Working in the region of reader response number 2

I was most drawn to Fred Arroyo’s Working in a Region of Lost Names. I believe it is because the point of entry seems illusive.

I had a few personal entry points such as in the beginning when he is observing his father looking out from the pier in the second paragraph on page 42. This was an entry point for me because I often just stare into space, lost in my head, so I can relate to the picture he paints of his father. I found it interesting that the author asks, “What was he searching for?”(42). I immediately asked why he had to be searching for anything. But, more than that, I find this part of the story interesting because the rest of the story takes place in this wandering mind space of the authors. This, in my opinion, emulates his father’s state in the beginning part of the story. The author names his story as a “looking back”(54) at the end of the story – he was occupying the region of lost names in his mind. I think it could be said that his father also was looking back, rather than searching for anything, and maybe this is the author acknowledging that. Another personal entry point for me was in the third section of the story, which starts on page 49. Partly because this is the first time I see a reference to the title, and partly because I can relate to grasping at memory for specifics such as names, and instead being left with details of surroundings, and individual pictures of times past.

I can’t, however, decide if the author had an intended point of entry for the reader. I get the feeling that his intention isn’t the traditional telling of a story. Instead he is just trying to wade through his thoughts, and he happened to offer them out to the world. I do believe there are a couple pivotal moments in the story, such as when he says,  “I have to work to continue the bloodline” (52) or “I have to try bring them – the words, too – back home” (53).  Though, I don’t think it they’re really point of entry, but just main points in his thoughts.

The Thinking Men Nikky Finney

I found myself reading The Thinking Men over and over, each time finding something new. The first time I read it I guessed that Finney intended this to be a response to the epigraph at the beginning of the poem. The epigraph says “Tradition has it that the workmen were negro slaves; but whether that applies to only the common laborers or to skilled workmen I cannot say.”(163).  The poem gives the impression that there were indeed skilled workmen that were slaves when he says things such as “We slid and nagged adze & auger, laid roof and wall from east to west”(164), and “Math, mind, and muscle plied deep into each and every dark seam.”(165).

The second time I read it I noticed the theme of intellect being more than what could be taught, more than what is found in books at a school. Despite it being against the law to teach slaves, the author says, “our math, mind, and muscle could see beyond what they thought they had enslaved” (163). Knowledge is about experience and living. I see this again when he says “We were thinking men. Our hands we living blackboards.” (164). What is a blackboard used for? To convey information - the building blocks of knowledge. They are thinking men, who learn from doing, from using their hands.

The third time I read it I zeroed in one the three sentences he had stand on their own in the poem: “We knew more than we could say” (163) “We were thinking men. Our hands we living blackboards.” (164)  “All this can leave a clear mark upon the world”(166). I found it interesting that the authors choose these sentences to stand out, because they each punctuate a point the author is trying to make.