Poem Response "Skinhead": Wk 6- M, 9/23

Out of all of the poems, I've read thus far, this one definitely contradicts the expected. While reading this, I imagined a white supremacist angrily writing lines of fury. A man with such anger that he felt compelled to expel it onto thin sheets of white paper. Of course, there are some things which would go against this thought process. Foremost, the speaker would have to be uneducated and unable to write something so cohesive. I could hear the tone of an angry, racist man and I felt almost scared with lines like "I get hard listening to their skin burst" making my eyes widen from the image of blood splashing at the hands of a white supremacist. Immediately after reading this poem, I turned to my boyfriend (Alan) and asked him to read everything from start to end. He had a similar reaction, specifically pointing out the same line that stood out to me. I was amazed by how appalled I felt... all at the power of a black woman. It is amazing to see how we can change our persona while writing poems and create something which is utterly not ourselves. I was able to see this change in persona also most clearly in the poem "Cuba, 1962" written by Ai. The poet is a black, Asian woman who writes as a Cuban man. Some people may say that poems only reflect what the poet has experienced, but as can be seen, that does not always have to be necessarily true.