Multicultural Approach to Poetry in Contemporary America

The beginning of poetry in America can be marked as the time colonies united. Its first appearance in the history of America was due to colonialism. Seeing that colonizers wanted to express their experiences here in the States, American poetry which was greatly influenced by the British mode made its debut. Years after mainstream poetry was dominated by white people using rhyme and meter, there was an uproar about the lack of diversity present. During the height of contemporary poetry, more and more multicultural individuals started telling their life experiences in a poem form. These poems explored themes of assimilation and ostracisation while discussing the perspective of those othered for so long. The aim was to report the state of their own life to an audience who was only exposed to Caucasian influences. Although all of this began due to colonialism in America, the poetry movement was fueled by taking back their lives after colonialism while not caring much about the structural modes as language and theme were of more importance. 

One of the most prominent authors of the time was Joy Harjo who was of indigenous background. She wrote about the ecology and environment of Native Americans. Harjo used a mix of styles in her poetry as she went on to explore the many sides of the cosmopolitan experience in the States. In one of her poems “An American Sunrise”, the struggles of Native Americans battling to keep a connection with their past while rejecting the conditions of the contemporary world are told through free rhyme and verse. The search for the preservation of cultural community during the time the newcomers tried to paint them as the villain is shown in the lines “We were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin chance.”. This showcases the blatant racism present in the older works as people of color now come forward to tell their stories of history as it happened to them instead of the settlers. 

Similarly, Lorna Dee Cervantes talks about a similar experience from a Mexican point of view. While Harjo emphasizes the loss of culture, Cervantes touches on the loss of culture through the language aspect. As she was born during a time in which speaking Spanish, her mother tongue would put a person at the center of a hate crime, as years passed Cervantes stopped using Spanish to avoid these happenings. With the absence of language, her bond with her Hispanic heritage faded over time as well. This would later on become the topic of discussion in many of her poems just like Harjo. In her poem “Four Portraits of Fire” Cervantes discusses the alienation of culture in the last stanza. As the narrator is stripped of their identity in a foreign land, Cervantes wonders about the courage of those not oppressed. With the lines “I am frightened by regions with wills of their own, but when my people die in the snow, I wonder did the depths billow up to reach them?”, the speaker is questioning the aftermath of passing as a person of color thus drawing attention to their exclusion not only when alive but also when they pass.

With all of that said contemporary multicultural American poetry can be seen as an uproar against oppression. As poetry was once a medium dominated by European men, contemporary poets of colour thought it was high time for their own stories to be told and seen hence began the new age of contemporary multicultural narrative.