Rhythm in Writing

In last week’s class, we spoke a lot about rhythm, language as performance and language as colonial. I started to think about colonizing and institutional texts that I have encountered, which I am sure a lot of the class has encountered too. Some of the texts are more evident like constitutions, books of laws, encyclopaedias, whereas others are more pragmatic, like signs that tell you what to do before you jump into a pool. When I think of these texts, there is always an absence of emotion, a coldness to them. There is no place for interpretation, question, it is an absolute statement. There is no life to the text, and so we as citizens must simply accept the law. However, in class we spoke about rhythm and how “rhythm is taking a word where one does not go” and challenging such bleak writing. I am now starting to think of forms of writing that have rhythm of some sort – poems, novels, short stories, picture books. Such pieces of writings do not ask us to subdue to the writing word but instead asks us to react, emote, question, and find the truths located in the work. In my notebook I wrote down, “time = rhythm = duration”. I think that rhythm in writing has the capacity to overcome the divide between reader, text, writer and instead allows for a space to internalize the piece so one can live and grow with it – which reminds me of a sort of call and response. I would say there are about 5 specific poems that have stayed with me throughout my life thus far. These pieces are not authoritarian, as meanings for me have changed as I have gotten older. Despite my new interpretations they always bring comfort into my life, I believe because of their rhythm.