poems

The poems read “A Map to the Next World”, “Love After Love”, and “The Future Loves You Already” are all written with a tone of promise. In “A Map to the Next World”, in the beginning talks about the implication of human error and how it has damaged our Earth “Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to/ dissapear./ We no longer know the names of the birds here,  how to speak to/ them by their personal names/ Once we knew this lush promise” speaking of a former time when our lives were more connected to nature but as we move farther from nature we lose our knowledge of the nature world with this distance (Harjo 19-21). Harjo goes on to talk about the return back to the natural world and with this return there is a sense of repentance for having left something which previously was so intertwined with us but with this repentance there is renewal. Walcott's “Love After Love” continues the theme of promise by expressing a message of opening one's heart. It seems as though it was written during or after a period of hard times, reminding the reader that good will come again “You will love again the stranger who was yourself./Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart/ to itself, to the stranger who has loved you”( Walcott 7-9). Through the video poem “The Future Loves You Already” by Jena Schwartz, the faces of the individuals speaking through how they imagine the future to look like. Using the faces of many individuals to represent different perspectives of the future as a way to show how it involves not just one person or identity. It shows how in this moment one aspect of life may be perceived as one thing when in the future it may be no more “The future speaks truth to/power/ until power is no longer a weapon/ but a secret tool/ to wield with care” (Schwartz). These poems speak to the belief that there could be a future in which what is used to keep people separated from their origins no longer holds the same power.


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