Words have meaning except through a certain level of universal collectivized agreement. The letters that arrange “word” have no actual contextual significance leading one to understand its definition. Likewise, the way words are arranged have no internal logic that automatically explains the structural composition. In other words, what is a “poem” or a “novel” or an “essay” or any other literary form? By itself, “poem” is meaningless. It is only because a majority of people over time have come into agreement that we can today look at a group of words and know immediately it is a poem. Or a novel or an essay or a historical text or whatever.
The significance of such collectivized agreements is the true purpose and subject of Amanda Ngoho Reavey’s book Marilyn. Or, at least, that is what this particular work of analysis has decided based upon reading, analysis, and interpretation. This particular work of analysis makes this determination to be put forth into the collective of other interpretative analyses based on certain pieces of evidence. One of those bits of evidence are words strung together not by Reavy, but chosen by her to indicate and signify some meaning to what will follow:
One of the quotes chosen by the author as the prefatory epigraph for her own work is derived from literary critic Helene Cixous: “What time is it, I mean to say where am I, I mean to say where have I gone—I don’t know anymore, in this instant when I call out to myself, where I’m passing or where I’m going.” In this quote Cixous is extrapolating from the inherent meaningless of words and the meaning we give them an idea which can be applied to much of the rest of existence. Put yourself in the position of spectator to Cixous walking rather than situating yourself as her. If you see a person walking on the sidewalk, they are obviously going somewhere, but within the context of that moment in time, is it truer to suggest that they are heading to somewhere specific or leaving somewhere specific? In other words, if a person is merely taking a walk through the neighborhood, is it more appropriate to say they have left their home or they are heading to a neighbor’s home?
Both could be equally true: the person has left their home with the purpose of going to somewhere specific. Likewise, only one could be equally true: the person specifically left their home but is just out for exercise and may wind up either returning home or decide in the middle of the walk to head to a neighbor's. The tricky part is that a third option exists: neither could be true at all. For example, the person seen walking may have just angrily exited a car as a passenger during a disagreement with the driver. That means this person neither just left their home nor are headed anywhere specific. For that matter, this person may not be familiar with the neighborhood at all. So it is still valid even to jump to that original conclusion that they are “obviously going somewhere.” Their walk may consist of nothing but two blocks until they cool off enough to get back into the car pulled over to the side of the road that they don’t even see yet. At that precise moment that you, as spectator, caught them in movement, then, they cannot really be described as someone who is leaving or heading anywhere. Their existence at that moment is, effectively, merely "in transit."
Here is another piece of evidence extracted from the text in which the author discusses her return to her home in the Philippines for the first time in years, since she emigrated to America: “I did not like traveling alone in Asia. Because they expected my skin to be my culture.”
See the connection there? The idea of what a poem looks like comes to as not organically, but because we have been conditioned to create certain expectations. The idea of automatically jumping to the conclusion of the conditions of existence of a person—even our own self—at any particular point in time is likewise absolutely dependent upon certain conditional operatives. And here we have the Asian-American author raising the issue of expectations of behavior based almost entirely upon something as non-organically conditional as the pigment of one’s skin. Even the very idea of “race” is related to the interpretation that this book of poetry is all about the essential quality of signified meaning arrived at through a universalized collective agreement. Biologically speaking, “race” does not exist. At its fundamental level it is all about pigmentation and it is only through collective agreement that other conditional operatives are applied relating to cultural and ethnic expectations. And even those expectations are arrived at only through the collective agreement.
Marilyn is a book of poetry—speaking in literary genre terms—but it is not necessarily structured as so. The first official page following the table of contents is a photographic reproduction of an official government-sponsored Resident Alien identification card. The page after that looks like what one expects a poem to look, but at the same time also looks like one of David Letterman’s top ten lists. And even that is not organically appropriate since its “stanzas” are numbered 1 to 11, technically making it a top eleven list. Except that it begins, like most lists, with number 1 and proceeds to number 11 and it is linear in its progression and thus raises questions like: Is David Letterman’s top ten list also an example of poetry and if not, why not? Or, is this really a list or simply a poem faking it since it is not a “list” in any tradition sense of itemizing completely different but also connected entities?
The coherence of the descriptive content in the list is such that if one removed the numbering and re-situated the structure so that it resembled a paragraph of prose, it would make perfect sense. Would that then mean that it is not a poem? Or has the collective understanding of what a poem looks like to modern readers attained the point at which even a paragraph can now be quickly understood to be an example of verse?
These are the kinds of questions that the author raises throughout the book. It does tell a coherent story about the Asian-American immigration experience, but it is what lies beneath that surface which is the real heart and meat of the text. Or so one person’s analysis interprets it and is attempting to influence the collective interpretation of the “inherent” meaning of this particular text.
Oh, one more thing. When you get to the part subtitled “Interludes: Suturing Techniques” in which the text has been rotated 90 degrees so that it reads horizontally from the bottom of the page to the top, don’t worry. That is not a printing mistake. It was done on purpose even though one’s collective understanding of the traditions and conventions of book publishing may call it into question.
