Prompt 1

Truly, I do not understand poetry. It twists and turns and rants and does a whole lot of other stuff that I find unnecessary. Sometimes I only understand the literal words and sometimes I understand the symbolism, but a poem is short (for the most part). Besides epic poems, there aren't many poems that I've read or heard of that writes like a story or a song. Which is why I find it so hard to truly understand them.

I am not going to say that the poem "I Am Joaquin" was different than my original assumption of poems. I had a hard time understanding this one as well. But it was, quite surprisingly, very fun to read.

I actually didn't understand that Joaquin was a woman until the last page of the poem, where she literally describes this woman and says that "she is me." The very masculine beginning to the poem made me think she was just a man, struggling with the new culture of America.

So, what I found so interesting about this poem was mostly it's structure and constant change of tone. There seemed to be a lot of conflict that the author went through and I couldn't relate at all...well that's not true. I could relate a little.

The poem begins with an introduction of herself, of the author, of her life, of her struggle. She talks about how there is a constant battle-a battle between her Mexican culture and her American societal life. And most notable, how she couldn't choose to have both. She then goes off reviewing historical figures and saying that she is them (and that they are her). How, before the revolutions and Spanish conquests, this "American" land was hers.

As I've stated before, she's constantly fighting with herself. First she's a prince, a leader, a king, a tyrant. And then she becomes a slave, a despicable person that shuns her fellow Mexican brothers and family. So there'd be times where she's a proud Mexican, totally in control of her life, and then she converts into a transformed American, where she shuns her Mexican culture and anything that goes with it (maybe not so severe).

I believe you really start to notice this conflict on page three when she lists herself as all these opposite adjectives:

"I I ride with revolutionists
against myself...
I have been the bloody revolution,
The victor,
The vanquished.
I have killed
And been killed."

A place where you really see the the author's depressed tone about her conflict is on page five:

"I look at myself
And see part of me
Who rejects my father and mother
And dissolves into the melting pot
To disappear in shame..."

And then I feel a chill. The author begins to boil in anger. The words churn in my stomach as she shouts and screams with her atmosphere and stabs the American flag with her hate.

Page six:

"My land is lost
And stolen,
My culture has been raped.
I lengthen the line at the welfare door
And fill the jails with crime.
These then are the reqards
This society has
For sons of chiefs
And kings
And bloody revolutionishts,
Who gave a foreign people
All their skills and ingenuity
To pave the way with brains and blood
For those hordes of gold-starved strangers,
Who
Changed our language
And plagiarized our deeds
As feats of valor
Of their own.
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art, our literature, our music, they ignored-
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their greed and avarice."

Oh goodness. I truly love this part.

And then, the author realizes who she is. She confirms it and comes to peace with it. She declares it and then becomes it. She has lived through it all and come out victorious! And with an explosion of short, fast building expression, she is who she is! She screams:

"I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!"

And so she will.