This past Wednesday in EL 363: Poetry of Witness, we
discussed the following piece by Yehuda Amichai that, to borrow the term from
Doug, is apt for a deconstructionist hook.
Poem Without an End
Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum
The poem suggests no real center, no place for the speaker
to rest an understanding of his relationship to his faith (“synagogue”) and
culture (“museum”). The result is a poem that resembles a Derridean trace,
wherein Amichai utilizes line breaks / enjambment in order to create some sort
of frantic searching for meaning, a search that as the title and end indicate
has no end. Laurie suggested that the “brand-new museum” could perhaps be a
reference to Jerusalem’s holocaust museum, which opens a New Historical reading
of the poem. But also a Marxist reading because the synagogue and “me”
contained in the museum are subsequently commodified.
This is my last blog post, but I know a few of you still
have some to go. I absolutely adore this poem, and would love to hear your
insight based off of this very
simplistic reading I’ve provided.
I love this poem. The chain of signifiers does point to a lack of a fixed center. It also reads a lot like a chant. Would this poem be performative? I don't think so, but it still is enacting this chain that never ends.
ReplyDeleteI liked your point, Audrey, that though Amichai cannot land on any fixed center, he is trying frantically to do so in the course of this poem. It seems like an attempt at self-definition, an attempt to fix his own identity so that he can make sense of the world. And, of course, the never-ending nature of the poem makes that impossible. But he keeps searching. I wonder, is there something gained in the continual search?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the hook might be the play on inside/outside--mind/memories/museum/reality.
ReplyDelete