Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Poet

P.O.P ~ Poets on Poetry

Intertextuality: Nature Bodies

Intertextuality: Ghostly Bodies

The Paradox of Language

Black-and-White Dusk at Limantour Beach p 219

Griffiths interviews contemporary poets in her own apartment.

Light Vs Its Absence

Watching Blackbirds Turn to Ghosts p 30

Limantour Beach

"No place breaking open to reveal the sun's wound..."

This poem presents the metaphor of a body in imagery; "spine of shore," "sun's wound," "life's veil." The seals are described as being "droplets... like blood."

"No place breaking open to brighten the darkest look of animals"

Miscarriage

"Window dusk mobilizes each blood drop

"Syntax of rot" - syntax is structure, rot is deconstruction

"Superstitious eye"

Similar to Miscarriage in October with Ladybugs by Amber Flora Thomas p 114

Archetypes as immortal?

The seals are described as having "ghostly bodies" and appear like "mermaids." They also have a "black gaze."

Woman at the bottom of the bridge vs Viola's "tiny hand" gesturing Bernard onward p 175

This poem presents a metaphorical body through the ladybugs - "ovaries," and "uterus" as well as referring to the ladybugs as "drops" of blood.

Similar to the sharks in Douglas Kearney's poem Swimchant of Nigger Merfolk (An Aquaboogie Set in Lapis) p 166.

The sharks are described as "haintin'"

Themes of life and death, the ocean as being both death and a source of life

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Contemporaries

Quote

"Over the years, my obsessions and

preoccupations linger in the spaces

of elegies, grief, nature, women's lives

and bodies, desire and violence, and

then there is the ekphrastic work that

focuses on my evolving relationship,

as an artist and poet, with visual art.

As a photographer and visual artist,

I also spend an inestimable amount of

time considering and employing

shadows as much as light. I have to

have both forces to make any image

or any painting or any poem."

Exposing What's Hidden: Interview

Tracy K SMith

Douglas Kearney

Yona Harvey

Famous: Claudia Rankine, Terrance Hayes,

Julia Alvarez

Sources

Castro, J. G. (2014). Exposing What's Hidden: An Interview With Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, 14(1), 98-105. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://proxy.uscupstate.edu:5737/lrc/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b36a368b-f3a1-42d7-814a-efd7103e79ca@sessionmgr198&vid=3&hid=109

Griggs, S. E. (2003). Imperium in imperio. New York: Modern Library.

Photo taken from http://www.rachelelizagriffiths.com/

Her Work

Has published four volumes:

Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books, 2015)

Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011)

The Requited Distance (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2011)

Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books, 2010)

Background

Photo taken from http://www.rachelelizagriffiths.com/about/

Griffiths was born December 6th, 1978 in

Washington, D.C.

Received an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Currently lives in Brooklyn.

Teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts).