zodiac15 Apr 2005
To recap:
Dovina: "...The poem, which never said anyone ignored me in his/her poetry."
zodiac: "I never said the poem said anyone ignored you. I said it proposes that they ignore you."
Seems clear enough to me. Incidentally, I also read this:
"He ignored me, didnât hire me, belittle me in his poetry,
skiped over me at his open mic reading. It's all sadly there."
So, I don't think you read what you say before spinning off in a completely different direction.
Look, I'm putting on my Serious Hat now. I don't much care if anyone did or didn't ignore you, belittle you, etc. That's never been pertinent to anyone but you. I'm telling you, though, that this poem is racist. It doesn't matter if it's about an individual: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is racist and it's only about one black individual, Nigger Jim. It doesn't matter if al-naafiiysh, etc, like it and say you're not racist: Nigger Jim liked Huck and Huck was racist. It doesn't matter if its goal (ie, a sense of wrongs retributed or whatever) is unracist: the goal of Affirmative Action is unracist, and Affirmative Action is still racist.
As I've said before, the mistakes of this poem are:
1) Placing wrongs against blacks in some vague past (bonus! You were uninvolved.)
2) Taking for granted that blacks today have enough "newfound" power and freedom that they could oppress whites if they wanted to.
3) Thinking that blacks would want to.
4) Thinking you have a place in black culture, community, verse, or readings, when historically black culture has run just finely without you.
5) Thinking a black person belittling you in his verse makes up for 200-something years of slavery, 100 more years of institutionalized segregation, and another fifty of vague badness.
All of that's in the poem. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please believe me.