Unit Content
This will be a two-week long unit that will emphasize close reading of poetry of witness through annotation and performance. I will use the information about “Strange Fruit” as an introductory activity about poetry and performance. After that, I will give students information about poetry of witness. Then, using Pablo Neruda’s “I’m Explaining a Few Things” as an anchor text for poetry of witness, we will analyze and conduct a dramatic reading as a class before students choose their own poem of witness and create their own performances.
The History of “Strange Fruit” as Poem and Performance
Before introducing students to poetry of witness and dramatic performance, I want to hook my high schoolers by showing them how poetry can be enhanced by performance. Without telling students what this unit is about, I will pass out the poem “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol. This poem was written by a white Jewish man from the Bronx in 1937. Meeropol was a high school teacher, a communist, and a civil rights activist.8 According to Biography.com, “Meeropol came across a 1930 photo that captured the lynching of two Black men in Indiana. The visceral image haunted him for days and prompted him to put pen to paper.”9
After our initial analysis of the poem, I will give students the connection of this poem to famous singer Billie Holiday. Meeropol set his poem to music and gave it to a New York City nightclub owner who then passed the song on to Billie Holiday. She was intrigued by the piece “not only because she was a Black American but also because the song reminded her of her father, who died at 39 from a fatal lung disorder, after being turned away from a hospital because he was a Black man.”10 While many people loved the song, it angered others. Holiday sang this song to inform and protest against the injustices that were happening in the South. She said, “I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because 20 years after Pop died, the things that killed him are still happening in the South.”11 Her performance as protest angered one person in particular - Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He made it his personal mission to stop Holiday, and “Knowing that Holiday was a drug user, he had some of his men frame her by selling her heroin. When she was caught using the drug, she was thrown into prison for the next year and a half.”12 After she was released, she continued to sing in sold out venues like Carnegie Hall, although she continued to struggle with drug use. The video that I plan on showing students is of a 1959 performance. You might tell students that soon after this performance, Holiday checked herself into a New York hospital, and “still bent on ruining the singer, Anslinger had his men go to the hospital and handcuff her to her bed. Although Holiday had been showing gradual signs of recovery, Anslinger's men forbid doctors to offer her further treatment. She died within days.”13
Using Poetry of Witness
For this unit, students will focus on the poetry of witness. Poetry of witness was first defined by Carolyn Forché in 1993 in her introduction to Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. According to “The Poet’s Toolbox: What is Poetry of Witness?,” Forché “ defines the poetry of witness as inhabiting the social sphere, a space between the personal and political”14 and which describes firsthand accounts of extreme violence, like torture and warfare. Williams goes on to argue that poetry of witness can now include secondhand accounts such as those witnessed from a distance through channels such as “news reports, images, interviews, or other documents.”15 I would like to add on to this definition of poetry of witness as well by including witnessing a time, place, and culture, not in an extremity like war, but in an extremity like poverty or other hardships. In “Poetry, Poetic Inquiry and Rwanda Engaging with the Lives of Others Self, Audience, and Activism: Poetry of Witness,” Laura Apol refers to Nadine Gordimer’s definition of witness literature: “As Gordimer puts it, writers of witness literature provide ‘continuing witness to the state of existence of those who suffered, so that it becomes part of [the reader’s] consciousness for all time.’”16
By bringing poetry of witness into the high school English classroom, we are setting students up for empathy for cultural and world events and showing students the power of language. Apol describes that “by deconstructing the boundary between personal and political, poetry of witness speaks with excruciating emotional resonance and, in the process, makes the reader or listener a witness as well.”17 Poetry of witness is essentially created to make people aware, to invite empathy, and ultimately, “invokes an ethical stance, a way of entering and learning the world of another with honor and respect.”18 These ideas are cornerstones for my classroom – a place to learn, listen to, and respect different perspectives and points of view – to feel for and relate to others. Although Popoff and Lansana are writing about the importance of bringing in diverse voices/ poets in the classroom and not of poetry of witness specifically, they write, “the ultimate goal is that young people will strengthen their sense of oneness and community, rather than fearing differences” and will “ honor[] the voices of others.”19 This is what focusing on poetry of witness can do for students.
