‘Early American Cinema [Pt. Two]’
— jayy dodd
this melting pot is dummyhigh and without a stirrer
bottom burned.
Poetry has long been active & relentless in its political dissent, considering the current climate, I am heartened by the quality & quantity of poets putting their voices on the line. Though this poem is from earlier in 2016, Kamden Hilliard’s ‘Early American Cinema’ deconstructs, over several parts, the construction of cultural erasure & ahistorical consumption. More than a meditation, Hilliard’s interrogation of D.W. Griffith’s Ku Klux Klan propaganda film Birth of a Nation as part of present iconography guts away critical etiquette. Each section serves a unique function with definitive voices & stakes bubbling from the text. On the skin of Hilliard’s work is an unconcerned commitment to realness. There are no footnotes or answers, only the same questions the speaker’s voice positions to you. The awareness of the reader, however, does not makes the poem’s subject shy, but antagonistic. This teasing of sensibility is why I return to Hilliard’s writing, their language can bully the un-expecting or passive reader.