{"id":1056,"date":"2023-10-04T08:53:54","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2023-10-04T12:08:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T16:08:20","slug":"craft-corner-code-switching-as-shapeshifting-in-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/craft-corner-code-switching-as-shapeshifting-in-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft Corner: Code-Switching as Shapeshifting in Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A poem that moves between languages has a special mystery. As a Mexican American writer, the Spanish\/English code-switch speaks to me in a personal, almost mystical way. Through its agility, I feel the fluidity and tension of dual language, culture, myth, and perception. I sense the poem\u2019s exploration of \u201cotherness,\u201d but also its \u201cboth-ness,\u201d which especially fascinates me. What type of experience would compel a writer to enmesh two languages to communicate meaning? What is gained through the mergence, or the mezcla <\/em>(mix), and the semi-obscurity of blending languages? I think that through code-switching, the poet inhabits dual identities simultaneously and \u201cappears\u201d to readers as constantly transfigured. This means that a code-switching poem is a shapeshifting poem, and in that sense, poetry is made metaphysical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Code-switching, or moving between more than one language in a poem, is an inherently daring move. The writer risks losing or alienating readers, obscuring the poem\u2019s message, or skewing its ultimate landing and interpretation. Yet, poets who achieve this shapeshift imbue their poems with multi-textural meaning and voice that extends beyond literal translation. This act of linguistic agility often defies and invites multiple interpretations. It creates separation, mystery, and play. It imbues the poem with cultural nuance, regional parlance, idiosyncrasy, phrasing, music, humor, and voice. Poets who code-switch fearlessly and are masters of this linguistic fluidity include Eduardo C. Corral, Natalie Diaz, Iliana Rocha, and Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Eduardo C. Corral\u2019s stunning \u201cTestaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,\u201d from his book Guillotine, <\/em>is one example of an arresting English to Spanish code-switching poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cTestaments,\u201d Corral explores the stories of people displaced from Mexico along the borderlands of the United States. The \u201ctestaments\u201d described in the poems revolve around graffiti and random messages scrawled onto water stations scattered throughout the desert. In this twenty-five-page poem, there is an arresting sense of loneliness and anonymous yet personal anguish. We share the visions of a speaker who is lost, ill, exiled, thirsty, hungry, afraid, wandering, and desperately lonely as he staggers between borders and cultures. The language mesh that happens in \u201cTestaments\u201d is deeply poignant. Diane Suess calls this an \u201cerotics of loneliness\u201d and says of the poem\u2019s striking calligrams that blur walls of words in both English and Spanish, \u201cit\u2019s as if I\u2019m reading through smoke, through tears\u201d (Corral, back cover).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these calligrams creates a blurred cross shape using the word \u201cclavo,\u201d or nail. Running through the center of the cross is the phrase \u201cMe falta un clavo para mi cruz,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m missing a nail for my cross.\u201d Another juxtaposes random graffiti from the borderlands like \u201cBUILD THE WALL STOP DRUGS\u201d above \u201cchinga tu madre gringo \u2122\u201d (Corral 15). Another calligram in the poem, composed of the speaker\u2019s haunted thoughts and prayers, says \u201cD\u00e9jame viver, Se\u00f1ora de Las Sombras,\u201d or \u201cLet me live, Lady of Shadows\u201d (Corral 23). The speaker tells The Lady of the Shadows (which we can interpret as death) \u201cno hay dinero \/ ni trabajo\u201d followed by \u201cthe dead gather.