Contemporary Poetry

conclusion 225

Rankine moves the personalised lyric into a realm of bizarre and
micro-narratives that fi ll newsprint and media networks. The
impact of solitude is made evident in the book, but co-exists with
a disturbing need to verify the sentiment through data and infor-
mation. Walking alone to her apartment one night, the speaker
meditates:

After we part and I am climbing the stairs to my apartment,

I think surely some percentage of women hasn’t been raped.

I don’t know though really. Perhaps this is the kind of thing

I could fi nd out on Google. Then I think, maybe, that ‘what

woman hasn’t been raped’ could be another way of saying

‘this is the most miserable day of my life’. (p. 72 )

Moreover, the book dramatises how religion and science fi ction
merge into a futuristic fi eld of data and information. Responding to
the evangelist with her pamphlet ‘BE LIKE JESUS’, she is drawn
to refl ect upon the character of Neo from The Matrix Reloaded: ‘I
say aloud to Neo, be like Jesus’ (p. 121 ). Rankine adds:

Neo can’t save anyone; Morpheus will have to have another

dream: the one in which salvation narratives are passé; the

one in which people live no matter what you dream; the one

in which people die no matter what you dream; or no matter

what, you dream. (p. 121 )

Performing ‘in between’ different texts in this way enables Rankine
to probe how autobiography and subjectivity are formed and
created. These tissues of intersecting and often-found narratives
recuperate a life story from an overwhelming volume of competing
data.

DISSEMINATING POETRY

My conclusion has attempted to show how poetry is responsive to
technological advancement, as well as the pressures that may be
placed upon poetic language in some future poetries. It remains to