The Performance of Becoming Human

Last updated

The Performance of Becoming Human is the third collection of poetry written by Daniel Borzutzky. It explores the theme of violence committed by the state against its citizens, often combining mundane phraseology and jokes with grotesque imagery. The collection was given the National Book Award for poetry in 2016, [1] and has been likened to Neruda's reaction to state-sanctioned violence in Chile. Borzutky's poems have been called un-poetic.

Contents

The question "Can a Poem Make the World a Better Place?" was posted by Borzutzky, who ponders if the expression of poetry can thwart the internal feelings of darkness and loneliness felt by those who emigrate. [2]

Early life

As a child of Chilean-Jewish immigrant parents, Borzutzky experienced emotional emptiness, which he calls "darkness," and used his poetry to find serenity in the world around him as a child.

Borzutzky is best known for his political works that reflect the common struggles of immigrants experiencing poverty and prejudice from those around him. [3]

Themes and style

In Daniel Borzutzky's The Performance of Becoming Human, the surreal and the absurd come together to show that we are living in the apocalyptic future we once feared. These poems ask how we (or maybe how dare we) experience the tragedies of oppression and cruelty as if they were as mundane as making the bed: "They chopped up two dozen bodies last night and today I have to pick up my dry cleaning." Through repetition and obsessive accumulation, every phrase leaps off the page, begging to be spoken aloud, or shouted. The work is as personally conflicted as Berryman's, as stealthy as Celan's, and as openly political as Ginsberg's.

Judges citation, National Book Foundation [1]

According to Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human is the third installment in a series of books on "how humans survive amid the worst types of state and social violence". In an interview with the Chicago Tribune , he refers to Chilean poet Raul Zurita, whose work Borzutzky has translated, saying "[Zurita] told me in an interview that during the Pinochet dictatorship he wanted to create 'poetry as powerful as the pain being delivered by the state'. It's an impossible goal, but one I hope to emulate". [4]

The collection is "formatted in paragraph-like prose chunks", which "break down into single sentences or fragments, often without punctuation", noted Healey in the Boston Review , but added that it wasn't exactly prose poetry. Healey remarked on the poetry's "prosaic tendencies", which he saw as connected to the "Latin American tradition—that impulse toward loud and rambling lines, surrealism and biting humor, empathy with common people against political oppression, as found in the work of César Vallejo, Nicanor Parra, and the more contemporary Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, whose work Borzutzky has translated into English". [5] Borzutzky repeats phrases and images, blurring the lines between poems; repetitions include the standard joke opening, "Did you hear the one about", followed by some violent or grotesque image. [5]

Criticism

Following the National Book Award, Borzutzky was criticized for his language: "diction described as flat and repetitive; imagery deemed unrelentingly repellent; an authorial tone rejected as the un-poetic rantings of an ideologue". Carol Muske-Dukes noted that "the reader must confront the realpolitik that informs [Borzutzky's] style. Perhaps he is not a 'bad' writer (his intelligence and learning are formidable); rather, he appears to be writing as a 'bad' writer on purpose". To wit, his work "is an indictment of poetic simile. Think of Neruda, (with his other-worldly lyrical gifts) reacting to state-sanctioned violence in Chile: 'The blood of children ran in the streets like the blood of children'". [6]

Contents

Related Research Articles

Nicanor Parra

Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. Parra described himself as an "anti-poet," due to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function; after recitations he would exclaim "Me retracto de todo lo dicho".

Robert Bly American poet, author and activist

Robert Elwood Bly was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.

Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević Croatian poet

Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević was a Croatian poet. His reflexive poetry, reaching its zenith in the 1890s, was a turning point that ushered modern themes in Croatian poetry.

Óscar Hahn Chilean writer and poet

Óscar Arturo Hahn Garcés is a Chilean writer and poet, and a member of the literary generation of the 1960s. Hahn has won multiple distinguished awards, notably the National Prize for Literature (Chile) and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award.

