Awritingreader’s Weblog

Just as we must as/assume that this is the true condition of the world in which the writer writes, why is it not also fair to consider other aspects of that same world? While reading, “We Wear the Mask” one must necessarily and sometimes subconsciously consider/inquire after/assume that some condition or state of the world of which the poem speaks includes a state where some are hiding from the world, masquerading behind a decorative lie. If we are allowed to inquire after the world of the poem, then why is it any worse to inquire after those things which inform the world of the poem (i.e the experiences of Dunbar). To assume that a black man would only have something to say about a black issue could easily be an oversight, but a far worse oversight would be to assume that his writings had nothing to do with the state of black Americans subsisting in his world. Certainly by granting Dunbar’s poem this contextual reading, one must admit that your relationship to the poem is less intimate, it does not refute another’s access to the poem. This is the primary oversight of Formalism as I understand it now. Much, though not all poetry is confessional or quasi-confessional in nature. Art that grows out of the sufferings of any people group has a particular propensity towards revealing what those who suffered know and experienced. Formalism would seem to want to ignore this reality. The religiosity, the psychology, the anthropology, and all these things form the boning of a poem. The history of the poem, that is to say, from where it came and why, is as essential as the “traditional” beliefs of Formalism.