Class: A Smiling-Faced, Lemon-Walled, Anxiety-Ridden Paradox not a Taboo

snatarajan,

Your poem--with its varied font sizes and typefaces and its many specifics of your life--is such a vivid evocation of the complexity and what you call the 'paradox' of class!  I love your suggestion of several different ways we should read the poem, almost like creating an internal version of spoken word poetry or several different versions of a photograph; for me, this is a way that I become part of the poem/story.  Your specifics evoke my own specifics.  You use "It means..." to frame three powerful suggestions at the end:  knowing, acknowledging, embracing.  You urge us to "talk" and your final "It means" is about the possibility of change.  I am struck with the way in which this format gives a different resonance to talk or dialogue, almost like music.  How do you see these acts of awareness and communication as impacting these complex realities of our lives?