Eggshells

[Image description: a found poem, black text on a white background, made by blanking out pieces of words into text. Accessible transcript link here.]

I made this poem from a transcript of an Autism Speaks video called I Am Autism. It was known for its strange fear-mongering tone, which made autism out to be a disease comparable to cancer or pediatric AIDS, and its focus on the point of view of parents of autistic children rather than actual autistic people. There are a lot of real issues I tried to touch on, from the under-diagnosing of autistic women which denies them resources, to the culture of normalizing ignoring the actual wants and needs of autistic children. But I also wanted to change the fear-mongering and self-righteous tone of the original to something else. My intent was to make this sort of pretty/haunting/disorienting effect.

This poem can be read without any background knowledge, but maybe the most important is that autistic people sometimes used to be thought of as changelings, or fairy children swapped in for stolen human children. This has been reclaimed a lot by autistic adults, including me (hello, if you haven’t figured out I’m on the autism spectrum, that is also pretty important background knowledge). In folklore, cooking in eggshells is said to confuse changelings enough to speak and reveal themselves, so that’s what the title is a reference to.

I didn’t originally mean for this poem to sound vaguely threatening, but I think I wanted to blend real experiences of being forgotten and not having resources with the more ominous “I” statements. I think the point of that was that there is power in I statements. “I live/I hover/I know/I speak”, in asserting existence and taking up space. The repetition of “We are” is also important, because community ties and organizing are vital to efforts to combat ableism. I do think the ominous tone is warranted (the intended effect was something like walking through a forest where you are unwelcome, and trampling over something more important) because the original transcript’s promise to eradicate autism and treat it as a disease rather than listen to actual autistic people gets turned around. You can make videos like this but you literally forgetting us and figuratively forgetting yourself. Why are you here? Why are you in our space? Why are you speaking for us?

Happy Autism Acceptance month.

Original transcript.
Factsheet.
Accessible (screenreader) version.

Locked Away for Life

This poem is a very unique poem that illustrates struggle, hardships, and even pain that certain type’s of people are still experiencing. The article “Locking Up the Lower Class” by Nathaniel Lewis explains that class disparities are the main reason for the gap in black-white incarceration rates. Since the beginning of time the American law system has locked people up at jaw dropping rates. The united states alone holds over 20 percent of the worlds prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at rates much higher than blacks. Rates as high as 2,306 per 100,000 compared the whites as 450 per 100,000. Blacks are 5 times as likely as white people to be in jail or prison in the US. My article and poem suggest that racism still exist today and it is thriving under American Law.

My poem highlights the most important issues in todays law system. The first point is Mass incarceration exists primarily to control black people. A racist system that developed following the end of the legal segregation and the success of the civil rights movement. THe second point is of the poem is to show that Mass incarceration exists primarily to manage the poor. Its a class-biased system that emerged as as the welfare state was rolled bak an neoliberal reforms took off. A system that does not only target minorities but poor minorities who are helpless. This poem is trying to show people that our legal system needs to change, so that black people aren’t monitored and controlled their whole lives. 

Continuing Trend of Racism in the NHL

I found throughout my experience with watching the NHL, that racism played more of a prominent role then i could have ever imagined. In a league that is 97 percent white, its stunning that racism can still be exemplified with such a short sample size.

What i wanted to stress with my work is that racism in the NHL has been a recurring event, and not just stemmed from a singular incident. I also wanted to express the emotions of the NHL players themselves who have been victimized. I believe its significant not only to see the examples of racism that has occurred, but to understand the voice of the players who have dealt with these encounters first hand. What my poem also does is describe how the players themselves cant see this harsh reality of race ever ending.

I Know You Want It

I created my found poem from the lyrics of the hit song “Blurred Lines” by Robert Thicke and Pharrell Williams. Both of these artists have won several awards for this song including the 2014 Billboard Music Awards for Top R&B Song, Top Digital Song, Top Radio Song and Top Hit 100 Song. These lyrics have become widely known and are sang to heavily to this day, but I don’t believe all fans of the song are truly listening to what is being said by these men. In the song, Robert Thicke repeats the phrase “I know you want it” 18 times. In rape culture, this is a heavily used line and sometimes actual belief by a man when a woman is being assaulted. This is only one line of many in the song that support these disgusting acts.

In my poem, I rearranged phrases that were said in Blurred Lines to attempt to create a setting and dialogue of an assault. Although I was aware that the lyrics angered me prior to making the poem, I grew to an extreme level of uncomfort when I broke down each phrase separately. It felt like every line in the song was disrespecting and objectifying women. Phrases such as “it’s in your nature,” “must wanna get nasty,” and “you’re an animal” create implied consent from men. These lyrics will continue to be played and sang every day regardless of gender, and the support of ideas of rape culture will continue to spread as well.

Keep Your Apology

For my found poem I chose “Na Na Na” by My Chemical Romance. The song is originally written to describe a futuristic post apocalypse world where the people have found themselves with no way to any sort of salvation.

