4B — Thursday, February 19, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By ADAM DEPOLLO
Managing Arts Editor
When Tarfia Faizullah fell
in love with poetry, she wasn’t
enamored with the fictive beauty
of metaphors or the craftsmanship
that goes into forming perfectly
metered
verse.
Rather,
she
was entranced by its ability to
illuminate the world around us
on its own terms — in her case,
literally so.
“I really loved Emily Dickinson
when I was growing up,” she said.
“I was sitting in the library and
reading her poem ‘A Certain Slant
of Light’ and it was, I think, early
afternoon, and there was a slant
coming through the blinds onto
the page and I was like ‘Whoa!
That’s a certain slant of light, that’s
amazing.’”
She was also fascinated by
the act of transcription, by the
possibility
of
having
others
speak through her voice and her
pen. In its earliest incarnation,
that fascination looked a lot like
plagiarism.
“I
didn’t
understand
that
writing
something
out,
like
copying it into my notebook and
showing it to somebody, isn’t the
same thing as writing your own
original composition,” she said.
“I got caught by my teacher, and
at first he was like ‘Wow, you’re
such a good poet,’ and then he was
like ‘These are from that book that
you’ve been copying poems from,’
and I was like ‘Yeah,’ and he said
that wasn’t the same as writing
your own poems.”
But Faizullah has since learned
the difference, and her first book
of poetry, “Seam,” might be the
long-delayed product of those
early studies in the often fuzzy
lines between art and life, made
all the more visible in the case of
translators and transcribers.
Published
by
Southern
Illinois University Press in 2014,
“Seam” is built around a series of
interviews Faizullah conducted
with
birangona,
women
who
were raped by Pakistani soldiers
in the Bangladesh Liberation
War of 1971. The collection was
published while she studied there
as a Fulbright scholar in 2010. The
poetry — formally diverse and
devastatingly immediate — does
much more than simply recount
the
stories
she
heard
while
traveling and meeting women
in Bangladesh. Her interview
subjects disagree with her, refuse
to answer her questions or, rather,
respond to the questions they want
to hear. She interrogates herself
as an interviewer, as a translator
of the birangona’s experiences
and as a Bangladeshi-American
steeped in the same tragedies – but
at a distance, as in “Interviewer’s
Note, vi.”: “I want / that darkness
she stood against / to be yards of
violet velvet my mother / once
cut me a dress from. Rewind.
Play. / Rewind.” And, ultimately,
it’s an opportunity for Faizullah
to reflect on, learn from and take
pride in her own work.
“Sometimes I feel that I could
have done it better, and sometimes
I feel that I haven’t told as full of a
story as I could have. But mainly
I’m just proud of it. I’m just proud
of what it has been able to do – just
really surprised by what it has
been able to do,” she said.
Since the publication of “Seam,”
the larger poetry community has
also recognized what Faizullah
and her work can do. The book won
a number of prestigious awards
for
first
poetry
publications,
including the Great Lakes Colleges
Association New Writers Award
and the Crab Orchard First Book
Award, and her other works as a
poet and academic has won her
a Pushcart Prize, a Ploughshares
Cohen Award, a Dorothy Sargent
Rosenberg prize and a number
of
scholarships,
grants
and
fellowships.
She
collaborates
with composers, rappers and
photographers,
works
as
an
editor for a number of notable
publications, regularly performs at
poetry slams and formal readings,
and currently finds herself at the
University, serving as the Nicholas
Delbanco Visiting Professor of
Poetry as part of the Helen Zell
Writers’ Program. But Faizullah
is first and foremost a poet, and
she hasn’t taken the time since
she finished “Seam” to rest on her
laurels.
“I just kept writing the whole
time,” she said. “I have hundreds
of poems that will probably never
see the light of day, because for
me, writing poetry is just a daily
practice. And I don’t mean the
actual act of sitting down and
drafting – I just mean sort of
moving through the world with
the eyes of a writer.”
The name of her next book,
“Register of Eliminated Villages,”
derives from a list of destroyed
Kurdish villages and is set to be
published by Greywolf Press in
2017. In it, Faizullah plans to return
to the themes of global violence she
explored in “Seam.”
