From Deleuze and Guattari’s essay on “Minor Literature” to Alfred Arteaga’s work on Chicanx poetics, theorists have studied the relationship between power and language, describing how creative writers find inventive ways to interrogate monolingual and nationalist logics.[1] Often, personal as well as historical conditions shape an author’s linguistic choices. My interest here lies in how poets use citation and translation as craft techniques in forging poetic languages that challenge powerful configurations and histories.
In the diamond at the heart of the moon: Sixty-nine notes on the US elections, part 1
by Sam Truitt
Sam Truitt
In memory of David Graeber (1961–2020)
1. two three four … / what are we fighting for?
2. Is poetry’s role to keep open a human possibility until all may join? Isn’t that what the confounders sought?
3. “Election” means something like the state or act of picking out or choosing.
4. An election illuminates the space between us.
5. “Election” shares the same cognate (Latin eligere) with “elite,” meaning “chosen people,” the adjectival use of which Byron introduced into English in a passage in Don Juan (Canto 13) recounting a party:
With other Countesses of Blank — but rank;
At once the “lie” and the “elite” of crowds;
Who pass like water filter’d in a tank,
All purged and pious from their native clouds …