Post by mahein38 on May 20, 2012 16:07:55 GMT -5
Carolyn Forché grew up in Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s, a town which at the time was torn apart by racial tensions, riots and extreme poverty. Though she was fortunate enough to hail from a close-knit, middle-class family, Forché’s early exposure to the inequalities and struggles affecting humans even in her own backyard had a profound effect on how she viewed the world. One of Forché’s first memories is that of finding photographs from a Nazi concentration camp in a magazine that her mother left on the kitchen counter and being shocked at how far away geographically, but close emotionally these atrocities were to her comfortable Michigan home. As one of seven children in a boisterous Czech-American household, Forché was always searching for a way to have her voice heard. Through her writing, Carolyn Forché is able to not only draw the attention of her family, but of readers, critics and activists all across the globe.
Eager to explore the world outside of suburban Michigan, Forché used the Guggenheim Fellowship that she had received for her first book, Gathering the Tribes, to travel to civil war-torn El Salvador in 1977. It was here, after seeing the torture, starvation, abuse and sexual mutilation associated with war first-hand, that Forché’s poetry transformed from that of a girl eager to explore the world, to that of a woman on a mission to protect human rights and expose the injustices of war and violence.
As a self-proclaimed, “poet of witness,” Carolyn Forché does not consider herself simply a spectator to world events but instead an active participant and scribe. Forché’s poetry bridges the gap between the “personal” and the “political” to create poetry that speaks directly to the human spirit and illuminates the injustices of the world. Often devoid of complicated metaphor, Forché’s poems incorporate simple language to bring incomprehensible violence and hatred down to a more human, relatable level. She does not simply write poems, but “psalms of grief,” “elegies,” ‘testimonies” and “reflections.”
The true strength in Forché’s ability to strike an emotional chord in her readers is her creation of the honest and unbiased characters that narrate her poems. These characters, often flawed but always sincere, walk the reader through the memories and events that make up the stories of their lives, and in turn allow the reader to see these tragedies and every-day struggles through a first-person lens. While some give the readers warnings that there is “no time left” from the inside of a Spanish prison cell, others walk the readers through the Garden Shukkei-en and through the memories of “the living and the dead both crying for help” and “a world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.” Others tell of the daily struggles of a woman who wastes her “deepest shudders on a wall of a man” or one who remembers the “wavy loaves of flesh” of her dead, Czech grandmother. These people, as real as those who pass you on the street each day, are not only narrators but illustrators of a world of both suffering and hope.
Overall, Forché’s poetry encourages knowledge-both knowledge of the world, so that we may end the injustices of our ancestors and those of our peers, and knowledge of each other, so that we may never ignore the innate equality of all human beings.
With her strong message and honest words, Forché will never be a “brief wisp in a giant place” but instead a clear voice with immense staying power.
With that, it is my great pleasure to welcome to the stage Ms. Carolyn Forché.
595 words
Eager to explore the world outside of suburban Michigan, Forché used the Guggenheim Fellowship that she had received for her first book, Gathering the Tribes, to travel to civil war-torn El Salvador in 1977. It was here, after seeing the torture, starvation, abuse and sexual mutilation associated with war first-hand, that Forché’s poetry transformed from that of a girl eager to explore the world, to that of a woman on a mission to protect human rights and expose the injustices of war and violence.
As a self-proclaimed, “poet of witness,” Carolyn Forché does not consider herself simply a spectator to world events but instead an active participant and scribe. Forché’s poetry bridges the gap between the “personal” and the “political” to create poetry that speaks directly to the human spirit and illuminates the injustices of the world. Often devoid of complicated metaphor, Forché’s poems incorporate simple language to bring incomprehensible violence and hatred down to a more human, relatable level. She does not simply write poems, but “psalms of grief,” “elegies,” ‘testimonies” and “reflections.”
The true strength in Forché’s ability to strike an emotional chord in her readers is her creation of the honest and unbiased characters that narrate her poems. These characters, often flawed but always sincere, walk the reader through the memories and events that make up the stories of their lives, and in turn allow the reader to see these tragedies and every-day struggles through a first-person lens. While some give the readers warnings that there is “no time left” from the inside of a Spanish prison cell, others walk the readers through the Garden Shukkei-en and through the memories of “the living and the dead both crying for help” and “a world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.” Others tell of the daily struggles of a woman who wastes her “deepest shudders on a wall of a man” or one who remembers the “wavy loaves of flesh” of her dead, Czech grandmother. These people, as real as those who pass you on the street each day, are not only narrators but illustrators of a world of both suffering and hope.
Overall, Forché’s poetry encourages knowledge-both knowledge of the world, so that we may end the injustices of our ancestors and those of our peers, and knowledge of each other, so that we may never ignore the innate equality of all human beings.
With her strong message and honest words, Forché will never be a “brief wisp in a giant place” but instead a clear voice with immense staying power.
With that, it is my great pleasure to welcome to the stage Ms. Carolyn Forché.
595 words