Project V.O.I.C.E.

Project V.O.I.C.E. (Vocal Outreach Into Creative Expression) is a national movement that celebrates and inspires youth self-expression through Spoken Word Poetry.

Conceived in 2004, Project V.O.I.C.E. encourages young people to engage with the world around them and use Spoken Word Poetry as an instrument through which they can explore and better understand their culture, their society, and ultimately themselves.

Project V.O.I.C.E. brings together performance, writing, and a supportive environment to inspire youth to recognize that their views are significant, valid, and necessary. 

Sarah Kay, Founder and Co-Director

Sarah Kay is a Spoken Word Poet who grew up in New York City and began performing her poetry when she was only fourteen years old.  Even though she was often the youngest poet by a decade, Sarah made herself at home at the Bowery Poetry Club, one of New York's most famous Spoken Word venues.

Suheir Hammad

I have been a huge admirer of Hammad's work since I first read her book of poems called Born Palestinian Born Black. Suheir Hammad has given us a collection of poems that have their roots in a land near the edge of the sea.

 Here is the voice of a woman who has not forgotten the plight of her people! Born Palestinian Born Black is about culture, conflict, and culture.

The author preface's says, "I was born a black woman / and now / I am become a Palestinian / against the relentless laughter of evil / there is less and less living room / and where are my loved ones? / It is time to make our way home."

Poet Suhair Hammad was born in Amman, Jordan, to refugee Palestinian parents. She immigrated with her family to Brooklyn, New York, when she was just five years old inspired by poet-performers such as Nikki Giovanni.

Barbara Jane Reyes wrote

"I have been a huge admirer of Hammad’s work since I first read her poem, “Of Woman Torn,” in the anthology The poetry of Arab Women, edited by Nathalie Handal. 

Hammad’s “Of Woman Torn” addresses the so-called “honor killing” of an eloped young woman by her father in Cairo in 1997"

palestine’s daughter

love making can be as dangerous

as curfews broken

guerillas hidden

you join now those who won’t leave

the earth haunt my

sleep who watch my

back whenever i lay

the forced suicides the

dowry deaths and

nora

decapitated by

her father on her forbidden

honeymoon he paraded

her head through

cairo to prove his

manhood this is 1997

and i can only hope

you had a special song a

poem memorized a secret

that made you smile

this is a love

poem cause i love

you now woman

who lived tried to

love in this world of

machetes and sin

i smell your ashes

of zaatar and almonds

under my skin

i carry your bones

According to Jane Reye, Hammad's syntax is broken, her lines are clipped, and her poems are bombardments of images and words, demonstrations of brokennes and piecing togetherof selves, of languages, histories, and geographies.

Portrait D’une Femme by Pound

Portrait D’une Femme

1          Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea

2          London has swept about you this score years

3          And bright ships left you this or that in fee:

4          Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,

5          Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.

6          Great minds have sought you-lacking someone else.

7          You have been second always.  Tragical?

8          No.  you preferred it to the usual thing:

9          One dull man, dulling and uxorious,

10        One average mind-with one thought less, each year.

11        Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit

12        Hours, where something might have floated up.

13        And now you pay one.  Yes, you richly pay.

14        You are a person of some interest, one comes to you

15        And takes strange gain away:

16        Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;

17        Fact that leads nowhere; and a tail for two,

18        Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else

19        That might prove useful and yet never proves,

20        That never fits a corner or shows use,

21        Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:

22        The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;

23        Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,

24        These are your riches, your great store; and yet

25        For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,

26        Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:

27        In the slow float of differing light and deep,

28        No! there is nothing!  In the whole and all,

29        Nothing that’s quite your own.

30                    Yet this is you.

Pound “played a significant role in the launching of literary modernism especially through his insistence that poets reject traditional modes of poetry and “make it new.”

“Portrait d’une Femme,” is the embodiment of modern poetry. The “prosaic and flexible blank verse” is about the portrait of a lady and her life in the society. 

New Criticism is an approach for studying poetry as “self-contained entity, without regard to the historical context, the writer’s intent, or any other aspects beyond the internal elements found within a work.” This type of criticism helps us analyse effectively the metaphors, word choice, and imagery which we are going to encounter in this beautiful  poem.

