Plantation Poetry

            I’d like to examine a passage from All I Asking for is My Body, that I found particularly beautifully written (someone also brought this up in section – so credit to them as well). Chapter four of part three begins:

The dust hangs in reddish clouds all around us. We are drenched, our denim pants cling to our wet legs, sweat trickles down faces and necks and moistens palms and backs of hands. We wipe continually, hands on pants, shirt sleeves over eyebrows, blue handkerchief around neck. (Murayama 39)

I think one aspect that makes this opening distinctively striking is the way it poetically describes something that isn’t necessarily beautiful at all – men sweating in the hot sun, “We are drenched, our denim pants cling to our wet legs…” I also found it interesting the way this opening uses “we” to perhaps emphasize the group aspect of this manual labor.  

            The distinctiveness of this opening is also heightened by the way that the rest of the chapter reads – in an almost unidentified vernacular, for example, “iIchiricchi ali bam bam…” These contrasting styles demonstrate Milton Murayama’s skill and confidence as a writer – and a poet. 

Sarah Eastland