complore (etymologies)

complexion

[a. F. complexion (13th c. in Littré), ad. L. complexin-em ‘combination, connexion, association’, later ‘physical constitution or conformation’, f. complex- ppl. stem of complectre taken analytically from com- together + plectre to plait, twine.]

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sometimes it's nothing

a clause without refrain, repair

partitions where | windows go

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ribbon unwinding our ribs

yours are brittle bones

it hurts to let go

now available @ etsy

from "Inbetweeness" by Angela Veronica Wong

It is admittedly not much of a choice if one has to deny part of one’s self to gain privilege. However, privilege can still exist, even if “choice” is denial. For example: if I “choose” to publish under a different name, say, “Mike Jones,” my words as “Mike Jones” have more privilege than my words as a female-of-color. “Mike Jones” has the privilege of invisibility, of nondifference. “Mike Jones” does not have to send his words through tokenism. His words would not be parsed through cultural lenses or be automatically associated with visual difference. Nor would he be judged on his difference. To gain Mike Jones’ privilege, I have to deny everything that I am. But if I did, his privilege nonetheless operates for me.

See: the nature of privilege is determined by those who have it. And those who have it in our society are white heterosexual males. The only way privilege exists is through silencing the other to maintain inequality. In order to gain privilege, those outside of the privileged categories must deny parts of her/his self, have to inch closer to WHITE, HETEROSEXUAL, MALE. For gays and lesbians, inching closer to heterosexual norm is done through visibility and the visual—dressing a certain way, not holding hands when walking down the street. For nonwhites, to inch closer to the white norm, it is done by remaining silent on race issues. For women, it is to fulfill the gender role assigned to them. Privilege is measured against the norm, and to gain privilege, one moves towards the norm.

and then

There will always be a chasm between what is felt and what is perceived as felt. I can never adequately explain the discomfort I feel in this world, the constant awareness of my notbelonging, my neverbelonging—partially because I do not have the language to express it. It’s a pervasive feeling, constant, and that I know I will deal with for the rest of my life.

Reading w. Dos Press

Reading for Dos Press and Hex Presse @ Okay Mountain in Austin on December 1st at 7:00PM.

Michelle Detorie (CA, ed. Hex Presse) will read/perform w/Austin drummer, Chris Cogburn.
Johannes Goransson (Indiana, ed. Action Books)
Michael Cross (Buffalo, ed. Atticus/Finch)
Michalle Gould (Austin, reading from the first book from Hex Presse)

Kate is thinking about whiteness over at Minor American.

i always feel uncomfortable when i think about my whiteness and how i came to be where i am.

and

but maybe i just wanted to say that. that i'm uncomfortable and having feelings about the subject and that i don't know everything about what they are yet but, wow, i'm so glad some people are saying something.

more on silence?

maybe the point is not to shut-up, but perhaps to start a different kind of conversation. I am thankful to those who, like Barbara Jane, are starting new conversations. Perhaps those silenced by some of the other conversations happening around the Spahr/Young Chicago Review article will participate in these new conversations.

As a feminist, I am compelled to decline the labels "experimental" and "avant garde." I have been attracted to these labels -- not just because of a desire to connect with artists I admire, but also vanity. I feel increasingly uncomfortable and embarrassed about this.

As one thinks through the hurt that comes from being excluded from or even being accepted into communities in which hierarchy, taste distinctions, and the possession of cultural capital matter, one has to decline affiliation.

It bears emphasizing that one can disaffiliate from these terms without any slackening in one's attention to experimentation in language.

I am interested in an emancipatory social project engaged with poem making.

there are different types of silence.

sometimes silence is a way to make room, to decline...participating in the formation of hierarchies?

a way to decline whiteness?

sometimes, silence is a way to participate in the formation of new communities.

what asks us/calls new communities into being? how do we make them? we need them.

More from Barbara Jane Reyes

This is a dangerous assumption, for Third World conditions exist in North America, in North American countries that are not Canada and the USA, among Native Hawaiians and the First Peoples of Canada, on Native American reservations, in urban, inner cities, in rural and agricultural settings. I suspect that women in these communities do not have access to the feminism which exists in white American middle class households and their corresponding professional workplaces and educational institutions.

& later...

I am critical of the assumption that “innovative” poetry coming from these “other” places will abide by the same standards by which “white,” “avant garde” American poetry abides; I find this problematic precisely because these standards are determined by this same “avant garde.”

(I confess, a few of the comment threads are so indecipherable to me that I have come to the conclusion that when some men argue with each other, they are pretending to understand what the other is saying, and each accepts this fiction because it is so flattering to be argued with.)

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Barbara Jane Reyes on Women of Color Feminism and Poetics
and Women of Color - Reticence - Publishing - Poetry

november

the month I feel most in between.

the poem making got stuck, neglected somewhere in the middle of october.

the bellum letters will continue, but the poem-a-day-for-a-month format probably won't be employed until April. And who knows what April will be like.

I love and fear thinking about the future. The opposite of love isn't hate; it's fear.