Jennifer S. Cheng

Refraction as resistance (ii)

[image: Capone, Cha, Philip, Walker, Kim, Lyle] — Capone, Cha, Philip, Walker, Kim, Lyle

Some artists cannot afford to believe that aesthetics are not inextricably tied to politics. In my final post of the series, I continue summarizing the significance of artists who, in giving expression to their visions of truth and meaning, ultimately resist normative discourses by refracting status quo representations of the world.

II. Refraction as Resistance: A Poetics of Non-linear

Deviating, shifting, indirect, crooked paths, “constant state of motion, dispersion, and permeability.”

Refraction as resistance (i)

Jennifer S. Cheng

[image: collage capone, cha, philip, walker, kim, lyle] — Capone, Cha, Philip, Walker, Kim, Lyle

I began with an accumulation, a sense of something, and this question: What is the significance of ‘refractive poetics’ for artists who identify with the margins or address alternative modes of seeing?

Refraction: Other bodies, liminality, and Ricoeur

Jennifer S. Cheng

This series started with the intuition that certain works of art to which I am drawn translate the world for and through the liminal body, offering articulations that refract the straightforward, the literal, the dominant. What is the role of ambiguity and the inarticulable in these refractive poetries? Why are these qualities especially poignant for artists from the margins? How do the mechanisms of refraction allows these artists to achieve meaning and truth that is otherwise unlocatable?

Erasure Poetry: A revealing (ii)

Refracting documents

Jennifer S. Cheng

[image: "Zong! #3," M. NourbeSe Philip] — "Zong! #3," M. NourbeSe Philip

In my previous post, I wanted to address the inherent political implications of how erasure poetry refracts a document into another one. I also asked: How do some poets use the rupturing of a text in order to reclaim, redress, resist? How does the intentional absenting of language attempt to succeed where its presence cannot? With this in mind, Zong! by M.

Erasure poetry: A revealing (i)

Jennifer S. Cheng

Erasure as an artistic form carries with it an urgent complexity of politics and ethics. Perhaps it is always inherently a political act. Perhaps it is always inherently a violent act, the removal of language as either defacing or disremembering. If erasure is a historical tool of the oppressor, can it ever be artistically innocent? We struggle with the complexities. The nuances change depending on the nature of the text being erased (government documents, nursery rhymes, Mein Kampf, the Holy Bible, speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., etc.) and on the person or entity doing the erasing. What power relations are implicated in such an act? What historical significance? Who gets to enact erasure, if anyone, and how does its impact or meaning change depending on who is implementing it?

In my investigations into how a poetics and politics of refraction sheds light on certain works by artists from the margins, it seems natural that, as a poet, I would eventually consider works of erasure. In light of my discussion of refraction, rupture, and ruins:

refract : disrupt : interrupt : modulate : shatter : disperse

In renaming the world anew, poets and artists engage in acts of “translation” that are intentionally askew. What truths and beauties are revealed in such blurry distortions of our world, and what is at stake in this moment of refraction for poets and artists from the margins? While we are familiar with Dickinson’s dictate Tell all the truth but tell it slant, I explore these angles through the lens of visual and mixed media—artwork that function as poems in miraculous ways—with the belief that they shed light on the poetics of language by manifesting it viscerally and tangibly. Simultaneously, I take the study of refraction further by examining how oblique renderings of status-quo notions urge the audience to inhabit non-dominant spaces of perception that challenge the terms of their reality. These artists demonstrate how refractive poetries invoke alternative or marginal perspectives, constructing new meaning by moving beyond normalized ways of experiencing the world.

Jennifer S. Cheng is a poet and essayist who writes about dislocation as home, things the body knows, and bewilderment. She is the author of HOUSE A, selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize, forthcoming in October 2016. Her writing appears in Tin House, AGNI, Entropy, Web Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, Tupelo Quarterly, The Normal School, The Volta, Guernica Daily, and elsewhere. A Fulbright Scholar and Kundiman Fellow, she received her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University, and BA from Brown University. Having grown up in Texas, Hong Kong, and Connecticut, she currently lives in San Francisco, where she is a founding editor of Drop Leaf Press.

Jacket2 Commentaries feature invited posts by poets and scholars who take a close, serial look at poetry scenes, archives, poetic concerns, or theoretical clusters. Commentaries, although curated, are not edited by Jacket2 staff. We welcome your comments. Send queries and notes to Jacket editors here.