Magnitude by Jacob Sam-La Rose Revision

Themes

Comprehending the scale of slavery, greed and gluttony, food and consumption

Title

Magnitude:

- Measurement

- Written for the bicentennial of the abolition of slave trade act in America - Scale of the number of people - Comprehending the scale of the slavery

Punctuation

4 total sentences

Each grain = 1 person

- Cascading effect mirroring the falling grains

- Semi colon links them, while distinct numbers, echoes never ending

Context

Commission, written for the bicentennial of the abolition of slave trade act

Epigraph

Aracelis Girmay (Black American poet)

'Arroz Poetica' - Intertextual conversation, about how those against Iraq war should send bags of rice to George Bush

"field" - "rice "Arroz" = "rice"

"your thousands, thousand names,

your million names" - People impacted by slavery

"names" - Identity

1. No real answer - can never be counted

2. Homogeneous - The same - Each grain

3. Rice was harvested by slaves

4. Extended metaphor for people/ slaves

"There are a million grains in a 20 kilogram sack of rice.

Give or take. It's a hard enough number to imagine,"

"There are a million grains in a 20 kilogram sack of rice." - Certain statement

"million grains" - Scale of people impacted

Lexial field of Maths/Computing - "million", "20 kilogram", "number"

"Give or take" - Fragment - uncertainty - not everything has been counted

"the kind that slips through the fingers, like digging

your hands in that same sack, trying to feel for individuals;"

Lexical Field of Physical / Tactile concepts - "slips through the fingers", "digging your hands", "trying to feel for individuals

a number that surpasses counting, bigger

than the mind's computational eye"

Lexical Field of Maths/ Computing - "number", "counting, bigger" and "computational"

"computational eye" - metaphor - concept is bigger than a computer

"like the full, unending girth of sky, like death, the

kind of threshold you give up on and take for granted."

Lexical field of Maths/ computing - full

Caesura, semi - colon, commas, enjambment

"Imagine the sum in eleven of those sacks and I'm

trying to find a way to make that number real"

"Imagine" - Imperative - instruction- links to slavery

Lexical field of maths / computing - "sum", "eleven",

Verbs of failure - trying

"like how many pots and how long it might take to cook that much rice and still retain the detail of each swollen grains;"

Lexical field of food/ cooking/ crops - "pots", "cook", "rice", "grains"

Lexical field of Physical/ Tactile concepts - of each swollen grain

enjambment - lives merge into one

"a real, fleshy equation that might capture the percentage

of wastage, the amount that would fall and be forgotten even

while trying to keep count, the appetite that might be necessary

to take it all in"

Lexical field of Physical / Tactile concepts - "real, fleshy" ,"fall"

Lexical field of maths / computing - "equation" , "percentage" , "amount" , "count"

Lexical field of food/ cooking/ crops - "wastage", "appetite"

Verb of Failure - "forgotten"

"wastage" - Natural wastage - Waste of a human - Human life - People unaccounted for

"amount that would fall" - Futility of struggle - Against slavery

Lexical fields and their analysis

Maths / Computing - Slavery and to dehumanise people - Turned them into numbers

Food / Cooking / Crops - Simplicity and human substance - Turns these huge abstract ideas (slavery, murder, why) into a concrete analogy

Tactile / Physical Concepts - Makes it real and human

Part 2

Connected but separate - Like rice in a sack

"In a lesson on trying to make the abstract more concrete,

one of my students, a Guyanese boy, late teens,"

"lesson" - Jacob - Sam La Rose is the teacher or is it his experience?

"the abstract more concrete" - Poem itself

"abstract" - Feelings of loss, heartbreak, frustration and anger

"my" - personal pronoun - makes it about him

"Guyanese" - His heritage

"Weeks later, the girl explains that her

Akan blood arrows back up to royalty,

that the boy is the son of a slave"

"Akan" - African people - involved in providing slaves (10% of slave ships) for slave trade. Akan means Enlightenment and Civilised (juxtaposition)

Caribbean and African community - Criticising the "divide and conquer" - colonial approach

"boy is the son of a slave" - African diaspora - Feeling of displacement

"that there is no future for them, only a past.

I understand that the counting males it easier,"

"them, only a past." - Criticism of not moving on from the past - How can you move on from the past

"counting males it easier," - Focusing on the small

"As much as I try, I can't suggest anything

to make the poem any easier, until he offers his own resolution:"

"to make the poem any easier" - Teacher wants to help

"resolution" - (structure) magnitude

"a memory of sitting on the seawall in Georgetown, facing the Atlantic, following darts of sunlight riding"

Lexical field of the sea - "the seawall"

Sunlight follows the pathway which he slaves took

"the backs of waves, wondering where each began,

how each follows the heels of another as they furl"

Lexical field of the sea - "of waves", "furl" - Fluidity of identity

"how each follows the heels of another" - Layers of identity

"towards wall or shore, how he can only understand as much of it as his eyes can drink in, how the rest for him is a mystery"

Lexical field of the sea - "wall or shore" - Fluidity of identity

"eye" - internal symbol

"drink in" - metaphor - Reforming his identity: Relishing ocean, Links to appetite, computational

comma - Acceptance

Full Stop - Single standalone line, we cannot be sure of the true horrors of the slave trade, can only reply on personal experiences through word of mouth