On the first line, the word “you” refers to the woman in the poem. Pound uses an extended metaphor to compare the woman to “our Sargasso Sea.” He writes, “Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, / London has swept about you this score years.” (Line 1 and 2) According to Christine Froula, Pound “portrays the lady by means of the extended metaphor of the “Sargasso Sea,” a relatively static area of the North Atlantic stretching between the West Indies and the Azores, where the current deposit masses of seaweed (or “Sargasso”). She adds, “as the Sargasso collects seaweed, so this woman, after twenty years of backwash from London’s social currents.” (Froula 1983)

Ezra Pound is comparing the “mind” of the lady to “Sargasso Sea”. Her “mind” is motionless and calm but it is covered with seaweed which is represented in the poem by the “ideas and old gossips.” Walter Sutton believes that Pound is “depicting the emptiness and sterility of a cultured woman (“great minds have sought you”) (line 6) surrounded by an exotic assortment of objects of art.” (Sutton 1973) 

Pound uses the words “you” to speak about the woman and he uses the word “ship” to refer to a real ship. The word “spar” (line 5) means the pole, which supports the sail. But the author writes, “Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.” ( line 5) The poet’s words, “spars of knowledge” are used to refer to the poles of knowledge that are reaching the woman. She is an intellectual lady. Therefore, a great amount of knowledge must reach her “mind.” 

On line 17, Pound writes, “Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else.” The mandrake is a forked root human-shaped plant which has yellow and purple flowers. Pound used the word “mandrake” as a metaphor in his poem. It was believed that the plant has aphrodisiac powers and that it could increase the ability of women to fall pregnant. Therefore, Pound might be telling us that the woman needs the mandrake to become pregnant of more ideas since the seaweed of the “Sargasso Sea” is covering her “mind” and it is not letting it grow with intellectual knowledge. 

On line 22 and 23, the poet writes, “The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work; / Idols and ambergris and rare inlays.” Pound is a modern poet who does not want to express his ideas clearly. He might be thinking that the woman’s “oddments” are “gaudy” and “tarnished” because they are surrounded by seawater. Therefore, the woman needs the “ambergris” to enrich her ideas. “Ambergris” is a gray substance secreted from the intestines of the sperm whale. It is used in perfume making. The poet infers that the mind of this woman needs to be inseminated with knowledge  in order to make her pregnant with ideas which will help her become intellectually ready for the society where she lives. 

Then, he writes, “In the slow float of differing light and deep.” (line 27) What we understand from the word ‘float’ in this line is that the poet is waiting for this new knowledge to float up to the surface. With the help of the ‘mandrake’ and the ‘ambergris’, the woman might become less superficial and sterile.

Then, he writes, “There is nothing! In the whole and all, / Nothing that’s quite your own. / Yet this is you.” The poet addresses the woman herself by emphasizing the last line with a deep indentation and he is telling us that he is not sure if she will change one day into a less superficial woman. 

Pound had rejected traditional modes of poetry when he wrote “Portrait d’une Femme.” He used ambiguous words and he compared dissimilar things in order to confuse his readers.

Thoughts About Frost

J.D. McClatchy believes that Frost's poetry indicate that the poet was a "Puritan without a God."

J. D McClatchy identifies Frost as a Puritan without God. 

Frost defined “a Puritan as one who was willing to put moral bounds on what he wanted, including not only pleasures of the senses, such as “wine, women, and song,” but also things as political power. (frostfriends.org)

In “Desert Places” Frost wrote, “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars- on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places.”

 Recognizing Frost’s Puritan ancestry, readers can feel that the poet is anxious about what would happened after death. 

According to Peter Stanlis, the poet believed that “because of the uncertainty of God’s ultimate justice or mercy, man is compelled to “stay afraid” deep in his soul.” (eclectic.org)

In “Design” Frost depicts a white spider preying a moth. Many readers use this image as a metaphor for “the world made in God’s image and the evil seems to have infiltrated it.”

 

In “Once by the Pacific” Frost says “Someone had better be prepared for rage. / There would be more than ocean-water broken / Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.” 

In these two poems, readers can see that Frost was pondering about the question of God and the afterlife.

Frost told his friend G. R. Elliott in 1947: “My fear of God has settled down into a deep and inward fear that my best offering may not prove acceptable in his sight.”

In a 1932 letter to poet Louis Untermeyer, Frost specified that the God he feared was the “God of Israel, who admits he is a jealous god.”

In his lectures and letters, Frost often alluded to his fear: "My fear of God has settled down into a deep and inward fear that my best offering may not prove acceptable in his sight," he told his friend G. R. Elliott in 1947.

In Frost's interview in the Paris Review, he says, "I never knew how many disadvantages anyone needed to get anywhere in the world." 

Frost is suggesting that travelling can make people feel exposed. In his poem, “The Exposed Nest,” he tells his readers the danger to be away from your roots and to be exposed to other people and ideas without knowing how to protect yourself or protect your family. 

But Frost trip to England brought many advantages in his life. It is in England that he proved himself as a poet. He wrote “Mending Fences” when he came back from a trip to Scotland and he wrote “The Road Not Taken” to illustrate Edward Thomas’s indecisiveness while they were walking in the wood in England. Therefore, Frost’s trip to England brought many advantages to the poet.

Indeed, Robert Frost had many fears and he tries to fight against many of them in his poems.