The reading from this week that most spoke to me was Walt Whitman’s “Starting From Paumanok.” The title itself is a fairly radical statement – it even would be one today for a white poet – commanding the reader to start in our exploration of America from a Native American viewpoint, the name of Whitman’s home of Long Island in the Native language of Renneiu. The most striking part of the poem to me is his use of Native location names in sections 1, 3, 14, and 16 in order to show the version of America he attempts to convey. In doing so, he reminds the reader of the roots of everywhere he goes; this defamiliarizing of common words and names is a way of writing with purpose that I believe is extremely effective in order to encourage social change, especially in poetry.

    This use of commonly recognized words to invoke a different meaning is also present in Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. The use of the phrase “if they are hungry, let them eat grass” by Andrew Myrick, conveyed by the poet on page 53, invokes the story of Marie Antoinette and causes a sense of the evil, uncaring overlord