I altered the original song to remove most of the futuristic pieces and odd wordings of the lyricist to condense it into a poem that rings true of any time in our society. My poem is meant to embody the struggles and desperation that underlies nearly every bad/terrible/horrid (whichever term you prefer) situation a person can be in and the lengths they are willing to take to escape it.

Several Weeks

I based my poem off the statement released by SeaWorld after the death of one of an orca in January. SeaWorld is no stranger to controversy surrounding their orcas. What really stood out to me with the process was the close reading you do while making a found poem. As I read through, I was looking for what key words and phrases stood out to me. I wanted to capture the emotion I felt as reading this. While they may say one thing, their actions clearly show another. The fact that this death was in January, and as I’m typing this there is still no post-mortem exam results is alarming. SeaWorld has also posted blogs about how the wild isn’t safe for orcas anymore and its better to keep them in captivity. I chose this topic because something I’ve always been passionate about is our ocean. From sharks to whales to coral, everything needs our protection as the ocean affects everyone.

Black Lives Only Matter If They Are Taken by Whites

I made my found poem based off of an article made by a black man named Armstrong Williams. His argument was that black on black crime has less media coverage but white on black crime is frequently discussed. He questions reactions to violence against African Americans and how the majority of the time it is shallow- as only white on black crime stirs everyone into a frenzy, not actual concern over other realities woven into the black reality. His questioning of whether black lives matter if taken by other black lives was misinterpreted by the white people who had the utmost knowledge to comment. Black reality is often marred by violence, poverty, and other struggles, and those who commented failed to understand that violence within the community is perpetrated by these struggles- not by race, is why the coverage is reduced for black on black violence. Racism has profit for the privileged (white people) and this lack of privilege (for black people) is why white on black CRIME is covered more intensely. White on white violence is not always covered either, but finding a loophole for an “all lives matter” viewpoint is important for those attempting to keep privilege at the expense of others rather than evening privilege out.

Two comments by men named “Ken” and “Stanley Thornburgh” were what irritated me the most. The point I previously stated for why coverage for same race violence isn’t as frequent, was apparently incomprehensible for both men. The men stuck to an “all lives matter” p.o.v., subtly dismissing and ostracizing BLM along with the message Armstrong was attempting to convey. I took both of the comments and made conversation on phrases I felt were racist. I made a draft of the style I wished to portray through superscripted words, line spacing, and overlayed words. I wanted to portray how the conversations happening through the article and comments carry missed points, subtle conflicts and can even seem to talk over one another in the misunderstanding of action. I also kept formatting in font and size from the article and comments- which is why some words are larger, lighter or even a different color from the ones before them.

CLIMATE CHANGE

For my found poem, I chose to write about climate change. I found an article that was published in November of 2018. This article was written by David Malakoff, and it outlines the current state of the United States in terms of climate change. The original title of the article is “Climate Change Poses Major Threat to United Staes, New Government Report Concludes.” Climate change is present today, despite denial from the president, and any administration following the president. Climate change is a serious issue that will devastate the whole entire world, and human population, if action is not taken soon. This article outlines the negative aspects of climate change, and the lack of effort made in order to fix this issue.

I chose to write out the words that I had originally circled, and blacked out of my article. The article was two full pages long, therefore I chose to write out the found words, rather than black them out in the traditional style. I originally had written it out, and added color, however I felt it took away from the overall message. We need to take action in order to avoid the repercussions of climate change, and I hope that my found poem helps to spread this message. Climate change, and the fact that people aren’t worried about its impact is something that angers me, and the found poem was a nice medium to express my anger in regards to the topic. Each of these sentences are fragments from the article, coupled together in order to make sense.

Love The One You’re With

I chose the song “Love the one you’re with” by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. This song is about learning to love the person you are with if you can’t be with the person you love. It’s about settling for one person even if you want someone else and trying your best not to think about the person you really want. This song gets under my skin and makes me angry because of a bad experience I had the first time I heard this song. After further listening to it I realized that the lyrics of this song are really upsetting and unhappy despite the sound of the song. So I decided to take the lyrics and flip the meaning of this song on it’s head. I changed the meaning from being about loving the one you’re with to being with the one you love. It turns an unhappy song into a happy found poem and I think everyone could use a little more happiness in their lives.

Shut up and Dribble

I made my poem about an incident that happened a little more than a year ago. A Fox News journalist, Laura Ingraham, didn’t like what Lebron James had to say so she went at him in an ignorant way. I decided to do my poem on this situation because racism in sports is a huge deal. When this report first came out it aggravated me a lot, because telling someone that their opinion doesn’t matter just because it doesn’t match yours isn’t right. Also, how she said “shut up and dribble” was unnecessary and racist. The other thing that bothered me about this is when she said “she wasn’t interested in the political advice from someone who gets paid 100 million a year to bounce a ball.” The amount of money you make a year has nothing to do with your political knowledge and just proves how ignorant she is.
So for this assignment I decided to black out some sentences and paragraphs and leave what Laura Ingraham had to say; to show how ignorant and racist she really is. What I learned from this is that yet again racism is still around, and people are still being racist in public and there are little to no punishments that follow.

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