Innovation in Language Learning

Poetry is not only a complex network of verbal signs but also a space where self-awareness and truth about one’s identity are generated. It is, therefore, the imaginative portrayal of a specific universe in a coherent order. This paper examines the issue of self-awareness and poetic self in the poems that appeared in The Empress of the Death House (1978) and The Undertaker’s Daughter (2011) by Toi Derricotte (1941-), a poet of African American descent renowned for her open and fearless articulation of trauma, resistance, and personal and societal identity. The paper also purports to investigate how Derricotte creates her poetic selves in connection to her historical, cultural, and social contexts, drawing on the idea of poetics of the self as a means of articulating one’s knowledge, experience, and voice. The paper takes a sociocultural stance that is influenced by the theories of Stephen Greenblatt (1943-), who developed the term “cultural poetics” to denote a strategy for reading and analyzing texts that reveals the connections between writings and their sociohistorical contexts. The paper also proceeds with the assumption that the moment of self-insight and awareness of the poet’s spiritual experience leads to the moment of poetic creation. The paper tries to answer the following researchable questions: How could poetry as a literary genre respond to problems of racism, ethnicity, and culture? Is poetry a merely linguistic sphere or generally a cultural sphere? Can a poetic experience be scrutinized in terms of cultural theory? How does Derricotte develop a dynamic and dialogic poetic self that questions popular narratives of marginalization and oppression? And how does she assert her agency and empowerment as a writer of color?

Keywords: Self-awareness; Poetic Self; Derricotte; Greenblatt; Cultural Poetics