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June Jordan Poem About My Rights

1574 Words7 Pages

June Jordan’s poetry is known for its immediacy and accessibility as well as its interest in identity and the representation of personal experiences. Her poetry is often deeply autobiographical, political and often displays a radical, globalized notion of solidarity amongst the worlds oppressed. “Poem about my rights” by the poet, June Jordan can be seen as spoken word poetry rather than page poetry where oral performance and repetition are used to convey her feelings and messages to the listeners. Poetry can be divided into two groups; written poetry and spoken word poetry. Written poetry, also known as page poetry, is written and is analysed by the reader. Written poetry is seen as more universal than personal as the reader, instead of the …show more content…

Hearing Jordan reading this poem is crucial to appreciating and understanding the power of her poetry. “Poem about my rights” is personal, intimate and has a quality where the listeners feel as if the speaker is talking directly to them. Jordan uses language boldly and fully. She does not shy away from stereotypically or conventionally cuss words or ideas which may upset some listeners. In the poem she speaks about social and political issues that are real and issues which she feels should not be. She writes about injustice, repression and oppression. “Poem about my rights” captures the range of Jordan’s subjects, as well as rich juxtaposing and free verse, linearly arranged sentences, parallelism, unpunctuated parenthetical remarks, enjambment and frequently used slashes to hold ideas together. Enjambment is used also used to speed up the tempo at which the poem is …show more content…

The speaker makes use of repetition which is a very important aspect in “Poem about my rights” where certain phrases and words are repeated numerous times. The poet uses the repetitive phrase, “I am the wrong sex, the wrong age the wrong skin...” (Jordan 8-9) for the first time, which contributes to the success of the repetition in the poem as the word “wrong” appear in the poem a few times which indicates the importance of the word in the poem. The word “wrong” refers to the victims enumerated throughout the poem as the speaker, and all other oppressed persons and nations who are victims of rape because they are viewed by their torturers to be wrong. Although the name of the poem reflects on human rights and “right and wrong” are subjects of this poem, the word “right” never comes forth in this poem although the word “wrong” is often used and repeated. Jason mentions that Jordan never says that she is right and never says that she as a person has rights although she admits that she is not

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