“I’m really fascinated by human
psychology,” she said. “And I’m
really
fascinated
particularly
by how we respond to violence,
how we contain it, and how our
awareness of such broad violence
all over the world, as well as what
we see in our daily lives or hear
about – how that affects us both
emotionally
and
intellectually.
How do we see ourselves? How do
we see other people through the
lens of the possibility of being able
to do harm.”
She
considers
poetry
particularly well-suited to discuss
highly charged topics like the
violence she addresses in her own.
“Poetry is really magical in
that it’s not prose and it’s not song
— it’s recitation and it’s oratory,”
she said. “There’s a reason why
we think of our politicians as
orators. And I think poetry is an
oratory tradition. So I feel like, just
formally speaking, it’s built to be
able to convey complex ideas.”
But the discussions Faizullah
engages in through her poetry
don’t serve to simply reframe
issues in an aesthetic light. I asked
her what she thought about a
line from one of her first favorite
poets, Emily Dickinson: “I dwell in
Possibility.”
“I think one of the most
powerful things about being an
artist is the awareness you develop
of the world as a series of infinite
possibilities,” she said, “and so
your life becomes about choices
and about discernment. I think the
awareness of those choices can lead
you to take risks that you wouldn’t
otherwise, which can lead you
to
understanding
something
about yourself that you wouldn’t
otherwise
–
understanding
something about your place in the
world, too, I think.”
Her poetry, then, transcribes
and
expands
upon
violence,
suffering and self-discovery in
order to present an alternative,
to show us that, even if we can’t
forget, the next day need not
be the same as the last. It gives
us the same advice she hears
in Dickinson, the same advice
she gives to her creative writing
students at the University.
“Yeah, I encourage them to
‘dwell in possibility,’ too,” she said.
ARTIST
PROFILE
IN
VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily
Poet Tarfia Faizullah is teaching at the University as the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor of Poetry.
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
The day before Valentine’s
Day, leading up to the release
of the music
video
for
“Style,” Taylor
Swift posted a
series of crimi-
nally
short
teases of it on
her Instagram.
They featured
a moody Swift
with
various
naturescapes
projected onto
her body, devoid of sound.
Right away, it was clear that,
visually speaking, the video
wasn’t going to be what we
expected. But the same could
have been said about her video
for “Blank Space,” which hard-
ly fed our expectations (and
hardly let us down). So I held
onto the hope that, in the con-
text of the full video, it would
all make sense. As it turns out,
that was wishful thinking.
The video for “Style” is
completely out of sync with
the song itself in terms of
tone, rhythm and aesthetic.
Whereas the song builds upon
a pulsating ’80s guitar synth
leading up to an exuberantly
brilliant chorus of imagery,
the video throws palpable
images out through a drab —
yet, technically pretty — lace-
draped window. What we get
is a slow-moving, barefoot
stroll through a fog-filled for-
est as we watch Swift play
with shards of a shattered mir-
ror that reflect a shirtless ex-
lover.
“Style” is arguably the best
song on 1989. It uses timeless
images of romance and gives
them a chic, mysterious twist.
It complicates a straightfor-
ward, yet doomed romance
and gives it a spark of life.
Why doesn’t its accompanying
music video take advantage of
that? Sure, Taylor’s got that
red lipstick thing that we like,
and her anonymous love inter-
est (briefly) wears a white
t-shirt à la the song’s lyrics,
but that James Dean daydream
look in his eyes? Hardly appar-
ent. Long hair slicked back?
Nope, not happening.
I’m not saying I hoped the
“Style” video would be a literal
interpretation of the song, say, in
the same vein as Miley Cyrus’s
“Wrecking Ball” was, but it
should have been higher energy.
It should have injected the song,
which I’ve had on repeat since
October, with some extra flare
that would have made it just as
infectious as it was the first time
we heard it.
Taylor Swift has been on
a hot streak throughout the
1989 era. But, with this video,
that streak comes crashing
down. She’ll come back from it,
though. She does every time.
-GIBSON JOHNS
C
‘Style’
Taylor
Swift
Big Machine
Records
BIG MACHINE RECORDS
I’ll admit this right off the bat: I read the book before seeing the
film. I’ll also admit this: I passed out twice in the theater. Does that say
something about the movie? What was 125 minutes felt like an eternity.
