Poetry and Politics

Deep in my current fieldwork, I'm taking a strange detour, into poetry. There's a small but vibrant Arab arts scene in New York, and I'm trying to figure out how to think about the literary work produced in it as "data" for my research. In particular, I'm trying to work through how to do that without either resorting to a very cheap definition of politics, wherein it means everything and nothing, and yet also not stripping the writing of any artistic content. Suheir Hammad says in her poem "palestinian 98":

this poem begging to be
beautiful poised
articulate this poem
palestinian and too late

But of course the poem's own form refutes its statement: it is "beautiful poised/articulate," even if Hammad doubts its ability to respond to the questions she is posed. Political poetry (particularly the good stuff) is both/and, and I want to be able to capture some of that both/and in my work.

Anyway, this means I'm spending a lot of time reading Hammad's work. She's a Palestinian-American raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, and she's relatively well known for her appearances on Def Poetry Jam, as well as for her poem First Writing Since,, which I think of as the quintessential poem about September 11th. It perfectly captures the relationship between being a New Yorker and being an Arab and being a person committed to social justice, in that particular moment in history.

first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart failed, the
plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

True story: Suheir Hammad once performed at a benefit for my wife's former employer. Walking home after the event, we passed her outside. I waved. She waved back. I had to text my roommate in a full bout of fangirl.

***

Tahani Salah is a poet who is easily compared to Hammad, as another Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American who performs spoken word (and also an alum of Def Poetry Jam). She's younger, though I can't find an exact age, went to Columbia (is still at Columbia?), and has competed on the Nuyorican team at the National Poetry Slam. I've heard her perform at Al-Awda demonstrations and at other Palestine events in the city. She hasn't yet published a book that I can find, and doesn't seem to maintain a website. That means that my major source for her work is YouTube videos of her performances...and that I'm having to make transcripts of her stuff.

This appears to be her most famous poem, "Hate." She performed it on Def Poetry Jam, and also at the National Poetry Slam. This is the Def Poetry Jam version, though the other one is on YouTube as well.

( Transcription below cut )

She's a vibrant performer. I am also interested to see how she's interrogating the notion of Palestinians as hateful, not by rejecting it, but by redefining hate as a useful, motivating function. I also find it interesting that in both the performances I watched, there is so much cheering over the lines "And in other countries, there are six year old children who step/and throw rocks to protect the tears and the lives of their grandparents" that I can't hear the following line.

So: poetry as data. Political ethnography is nothing if not interesting.