I wonder if the poet had it in mind while she was writing. @CE Erickson, did you?
“unbound by labeling—it is only me in there” I found this line troubling. It is very post-modern, there is no actual reality of being a woman, only the label imposed by others on the outside.
A lot of our modern confusion around identity probably goes back to mind/body dualism—seeing the body as a mere envelope of the spirit. But I think the author is pointing to the public and anonymous nature of our labels. They're helpful for practical reasons, but they're never adequate for capturing reality. You can think you've got the sum of a person just by being able to assess their sex, age, job, etc. for example, when really, the deeper your intimacy grows, the less you think of them in terms of labels and the more you think of them as just them. Something indescribable. If we think of Creation as God's speech, it figures that our speech will never be able to sufficiently describe it.
Thanks for commenting! I think on first read, the poem is provocative to most conservative people.
I liked the use of "meiotic", but "vaginal" is too clinical and indecent, and was therefore obtrusive.