Visually or kinesthetically dramatizing these poems of witness will not only bring poems off the page of a book but allow students to understand and creatively showcase the awareness the poet wants to bring to society. As Martin and Zox-Weaver end their essay, they argue that “Poetry is a way of transforming the world, of integrating shards and mapping meaning, of making things happen.”20 So, why not show students the true power of words when bearing witness? By doing this, teachers carve a path for students that show how they can turn words into pieces of activism and awareness, which will hopefully create change. Popoff and Lansana echo this idea when they write about the importance of teachers “challenging [students] to find ways to create change. It is in our hands to create this imperative, to open young eyes to their own relevance and cast concrete steps to take in building the kind of world in which they and their children wish to live.”21
Historical Context of Neruda's “I’m Explaining a Few Things”
After explaining the definition and importance of poetry of witness, I will present my students with Pablo Neruda’s “I’m Explaining a Few Things.” As I pass out the poem, I will give students the historical context. A Chilean poet, Neruda moved to a small suburb called Guernica outside of Madrid. This poem “speaks of the dilemmas that its author faced when posted as Consul to Madrid in the mid-1930s. Neruda had not been particularly political until then but, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he abandoned his diplomatic neutrality and sided with the Republicans.”22 In the context of the Spanish Civil War, Republicans were the left-wing group of communists, socialists, and anarchists.23 The Republicans were against the Nationalists. According to a Pablo Neruda teaching guide, “Nationalists were made up of military leaders, segments of the Roman Catholic Church, groups that wanted Spain to become a monarchy again, and fascists.”24 In 1936, Generalissimo Francisco Franco staged a right-winged, fascist revolt and began the onset of the Spanish Civil War.
During this time, Hitler was rising in power. Most students at this age have a basic understanding of Hitler wanting to exterminate the Jewish race, among other “race poisoners.” However, depending on your students, you might review this piece of information. Adding to that knowledge, teachers should point to the history of Moors in Spain. Angela Chamblee notes that “The Moors were an African people who invaded and conquered Spain. They stayed in Spain for 800 years and left a lot of African DNA there too.”25 Because of this history and the potential of the contamination of Hitler’s Aryan race, Hitler wanted to do an experiment called “saturation bombing” on Spain. Franco agreed to this attack on Guernica, this bombing of his own people, “to break the spirited Basque resistance to Nationalist forces.”26 Chamblee describes how in 1937 “Guernica was bombed non-stop from 4:30 p.m. until approximately 6:45 p.m. on April 26. Guernica was just a small little town. There was no military importance or advantage to be gained by bombing it.”27 Approximately 1500 people were killed in this small market town that was used as a “testing ground for a new Nazi military tactic - blanket-bombing a civilian population to demoralize the enemy.”28 The destruction shocked Europe. It was this horrific event that Neruda was responding to in his poem “I’m Explaining a Few Things.”
As one can see, this particular poem is one of witness and “fulfills the function of a historical memory.”29 Neruda’s poem of witness “hold[s] on to faint voices and perspectives that may otherwise have vanished into the dark holes of historical narratives.''30 This idea shows the importance of this poem of witness, first, as an act of resistance and protest to the horrendous actions of Franco and his saturation bombing and, second, as a preservation of cultural and historical memory. What I am particularly interested in pointing out to students is how students can use poems of witness and protest from the past to make commentary about modern society or point out injustices that are still happening in our world. As a poet turned activist, Neruda believed that poetry “had ‘to go out into the street, to take part in this or that combat’. The poet did not shy away from this task, did not mind being branded as subversive.”31 Poetry of witness does this – it informs, it feels, it rebels.
