Poets of the twentieth century explored the implications of shifting uses of form that occurred over a period of one hundred years. Poems such as William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”, e.e. cummings’ “my sweet old etcetera”, Dereck Walcott’s “Parang”, bpNichol’s “Blues”, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti “Modern Poetry is Prose (But it is Saying Plenty)”, exemplify the multiple shifts that characterized the evolution of poetry throughout the 1900s. These authors use form as a means of embedding meaning within the text through the structural aspects, thus showing the changes that have developed modern comprehensions of the poetic genre across a rapidly shifting timeline. Through the use of formulaic elements to affect the reader’s comprehension
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The poem is speckled with the phonetic spelling of words to represent a regional accent. This is partnered with the fact that there are a number of slang references used to mimic the speech patterns of the perceived background of the narrative speaker. Thus formalistic choice represents the poem in the contexts of the Caribbean vernacular tradition in which the narrative speaker can sing “the truth” about the experiences of colonization (Walcott, 9). This stylistic choice allows for the poem to self-consciously link itself through the written word to the oral traditions of the African diaspora, situated in the space of the Caribbean. The title purposefully uses the homonym “Parang” which can be used to refer to either “Trinidadian folk music” or “a large heavy machete” that can serve the use of “clearing vegetation” or act as a “weapon” (parang, n). This double meaning draws attention to the traditions that have been saved by the African diaspora but also shows the violence that has been experienced over many generations. The poem represents the longing to go home that is inherent in the diasporic experience, where “love is a place in the bush” far from where the “music” is “grieving” (Walcott, 21-22). Through the stylistic representation of dialect, the poem calls upon the oral musical tradition to draw attention to the diasporic disconnect caused by slavery and colonization in the
The poem is speckled with the phonetic spelling of words to represent a regional accent. This is partnered with the fact that there are a number of slang references used to mimic the speech patterns of the perceived background of the narrative speaker. Thus formalistic choice represents the poem in the contexts of the Caribbean vernacular tradition in which the narrative speaker can sing “the truth” about the experiences of colonization (Walcott, 9). This stylistic choice allows for the poem to self-consciously link itself through the written word to the oral traditions of the African diaspora, situated in the space of the Caribbean. The title purposefully uses the homonym “Parang” which can be used to refer to either “Trinidadian folk music” or “a large heavy machete” that can serve the use of “clearing vegetation” or act as a “weapon” (parang, n). This double meaning draws attention to the traditions that have been saved by the African diaspora but also shows the violence that has been experienced over many generations. The poem represents the longing to go home that is inherent in the diasporic experience, where “love is a place in the bush” far from where the “music” is “grieving” (Walcott, 21-22). Through the stylistic representation of dialect, the poem calls upon the oral musical tradition to draw attention to the diasporic disconnect caused by slavery and colonization in the