Forrest Gander Poet, essayist, novelist, critic, translator

Forrest Gander is an American poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2019 for Be With and is chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Latin American poetry is the poetry written by Latin America authors. Latin American poetry is often written in Spanish, but is also composed in Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, English, and Spanglish. The unification of Indigenous and imperial cultures produced a unique and extraordinary body of literature in this region. Later with the introduction of African slaves to the new world, African traditions greatly influenced Latin American poetry. Many great works of poetry were written in the colonial and pre-colonial time periods, but it was in the 1960s that the world began to notice the poetry of Latin America. Through the modernismo movement, and the international success of Latin American authors, poetry from this region became increasingly influential.

M. T. C. Cronin is a contemporary Australian poet.

Pablo Neruda Chilean poet

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda, was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

Carol Muske-Dukes is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and professor, and the former poet laureate of California (2008–2011). Her most recent book of poetry, Sparrow, chronicling the love and loss of Muske-Dukes’ late husband, actor David Dukes, was a National Book Award finalist.

Chilean literature

Chilean literature refers to all written or literary work produced in Chile or by Chilean writers. The literature of Chile is usually written in Spanish. Chile has a rich literary tradition and has been home to two Nobel prize winners, the poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. It has also seen three winners of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, considered one of the most important Spanish language literature prizes: the novelist, journalist and diplomat Jorge Edwards (1998), and the poets Gonzalo Rojas (2003) and Nicanor Parra (2011).

Raúl Zurita Chilean poet

Raúl Zurita Canessa is a Chilean poet. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000.

Doren Robbins

Doren Robbins is a contemporary American poet, prose poet, fiction writer, essayist, mixed media artist, and educator. As a cultural activist, he has organized and developed projects for Amnesty International, the Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund, the Romero Relief Fund, and poetsagainstthewar.org. Robbins has lived most of his life in California and Oregon.

Kimberly Dark

Kimberly Dark is an American author, professor of sociology, and storyteller.

Peter Barr Nickowitz is an American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.

Daniel Borzutzky is a Chicago-based poet and translator. His collection The Performance of Becoming Human won the 2016 National Book Award.

Cathy Colman is an American poet, teacher and editor. Her first book, Borrowed Dress, won the 2001 Felix Pollak Prize for Poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press, chosen by Mark Doty. It made the Los Angeles Times bestseller list in October, 2001. Her second book, Beauty's Tattoo, was published by Tebot Bach Publications in 2009. Her third book, Time Crunch is published by What Books Press, October, 2019.

Gloria Dünkler Chilean writer

Gloria Dünkler is a Chilean writer, and winner of the 2016 Pablo Neruda Award. She is best known for her poetry, although she also collects folktales.

Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award

The Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award is an annual award granted by the National Council of Culture and the Arts (CNCA) of Chile, through the National Book and Reading Council.

Rosabetty Muñoz Serón is a Chilean poet and professor who is linked to the cultural movements Chaicura from Ancud, Aumen from Castro, and Índice and Matra from Valdivia. She is a recipient of the Pablo Neruda Award and the Poetry Altazor Award of the National Arts.

Elvira Hernández

Elvira Hernández is a Chilean poet, essayist, and literary critic.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Performance of Becoming Human". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  2. Brooks, Mary Jo (December 20, 2016). "Can a poem make the world a better place by documenting the darknesses around us?". PBS . Retrieved November 10, 2018.
  3. "Can a poem make the world a better place by documenting the darknesses around us?". PBS . 20 December 2016.
  4. Rooney, Kathleen (December 1, 2016). "Chicagoan gives poetry 'Performance' worthy of National Book Award". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved December 17, 2018.
  5. 1 2 Healey, Steve (November 10, 2016). "No Place to Call Home: The Poetics of Displacement and War". Boston Review . Retrieved December 17, 2018.
  6. Muske-Dukes, Carol (January 4, 2017). "New poetry from Jane Mead and Daniel Borzutzky examine death — in both human and national forms". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved December 17, 2018.