¶ … Etheridge Knight's "Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine"
As much as I love lyric poetry, I also love how Etheridge Knight's "Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine" has an epic scope. He brings to light a hidden aspect of our common American history by focusing on the sinking of the Titanic. Instead of going down with the ship, his hero Shine swims to safety. Symbolically, wealthy passengers who would look down on this black man now desperately offer him "million dollar checks." Now that their life is at risk, what they used to value so much is actually worthless in the harsh, natural environment of the sea. This highlights a frequently-discussed aspect of the Titanic sinking, namely the difference between the experience of the lower-class steerage passengers and the wealthy elites, only Knight's poem (unlike the James Cameron epic) brings to light the racial dynamics of this divide.
I love in the excerpt you quote Knight deploys deliberately anachronistic language to communicate what Shine is thinking "jump in muthafucka and swim like me" which is juxtaposed with more poetic uses of language like the repetition and alliteration of "Shine swam on -- Shine swam on." This draws a connection between the fascination with the Titanic we have today, and the modern crises of class and race which still plague us. Despite our beliefs we have come so far, in many ways we have not as a society. We are still just as divided as we were in the days of steerage vs. high-class passengers and just as racially divided as well. Characters like Shine, however, are able to show strength even in the face of insurmountable oppression, and because of that strength, the threat of natural disasters like crashing against an iceberg seem like nothing. Only through poetry can we draw some complex, powerful connections, undistracted by plot and character development.
