Introduction 

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The first text that will be analyzed is Rankine’s poem “Stop-and-Frisk,” contained in her 2014 multigeneric poetry book called Citizen: An American Lyric. Published by Graywolf Press, it has won numerous accolades and awards, as listed on the back of the book, including being a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. The second text that will be analyzed is Situation #6 video created by Rankine and her husband John Lucas. It is available for viewing on both Rankine’s website, Lucas’s website, and even YouTube. Rankine’s book prompts the audience to the existence of the video and the video itself features Rankine’s poem “Stop-and-Frisk.” Essentially, the difference between the two genres is that while we get to read Rankine’s poem in the book, we get to hear it in the video while watching the video’s content. While the poem is rhetorically effective in both the poetry book genre and the video poetry genre, experiencing both is an insightful experience. 

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Rhetorical Situation

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Rankine is an acclaimed African American writer and Professor of Poetry at Yale University. She is the author of six poetry books, including Just Us: An American Conversation, Citizen: An American Lyric, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, PLOT, The End of the Alphabet, and Nothing in Nature Is Private, as well as three plays including HELP, The White Card, and Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (Rankine 2018). Rankine’s 2014 poetry book Citizen: An American Lyric defies expectations of the traditional poetry book genre as the interpretable text spans more than just the linguistic mode of communication and provides various visuals alongside the text to bolster the meaning of the actual writing. Likewise, the spatial mode is used to a rhetorical/poetic advantage. The first part of the book, all written in second-person point of view, takes readers through situations in which the middle-aged Black woman speaker experiences microaggressions that are left unresolved. The second part of the book focuses on more injurious forms of racism. Rankine’s husband and filmmaker Lucas was heavily involved in the making of the book as well as the situation videos that the book invites us to watch throughout the text. Situation #6 video can be easily accessed on Rankine’s professional website, and the video was released in tandem with the book. Lucas’s credibility is harder to assess because unlike Rankine, he is not nearly as famous. 

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Rankine channels and validates the anger that Black Americans and Black people in America feel in the face of microaggressions as well as white supremacist violence and police brutality against them. Anger is an emotion that many Black Americans feel, and that anger is often pushed back upon as irrational as we have seen with those who vehemently oppose the Black Lives Matter movement. She purposefully uses second-person point of view which across the different situations/poems/essays in the book, heightens empathy in the reader. For her Black American audience, this is also important for sparking solidarity. Despite differences in where one lives, the type of job they have, their sexual orientation, level of education, they could even be Serena Williams, using “you” instead of “I” in all these different poems gels Black people in America to a sense of togetherness because of their shared experience. At the same time that this is intended for Black Americans, in one of Rankine’s essays preceding the writing of Citizen: An American Lyric, “The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning,” Rankine mentions that white liberal sympathies for Black oppression could only go so far, and usually, it is at the momentary feelings of sympathy or compassion. The secondary purpose of the “you” in her book, I propose, is to not only elongate our understanding of Black anger as white liberals, but with the repetition of different microaggressive situations, somewhere along the way find ourselves in the web of colorblind racism based on circulating and irrational fear, which ultimately leads up to the more deadly and injurious violence found in the second portion of the book. In short, Rankine’s lyric, regardless of who we are experiencing the text, compels us to worry about our own actions and emotions, rather than the actions and emotions of others. The purpose of the poem Stop-and-Frisk, which is one of the few that combines first and second person point of view in Rankine’s book, is to encapsulate the experience of being pulled over as a Black speaker for no apparent reason whatsoever. The secondary intention is to critique the way policing is done in this country. 

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The purpose of the video that the book invites us to find online on claudiarankine.com then is to heighten the purpose of the actual poem, though I think that between the poem, Rankine reading it, and what we see in the backdrop—just two young Black boys carefree, having fun, and shopping against blurry police lights—works so effectively in that it creates a strong emotional appeal and also a logical appeal for whatever audience you might be able to think of. Essentially, the video portrays “the crime” and it is beyond harmless and absolutely illogical as to why the stop-and-frisk occurs. Rankine implicitly answers the question on the audience’s mind with two words: white fear. While the poem itself expresses the injustice, the video serves as a complement to the poem to show the irrationality behind pulling someone over just for the color of their skin and the clothes they are wearing. Since these go together in tandem, but are actually published apart, Rankine chose to go with the visuals, as well as the video, knowing that linguistic text has been used as an oppressive force against certain communities, including Black Americans. The emphasis on linguistic text as the go-to mode of communication for rational thinking is exclusive and favors cold logic. Using multiple modalities allows Rankine to immerse her audience in feeling over cold logic while at the same time remaining rational. 

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Design Choices

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In the poem “Stop-and-Frisk,” the speaker describes the experience of being unjustly pulled over by the police. With the use of repetition and second-person point of view (emphasis, linguistic mode), Rankine effectively provides clues to the illogical way policing is often done in America. The poem begins: 

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I knew whatever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

 

Indeed, the use of “you” in the second stanza allows the audience to more readily identify with the situation at hand, begging the question: how would you feel not being the guy and still fitting the description because there is only one guy fitting the description? My assumption is that “you” would feel angered, confused, annoyed, pissed, sad, and a whole array of other emotions. The poem continues to describe the experience, often repeating the second stanza between the build-up of unjust occurrences in order to solidify the critique and the feelings evoked in the audience. Since the video uses the linguistic mode but through Rankine’s recitation of the poem itself in the backdrop, this aspect will be further explored in the aural mode section.

 

The actual book Citizen: An American Lyric defies our readerly expectations as the text in hand feels much more like a magazine. In fact, the last page in the book informs us: “Book design and composition by John Lucas. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 80# matte coated paper” (Rankine, 2014). The paper is therefore not made of the typical light and coarse material we get with most other books; simply looking at and touching (gestural mode) the pages where the poem “Stop-and-Frisk” begins, we can tell that this kind of paper is typically used for purposes other than the one here. In other words, it stands out just as much as Rankine’s experimental form in the book. We see and feel by touch the heaviness of the subject and emotions contained within. The font size (visual mode) also stands out; when we typically open up a new book, we expect to see words on the page that are as small as the text I am typing up right now. The font size in Rankine’s book is significantly larger, adding to that magazine-like effect I already mentioned with the choice of paper. Between the paper choice and the atypical font size, it is likely that the intent was to give the book additional importance, also marking a separation from the traditional and oppressive past of the patriarchy. 

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It should also be noted here that the poem itself is sandwiched between two pieces of artwork. The two pages before the poem begins feature the 1997 Blue Black Boy, which is a silver print with text on mat art piece by Carrie Mae Weems (Rankine, 2014, p. 165). 

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