Epic Situation

I am glad that i waited to enter my passage in our blog this week, as today's class was difficult for me to grapple with, in particular the assumption that the speaker of a performed piece is to be identified as the narrator. For the sake of qualification, I took performing poetry with Randy Hill and one of the devices we learned about was this notion of the Epic Situation. The epic situation as we defined it was the where and who of a performance. So if you are performing Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman, You would have to decide, where am I going to set this performance and who will I portray? In this case, you may go about the generic route personifying a woman in a public sphere, or you may attempt to portray a transgendered male, convincing himself of his womanhood in a private setting. The point is that unless specified otherwise, we need to contain the narrator to the person within the poem and not the deliverer/speaker. Do not assume that because a black woman is presenting a poem about a skinhead, the narrator of the piece is a black woman. Instead, listen and interpret her words. The opening line is: “They call me skinhead.” Thus with ample critical analysis it may be determined that the poems narrator is, indeed, a skinhead, and not the black woman speaking the poem, shall we relate the stage to the setting of the poem too? It is difficult to separate that which we are so used to trust, our sight, from poetic thought. I am not saying that I know everything there is to know about poetry – we all know that’s not true, but I am saying that I am certain that the speaker is not a black woman and to my knowledge it has nothing to do with the way she’s dressed. Maybe it has something to do with her skin color and the volumes of cultural history that’s bound within, but nothing is indicative that it is about or through the voice of Patricia Smith. I don’t like to generalize, but I do fancy myself to play with the evidence provided to me, and the opening line is enough for me.