Lemme break it down.
Firstly, I need to speak to whoever adapted this screenplay. Who are
you? The innuendos, the symbolism – I don’t think I stopped to breathe,
I was laughing so hard. Where is the best comedy nomination for this?
It tickled me more than Christian tickled Ana. Maybe this is a testament
to my maturity. Each time Christian held out his hand and told Ana to
“come” – when he whipped out the pea(cock) feather during a serious,
steamy session – I just couldn’t keep it in (the laughter, I mean).
Anyway, the film just tried too hard (haha) to be sophisticated and
hyper-artistic. “Fifty Shades” needs to accept that it will never be an
Academy-worthy film, and it doesn’t need to be such a drama queen
about it. The dialogue, the delivery, the juxtaposition of dark and light
– everything dripped with drama and desperate symbolism. Every glare
pierced through our souls, every touch brought shivers down our spines.
I died lactose intolerant from the amount of cheese in this film.
—DAILY ARTS WRITER
… im on acid i feel like we live in a snowglobe wouldnt it be nice if
we could just walk outside and it was nice out its sad living in a snow-
globe but also kind of pretty were in a car ive been awake for like two
days but im ok with it time moves really slowly when you think about
it but like im not thinking about it so its actually going pretty fast my
hair feels really nice were at the movie theater id rather see hot tub
time machine a hot tub sounds nice vry warm especially a time hot
tub everything makes so much sense were in the movie theater were
sitting at the front there are ppl i dont know i feel like we could be
friends were all here to do the same thing its pretty groovy the movie
started i like the girls shirt its got a lot of patterns i like patterns shes
really bad at doing interviews but thats ok im an english major too but
i like ezra pound more did u know ezra pound is a really handsome
guy more handsome than the gray guy i think but hes not in a movie
i feel like everyone is using a lot of words in this movie but nobody is
saying anything shit thats life man i just got sad i cried a little bit but
it felt good theyre gonna have sex now i saw nymphomaniac it was
pretty much the same thing but better why wont the gray man just sit
still for a minute he keeps walking around everyone is sad they should
be happy they have such a nice house and hes really good at piano i
play piano too are we the same guy im pretty sure im into bondage too
im crying again the girl next to me is asleep i wish i could fall asleep
theyre in a plane the movie ended someone said this is about vampires
remember interview with a vampire i really like brad pitt also tree of
life and mr and mrs smith …
— DAILY ARTS WRITER
What’s the opposite of a sexual awakening? Sexual deadening?
Sexual closing? All I know is that, after driving through an arctic tun-
dra on Valentine’s Day afternoon and maneuvering my place in line
so I could say “uh, same thing please” to the ticket-seller instead of
“uh, the movie with all the weird sex, please,” “Fifty Shades” seemed
like it was going to be the fun kind of trashy. That was for the first 20
minutes. Then they had to start having sex, and things got so absurdly
dull that Buzzed fell asleep in one of the (admittedly very comfortable,
if a bit squeaky) theater seats next to me. While the fact that Dakota
Johnson fully actualizes a character who is literally Bella Swan with
an English degree is quite admirable, Jamie Dornan’s robotic Edward
Cullen somnambulates through his scenes and does little more than
moodily play the piano and stare at Johnson’s butt while she dances
to “Beast of Burden.” The most intriguing thing about him isn’t the
burn marks on his chest, but rather how the hell he’s so freakishly
clean-shaven (maybe androids can’t grow hair). Why is he tickling her
so much? Why are the sex scenes so male gaze-y? Can I call in a friend
with no journalism experience when I can’t do an interview? (Ignore
that last one, Jen.) Those were all my questions, but the film’s only
salient question was asked by Johnson about two-thirds in: “What are
butt plugs?” If this is the sex adults dream of, I’m fine with never get-
ting past first base again.
—ADAM THEISEN
‘Fifty Shades of Grey’
on valentine’s day
sober
high
in this series, three daily arts writers in
varying states of mind visit the same
place and write about their experiences.
baked.buzzed.bored.
runk
d
this week’s destination: