America and The White House are complementary poems, America
being one about his love for a place that drives him mad and treats him poorly
(because of his race, although he never mentions that), and The White House
which is what I see as the breaking point of this tension found in
America.
I don't know how closely in time America and The White House
were written, but for my arguments sake lets home America was written
first. Does the optimism found in the final four lines in
"America" die off in the writing of "The White House"? Or
is he just elaborating on that "bread of bitterness"?
In a previous class with Entin we read Claude McKay and
discussed his use of Sonnet as a form. Here both America and The White house,
poems in protest of the way this country treats him, are written in the
traditional sonnet form, most famously used for fawning over a romantic
interest. Is this re-appropriation of the sonnet a way for him to take a very
Anglo-American, Western, form and turn it against them?
Coincidentally enough, I am currently in a course with Entin wherein we read "America" last night! Similarly, we were reading it through a theorist's lens--specifically, Homi Bhaba and Jamaica Kincaid. I think that Bhoba's idea of "mimicry" as a type of rejection of the colonizers, and as a means of subverting the stranglehold of assimilation that a colonizing society forces upon the colonized. I think that the idea of de-romanticizing a romantic poem is particularly alluring because of the fetishization which America places on the idea of bootstrap experience from which people who are "other" are excluded. HIs use of overtly feminine language in relation to America is also a sort of abstrusion from the sexual/maternal into a more harridanesque image of she/"America."
ReplyDeleteAlso, the marmoreal imagery in the last few lines feels very phallic in description, and the sinking..etc. It reads very tactile and yet manages to have this esoteric quality which feels as if it's borrowing from other cultures with prophecy. He's not just saying "I think this shit will end poorly for America," he's saying "I see..and describes."
As far as the "bread of bitterness" I am so around the bend with that. Is it his religious nature bringing forth transubstantiation? Is it bread/manna? The royal bread? Gah.