Stevens, Abeyta, Thirteen Ways of Looking At Things

Have been thinking a little bit about Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird. In one of the workshops I took once, this was a required reading. The dominant reading that was collectively produced by the class was, this poem resists the very work/act of meaning-making. I was of the opinion that it might be, but at the same time, the poem also assumes a white, masculinist, imperial gaze as its basis. That gaze works almost as a political/cultural unconscious of this poem. A closer reading of the poem reveals that it is a gaze that travels outwards from inwards. It is impossible for me to read this poem without thinking of a guy standing in a window, watching nature and the blackbird, taking it apart bit by bit. I identify this urge to look at something, especially in nature, as intrinsic to an imperial gaze. It tears open many many complicated questions: who historically had the right to "look" and "analyze"? I am thinking about this "social/cultural/political unconscious" as I am beginning to revise the poems that I wrote for NaPoWriMo. What are the assumptions about the world that I bring into my writing without even being aware? Of course, class. Caste. And all the associated cultural privileges that come with them. But how do such categories make up the symbolic realm of my work? I still haven't figured out fully yet! Maybe, the answer keeps changing! The assumptions I bring in Manuscript A might not be the same as the assumptions I bring into Manuscript B!

Anyways, whenever I read Stevens' Blackbird poem, I cannot help thinking about Aaron Abeyta's poem Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Tortilla. What Stevens leaves in the vague realm of "beyond meaning", Abeyta transforms it into meaning. The very tangible tortilla. The very tangible human hunger. Food. The process of production of food. Food as a reservoir of culture. Race. Class. Labor. And last but not the least, the US-Mexico Borderlands. In short, Abeyta breaks Stevens' almost taken-for-granted imperial setting, allegory.

Whenever I read Abeyta's poem, I become conscious of all writings as essential works of re-writings. And therefore, writings are also about "reading." What am I re-writing in these poems, then?

Well, a post for another day!