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Created: April 14, 2003
Latest Update: April 14, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Comments on Being Painted Black

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

These comments are based on the poem, Being Painted Black, by Laura Phillips, that appeared in Parade Magazine on Sunday, April 13, 2003, within the Los Angeles Times.

On Monday, April 14, 2003, Tatiana Melendez wrote:

Subject: Being Painted Black

Hey Jeanne,

I just wanted to comment on the poem, "Being Painted Black' by Laura Phillips. I think it's an excellent poem, but I was just wondering if I have a clear understanding on what I get from it. Tell me if I am wrong!

Well, I think she has been torn, lives her life being closed up and sad about being little or almost invisible, as if no one pays any attention to her. No matter what, her world continues to be dark as she is being hurt, abused, and people still don't recognize her like she wants them to. She feels beat up, and there seems to be no hope in her eyes. She feels lifeless and regardless of what she says still no one recognizes her. She seems not to exist, as though her world has closed in on her.

On Monday, April 14, 2003, jeanne responded:

Tatiana, I'm glad you wrote. I know it's difficult, but one of the reasons I insist that you write is that you'll gradually learn that it's much easier than you thought.

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, you can't be wrong. There is no right or wrong to a work of art or a writing or a structure someone has built. Once the object, the painting, or the story, or the building, or whatever is launched it belongs to the world. Because, you see, you the viewer or the reader or the occupant, or whatever complete the work by your reaction to it. You and the work become interdependent. In theory we refer to this as the disappearing author, in a postmodern vocabulary. And what it means is that what the poem say to you is what counts, even though that may or may not be what it said to Laura Phillips.

Second, we are lucky enough to have a comment as well from the poet who judged the poetry context in which Laura won with Being Painted Black. Bill Collins, the Poet Laureate of America said in the Parade article that he chose Laura's poem because it shows the unpretentious creativity shining through adolescent self-consciousness, that can often stifle the "spirit of creative play."

Collins points out the playfulness that Laura seems unable to resist despite the overwhelming searching of the poem for who she is: She starts "parchment" colored gray, goes on to "a drop of ink" on "a snow white canvas", then on to being "redrawn with charcoal", on a "dark black surface." The repetitions are what signal to Collins, that even while exploring her own psyche, Laura picked up more and more delight as she found new ways to describe the feeling with all the different tools of art. In other words, she was playing, too.

How does this compare to your interpretation? I think you focused on the darkness of the psyche: "her life being closed up," "sad about being little or almost invisible," "as if no one pays any attention to her," "she is being hurt, abused," "[s]he feels lifeless," "still no one recognizes her," until the crescendo: "She seems not to exist, as though her world has closed in on her."

But look, just look, at how you focused in on that dark psyche. You thought up reason after reason why a sixteen-year-old might feel such darkness. You piled the reasons on, one by one, almost the way Laura piled up the many ways that art tools could describe the psychic pattern she feels or felt. And you built up the seriousness of the reasons until finally she doesn't exist, and the world closes in on her. Wow! Maybe you should write some poetry.

How do you link this conceptually to our course in Sociology of Reality? Easy. Through your reading of this poem I have come to know you and to see a unique perspective of you. I would suspect that you have had enough acquaintance either through lived or shared experience to relate to the pain of the adolescent's search for self. That's a characteristic that would be very helpful in one of the helping professions, because what you are doing here is pursuing illocutionary discourse, or understanding another just for the sake of understanding her as an Other, and that is what makes real discourse possible.

And the use of the poem for you and me and Laura to come to know each other is an unusual and sociological use of poetry. Consider poetry as a tool in helping us express and empathize with one another. That's another concept we're stressing in this course: different tools for expressing our feelings, our needs, our joys, our sorrows, our values.

Do be sure to stop by our office, and let me know that you see the way to connect your submission with our course work.

love and peace, jeanne

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