\u201d This heartache and anguish are raw, and straddle both worlds. In \u201cTestaments,\u201d the speaker observes \u201cGod is circling like a vulture \/ gracias nada mas \/ coraz\u00f3n de oro \/ a qui\u00e9n vas enga\u00f1ar\u201d (Corral 35). This is language that clearly expresses dread and struggle\u2014even if the literal meaning of each word isn\u2019t precisely grasped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that intuiting the meaning of unfamiliar words <\/em>creates its own engagement and mystery that deepens the experience of a poem. For the average reader whose primary language is English, words like diablo, r\u00edo, coraz\u00f3n, <\/em>for example, likely exist at some level of fundamental comprehension. Yet, even less commonplace words like molcajete, calavera, <\/em>and charro<\/em>, when taken in the context of an engaging poem, are thrilling linguistic gestures that invite further immersion and investigation. I find the musicality, delicacy, and bravado of Spanglish and its particular code-switch especially intriguing because the languages push in a \u201cprickly\u201d way against each other. When a phrase in Spanish is inserted into a stanza in English, a thrust and swagger happen that is part of the music, part of the shapeshifting. This happens when the speaker in \u201cTestaments\u201d observes \u201cBlood soaks my sneakers. The handkerchief \/ around my head \/ reeks like sobacos\u201d and \u201cA severed hand \/ black yarn around \/ the thumb. Welcome \/ to the cagada\u201d (Corral 21). Here, \u201csobacos\u201d are \u201carmpits\u201d and \u201cthe cagada\u201d is \u201cthe shit.\u201d But doesn\u2019t that swagger and music lead you to a strange sense of intuited understanding through context?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if the words in the poem are of a specific dialect not immediately understood, the reader can still sense an authentic utterance\u2014<\/em>and that these particular words have simply been chosen because this is how the poet experienced the poem. The speaker in \u201cTestaments\u201d says \u201cI try to recall the taste of Pablo\u2019s sweat. \/ Whiskey, no. \/ Wet dirt, si. \/ I stuff English \/ into my mouth \/ spit out chingaderas\u201d (Corral 11). Regional aphorisms and untranslatable figures of speech create an innate sense of withholding, or inability for certain expressions to exist beyond linguistic boundaries in a single form. So, the poet must keep both language and meaning fluid and flexible, as in the lines \u201cCada noche \/ I sleep \/ with dead men. \/ The coyote was the third to die.\u201d The stitching of languages is innate and hypnotic, as in \u201cthere\u2019s a foto \/ in my bolsillo \/ of a skeleton \/ shrouded \/ in black flames: \/ Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Santa Muerte\u201d (Corral 11). It\u2019s a dynamic gesture and a dazzling process to feel happening in a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Spanish\/English code-switch has a special significance for me as a reader, but it has also changed my linguistic parameters so that I\u2019m drawn to poetry with unfamiliar terrains. This makes the experience of turning to poems an act of\u00a0seeking<\/em>\u00a0the shapeshift; that is, I turn to poetry not only to be immersed in a story, and a psyche, but also another psychic reality with its own elemental textures of language, phrasing, music, and thought. Immersing ourselves in the poetics of multiple languages is vital for growing in perception, awareness, and empathy\u2014and code-switching is the mystical crossing that allows it to happen. As Eduardo C. Corral writes in \u201cTestaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,\u201d \u201ca proverb: beauty \/ can\u2019t be talked into speech. The sky isn\u2019t blue. \/ It\u2019s azul.\u201d and \u201cSaguaros \/ are triste, not curious.\u201d Perhaps beauty cannot be conjured by speech, but it can be built and transfigured within these careful layers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013\u2013Mary Robles, Mid-American Review<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note from the editors<\/strong>: The works in this craft essay are cited from Guillotine<\/em> by Eduardo C. Corral. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2020. 72 pages. $16.00, paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poem that moves between languages has a special mystery. As a Mexican American writer, the Spanish\/English code-switch speaks to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,15],"tags":[195,194,199,198,200,201,85,193,41,34,29,196,197],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft-corner","category-poetry","tag-code-switching","tag-craft-corner","tag-eduardo-c-corral","tag-english","tag-graywolf-press","tag-guillotine","tag-mar","tag-mary-robles","tag-mid-american-review","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-shapeshifting","tag-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}