Douglas Kearney Writing

When I first started to read Douglas Kearney's writing I immediately believed it was some form of racisim. There is one full page of just the word "Negro" with little sayings about each letter in the word. The very first suppose ably short story is called Radio, and it talks a lot about blacks and the radio. This one actually really confused me. The second stanza says, "the first black to speak the word radio knew it meant the same as blood." These lines made me think of how competitive the music industry is. Kind of like the saying, "you either sink or swim." The music industry is very competitive which could be why Douglas compares being on the radio to blood. You have to be tough and ready to work in order to music industry.

A couple pages down from the first line I picked out is another line in the story The Voltron Communiques, "monsters are coming to tear you into yourself. black lion, take that key out your chest, the screaming wind on your  back bumrushes you off your pedestal. see how it lifts your foes, too." The first part of this passage about the black lion, reminded me about the Wizard Of Oz and how the lion is going to the great Oz because he doesn't have any courage. So this part talking about take that key out your chest, meaning to me that you need to have courage even if you're ready to become a coward and chicken out. The second part of the passage talking about your foes. Everybody wants to be your friend when you're high on top and have everything going right, but when you're "knocked off your pedestal" then you find out who your true friends are, and if some of your foes are the ones who knocked you down than they may begin to rise and capture the spotlight.

Overall, I'm not sure if this is meant to be short stories. They all look like poems, more than stories. There doesn't look like there is much structure to any of the sections. Even though there appears to be plenty of punctuation throughout the whole thing, but there are rarely any capital letters, which would mean the start of the new sentence. I didn't find any flow in the story and often found myself reading it like I would a poem, not by punctuation but by the line breaks. I believe his writing has a lot of meaning but in my mind they are not short stories, but in fact poetry that may be trying to impersonate short stories.