Date And Time

 Emma Straus  

21st Century Literature and Time  

Date and Time 

November 2022 


 

Date and Time allows the reader to access a special kind of ‘time travel’. Phil Kaye reminisces on his life through poetry. Similarly to Brown Girl Dreaming, the notion of unlocking memories in the form of poems and literature allows Kaye to present his memories in a non-linear way.  

Kaye has nuances that he includes throughout his writing. He repeats a borrowed quote: “Every great story has a beginning, middle and end – not necessarily in that order,” and throughout the memoir, the quote shows itself in terms of structure and form. It is interesting the way in which Kaye organizes the book. The chapters are seemingly ‘out of order’, but for the purposes for our class, this technique only speaks to time’s fluidity. