I Am Just a Red Nigger Who

8/14/2019 I Am Just a Red Nigger Who

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I am just a red nigger who love the sea,I had a sound colonial education,I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,

and either Im nobody, or Im a nation. (4)

3 Shabine Leaves the Republic

I had no nation now but the imagination.

After the white man, the niggers didnt want me

when the power swing to their side.The first chain my hands and apologized, History;

the next said I wasnt black enough for their pride. (8)


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The Schooner Flight

ThematicsCaribbean Identity

Love & loss

History

5Shabine Encounters the MiddlePassage

9 Maria Concepcion and the Book ofDreams

Political Corruption

2 Raptures of the Deep

Geography & Natural History

The Sea

TravelPoetry

PoeticsHistorical poem

First-person poem

Song of self

Song of survival

Poem of the seaTravel poem

Quest poem

Elegy

for lost love, lost homeland

Prophetic poem

Political poem

Ethnic-relations poem

State-of-the-nation


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Dynamics

Narrative planes (factual, mythic,imaginative)

SpatialityTemporality Syntactic variation Grammar

Reference (I/Others) Rhythm, Metre & Rhyme Sound


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Narrative Planes

FactSlavery

Carib resistance

Storm at sea

Myth(Biblical, Greek,Caribbean)

Maria Concepcion as VirginMary/goddess/guide/ fortune

teller/siren

10 Out of the Depths-- LetHim, in His might, heave

Leviathan upward


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Imagination

Next we pass slave ships. Flags of all nations,/our fathers below deck too deep, I suppose,/tohear us shouting.

I ran like a Carib through Dominica,/my noseholes choked with memory of smoke;/I heard thescreams of my burning children,

Maria Concepcion as island, as Caribbean--11

After the Storm-- I saw the veiled face of MariaConcepcion/ marrying the ocean, then driftingaway/ in the widening lace of her bridal train


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Temporality & Spatiality

Does the poem take place over time,and if so, how many episodes does it

show? Does the poem bring in several different

places/spaces?

Does the poem refer to a time in the

historical past? If so, what does thatepoch mean to the speaker?


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Temporality & Spatiality

How is the chaos of history ordered intothe brief space of a lyric?

Does the poem move from space tospace as it goes along, or does it remainin one place?

If the poem treats imagined spaces, how

are those spaces laid out anddemarcated?


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Works Cited and

Consulted Handley, George B. New World Poetics:

Nature and the Adamic Imagination of

Whitman,Neruda, and Walcott. Athens:University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Ismond, Patricia. Abandoning DeadMetaphors: The Caribbean Phase of

Derek Walcotts Poetry. Kingston,Jamaica: UWI Press, 2001.


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Works Cited and

ConsultedWalcott, Derek. What the Twilight

Says. Dream on Monkey Mountain

and Other Plays. New York: Farrar,Straus & Giroux, 1970.


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Additional Resources

Brown, Stewart, and Mark McWatt.The Oxford Book of Caribbean

Verse. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Brogan, T. V. F. The New Princeton

Handbook of Poetic Terms.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.


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Resources cont.

___________. The Princeton Handbook ofMulticultural Poetries. Princeton: Princeton

UP, 1996.

Caplan, David. Poetic Form: An Introduction.New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Eagleton, Terry. How to Read a Poem. Malden,

MA: Blackwell, 2007.


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Resources Cont.

Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form.Rev. ed. New York: Random House, 1979.

Hollander, John. Rhymes Reason. NewHaven: Yale UP, 1981.

Myers, Jack, and Don C. Wukasch. Dictionaryof Poetic Terms. Denton: University of NorthTexas Press, 2003.


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Resources cont.

Oliver, Mary.A Poetry Handbook. SanDiego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Pinsky, Robert. The Sounds of Poetry: ABrief Guide. New York: Farrar, Straus andGiroux, 1998.

Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and

Poetics. Rpt. Ed. Alex Preminger et al.Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.


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Resources cont.

Ramazani, Jahan. The Hybrid Muse:Postcolonial Poetry in English. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, andRobert OClair. The Norton Anthology ofModernand Contemporary Poetry. 3rd ed.New York: Norton, 2003.


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Resources cont.

Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland. The Makingof a Poem: A Norton Anthology of PoeticForms. New York: Norton, 2000.

Vendler, Helen. Poems, Poets, Poetry: AnIntroduction and Anthology. 2nd ed. Boston:Bedford/St. Martins, 2002.

I Am Just a Red Nigger Who

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