Stratgey Response, Week 7

One element of Sandra Meeks’ poetry that caught my attention right from the start is the fact that she uses no punctuation throughout her entire collection, Biogeography. Looking these phenomena I could not help but think of two things, Derek Walcott’s Sabbaths W.I. and the title of Meeks’ collection containing the word geography. The two, Walcott and geography go hand and hand, so I began to wonder what Meeks’ was playing with here by pairing the ideas of location and the lack of terminal punctuation in her poems. Also, I began to wonder if she is perhaps engaging in a realized or unconscious poetical conversation with Walcott. Looking mainly at the text for memorization this week, “Mapping the Drift,” I began to examine the title and its interesting denotation of locating, or mapping, a divide, or drift. Clearly this plays along with Meeks’ collection in terms of how she is using, or not using, punctuation. Meeks partaking in a schism from traditional poetic convention in grammar by choosing to not use terminal punctuation; yet her collection stands as a location, or a map, of where this divide is taking place. The poem(s) ironically locate the absence. And in “Mapping the Drift” in particular there are numerous actual locations named: southern colonists, America, Carolina, Oklahoma, the South, etc. Also, the poem begins with the phrase, “By law,” which clearly Meeks is playing around with the ideas of poetic governs, because she is not following traditional grammar laws. I began to wonder if Meeks was taking a cue from Walcott and using the internal textual presence of landscape to stand in as a form of punctuation. I question this because Meeks’ use of geography does not frequent as often in the poem as Walcott; maybe it is more inclusive in the overall collection then in each individual poem. Meeks’ collection is also contains the word bio, as in biological, and is similar to Walcott internal play of punctuation through landscape markers. Possible essay idea here? Needs time for further exploration.