AmeRícan (Week 10)

The “AmeRícan” poem makes several artistic decisions that I, as an ignorant buffoon, am largely unable to decipher the intended purpose of most of them. I do not know what purpose it serves to refrain from capitalizing certain words that should be capitalized. I don’t know why the first words of most sentences aren’t capitalized, or the races and ethnicities besides the titular AmeRícan race remain uncapitalized. “AmeRícan salutes all folklores, european, indian, black, spanish, and anything else compatible.” Actually, now that I think about it, AmeRícan and God are the only words I can find in this poem that are capitalized at all. Why “God” is one of the exceptions I cannot tell, but I suppose that AmeRícan being capitalized (and having two capitalized letters in it) makes a lot of sense for emphasizing it, among other things. The combination of American and Puerto Rican, the focus on the accent over the í in AmeRícan, and the choice to capitalize the R in it all contribute to helping define the identity of AmeRícan (and remind me of the mestiza consciousness). “defining myself my own way any way many ways Am e Rícan, with the big R and the accent on the í!” Speaking of this particular stanza, the wordplay makes for a tongue-twister that throws me off, and honestly that fact somewhat distracts me from the content. Thankfully, the other line I circled, “and i dream to take the accent from the altercation,” helps me to remember the point it makes. The only poetic device I can really comprehend and know the purpose of is the repetition of the word AmeRícan at the beginning of most of the stanzas. The repetition of that helps the reader to memorize the word and keep their focus on it as the subject of the poem.