Analysis of Neruda's “I’m Explaining a Few Things”
Again, Neruda wrote “I’m Explaining a Few Things” in response to the saturation bombing of a town he used to live in. At the beginning of the poem, Neruda muses why he does not write poetry about nature anymore, and then he declares to readers that he will tell us why. Ironically, he begins describing the beauty of the bustling market town of Guernica that Neruda paints. He uses the imagery of “bells / and clocks and trees,”32 grounding us in a time and place. In an act of foreshadowing, Neruda begins by juxtaposing the innocent imagery of his “house of flowers,” 33 noting “its dogs and children”34 with the allusions to “Neruda’s close friend Federico Garcia Lorca, one of Spain’s foremost poets, [who] was assassinated by Franco’s forces. Two others, Rafael Alberti and Miguel Hernandez, were members of the Communist Party.”35 He first calls on Rafael and Hernandez as witnesses to the Federico who is “from under the ground / where the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth,”36 alluding to Lorca’s untimely death at the hands of the Nationalists. This reference to Lorca’s grave highlighted by the image of “drowned flowers in your mouth” foreshadows the many deaths to come from Franco’s saturation bombing of innocent people. These allusions most likely will be overlooked by students, but are important to point out as they continue piece together meaning from this poem of witness.
Neruda then paints an image of a bustling marketplace by using such words and phrases as “merchandises,”37 “palpitating bread,”38 “hake,”39“stacked-up fish,”40 “frenzied ivory of potatoes,”41 and “wave on wave of tomatoes.”42 Readers get a sense of the liveliness of this town in the beautiful chaos of the exchanging of goods.
The big shift of the poem begins when Neruda writes,“And one morning all that was burning.”43 Here, the imagery of the innocent town changes abruptly to the catastrophic and tragic imagery of the bombing. The use of the word “devouring”44 to describe what the bombs and guns are doing to the innocent people of Guernica is an example of weighty personification. Neruda writes, “and from then on fire, / gunpowder from then on, / and from then on blood.”45 The repetition and placement of “from then on” in these three consecutive lines mirror the continuous, non-stop bombing that Franco inflicted on this market town and the use of polysyndeton highlights the relentless effects of this attack: fire, gunpowder, blood.
After those lines, students should point out the anaphora of “Bandits with.”46 First, have students look up the meaning of “bandit.” They should see three definitions as someone who robs, who lives by plunder, and also an enemy plane. In this scenario, the word bandit makes sense with all three meanings. This use of anaphora calls our attention to the end of these three consecutive lines: “planes and Moors,”47 referring to the Germans, Italians, and North African Colonial soldiers flying those planes, “finger-rings and duchesses,”48 referring to monarchist aristocracy, and then “black friars spattering blessings,”49 referring to the Catholic church. All of these images are defining the enemy. Neruda then juxtaposes the images of enemy with what the enemy is doing – killing children, the vilest deed and the saddest consequence of this “experiment.” This juxtaposition is jolting after the use of the lull of the anaphora when he writes that these bandits “came through the sky to kill children.”50 Neruda uses three more images to discuss the people who created this destruction, calling them “Jackals,”51 “stones,”52 and “vipers.”53 Readers should come to the conclusion that jackals represent cunning and treachery, stones embody unemotional coldness, and that vipers connote spitefulness and disloyalty.
After the condemnation of the horrible actions and calling out the enemy using metaphor, Neruda finally calls them by name, not metaphor: “Treacherous / generals.”54 Then he threatens them with haunting images and alarming personification, telling them that their actions will have consequences: “and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, / and from every crime bullets are born / which will one day find /the bull's eye of your hearts.”55
When we get towards the end of the poem, Neruda references his “dead house”56 and that “from every house burning metal flows / instead of flowers.”57 This makes the reader remember the beginning beauty of houses and flowers which is a stark contrast to what he shows now - complete and utter destruction of that beautiful suburban town. He ends the poem the same way he started it– by repeating the phrase “And you will ask,”58 questioning why does he not write pretty little poetry anymore. His repeated answer: “Come and see the blood on the streets.”59 The monosyllabic use of words and imagery of blood make a powerful statement of the nonsensical destruction of innocent people. As readers, you cannot turn your head away from this image. We are witness to this violence.
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