Harjo, Walcott, and Schwartz Reflection

 Grace Perry

Dr. Ellis 

EN376*01 Postcolonial Futurism 

4th October 2023 

Harjo, Walcott, and Schwartz -- Love and the Future

      The three poems presented by Harjo, Walcott, and Schwartz each sought to peer into and discuss the future in a way that expressed a significant level of hope and resilience. The three pieces act as a form of call to action. They implore readers to feel and sense love in relation to the world around them, in order to strengthen the innate human connection to the world in which we exist. They each seek to challenge the different ways in which we can love and for who and for what we can display that love for. The dream of a future that is founded on this reciprocal love that can exist between the world and humanity, and continues to persist because of the decision to continue loving. We have all heard that love is a choice, and the future already chooses to love us (despite the ignorance in which we currently reside) it is just a matter of when we choose to love our future's back. 

    The three authors take on this message in distinctive ways, but they each seek to portray the same message for courage and hope. Schwartz gives an intersectional personification to the future that allows the viewer to find and place themselves in relation to this time that is to come. It begins by addressing all participants of humanity, setting the space as one that is welcoming and encouraging of the participation of all people because the success of the future is dependent on the agreed upon collaboration of humanity's joint efforts. Schwartz seeks to emphasize the extent to which the future is reliant on our choice to return it's love by continuously reminding the viewer that the future has already completed its end of the deal by agreeing to wait and love us unconditionally. This is interspersed with the language of the multiplicity of people, cultures, and lands, giving the reader an idea of the extent in which this decision is applicable to all areas of reality. 

    Walcott delivers this message with a more individualistic view. Walcott encourages the reader to return to themselves, the foundation of their identity, their humanity, and be willing to develop with time the opportunity to embrace the self once more. This particular approach of self loving in the aftermath of received love creates an interesting parallel between the feeling of old lovers and the feeling of bringing one's body back to the roots of the Earth. When we feel the love of someone outside of ourselves, we tend to shape ourselves around that given love, but Walcott is suggesting that even if we have molded to a new form of love, adopted from a "stranger" we cannot forget that original identification of the independent self is continuous and will wait to love us once more, just like the future. 

    Finally, Harjo's approach is more of a strong appeal to passion. She embraces the language of a tale that is post-apocalyptic and distant but then continues to develop this world with the imagery that we are so akin to in our present moment. Harjo expresses the destruction, the carelessness, and the conceited way in which humans seem to approach their home in a way that is reflective of a utopian climax, before bringing the hammer down to remind the reader that although this world has been made to feel distant, it is imminent and knocking on our doors. Harjo maintains hope, however, in, as Schwartz and Walcott did, suggesting that despite how far we may have strayed, there is still a chance, for the future still loves us, to rectify and embrace our mother. 

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