Guests
by Alexis, March 17, 2008 12:10 PM
There are little televisions throughout Don't Let Me Be Lonely. Really. Little photographs of televisions, sometimes depicting widely broadcast images from the news, sometimes only static, are interspersed throughout this long prose poem. The images come as a slight shock at first — poetry arguably being the antithesis of television — but as Rankine's compelling narrative voice navigates the images, the sound bites, the advertisements, and the inevitable detritus, the televisions become symbols for us — we sad, solitary, lost individuals. It both is and isn't as heavy as it sounds: her primary themes are death and depression, but her observations are often fiercely wry. Honestly, I've never been interested in overtly political poetry, but Rankine has made this political poetry so gut-wrenchingly personal, so emotionally resonant — not to mention the brilliant formal execution — that I will never write off political poetry again.
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