We started the semester in American Lit Survey by talking about gatekeepers--the publishers, editors, and cultural influences who try to determine what makes American literature American, whose voices speak for us all, which voices get excluded from the conversation.
We ended our reading for the semester with "To the Hyphenated Poets" by Amit Majmudar, Ohio's first poet laureate, who extols the "hybrid vigor" of our polyglot culture, calling oneness "Pure chimera" because "Splendor is spliced" and our language itself is a "crossbred / mother mutt." Majmudar reminds us that the hyphen connecting two halves of a poet's dual identity is also a bridge "joining / nation to nation," a punctuation mark representing the power to renew, refresh, and recreate poetry, language, and culture.
This feels like a very satisfying place to stop, so let's breathe a deep sigh of relief and put down the textbooks. Nothing left now but final papers and exams!
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