Introduction Blog Post

After reading the introduction I began to understand more about what Rita was going to be talking about. In class during our group discussion, I was now able to comprehend her reasoning as to why she chooses the poets/poems in the book. Based off the sentence “To which I inwardly cringed, for your email arrived just as I find myself so deep inside this enterprise as to be hopelessly blinded by the trees in the forest, the forest, the forest,” you can conclude that her introduction is a reply (to someone named “T”) to this mystery person. As you dig deeper you notice she begins using alterations when referring to the forest. It was discussed that this can be compared to “a family tree” and I agree. It is describing the forest to be the realm of literature and/or poetry and the poets seem to be the trees or foundation that sets it up. This also happens to be her using metaphors in this same sentence to illustrate the dynamic she upholds this anthology to. Rita pretty much remains stern in her literary references and what they provide to the art world today. “…after we have reconciled ourselves to owning this scary new millennium by looking forward before we have begun to forget,” is Rita implying that moving forward and progressing is as equally important to knowing and understanding your history, in order to prevail. “The king of is dead; long love the king,” is an example of accepting the present but still remembering the legacy left behind. In these artistic ways, Rita is telling us that it is crucial to understand our past and history to understand the times we live in today and even more years from now. It is understood through her rhetorical questions that sometimes artists are marginalized, non-represented, or even falsely represented. This includes minorities, women, as well as the LGBTQ community because the times weren’t as accepting as today (which hints to the depression and heavy burden of sorrow within poetry). Slavery (including systematic oppression), The Great Depression, World War I and II are some examples that can be explained for these troubling poetry times. This further emphasizes her other commitment to shedding light on these issues and poets who actually went through these similar experiences. They will come into fruition once reading their actual poetry and using similar references and literary elements alike Rita’s in her own introduction. Rita seems as if she’ll touch on controversial forms of morality when referring to the “dreaded monster of morality with an exalted sense of purpose and doom.” Sounds to me like saying things that are undeniably going against the grain can end up being a blessing (the poetry) and a curse (the mental struggles like depression and suicide which ended up being common in these times). She refers to northerners as the “involuntary population of freedmen struggling to create an identity for themselves in hostile environments.” To me this sounds like slavery to freedom trauma meaning it was hard to adjust to the “free” life after being shackled and controlled for so long. This is a part of the same trauma I touched on earlier. It left some of these poets in troubled times of not knowing who they are or what place they have in the world. Reasons like this make me look forward to reading more of Rita’s anthology because I feel like people in my generation often do not consider how certain trauma shapes and affects our culture, not just then, but even the times of today. There is a saying that “history repeats itself,” but if you are informed of that history that your ancestors hold, you can at least look out for the mistakes and find ways to solve issues and be better than what was.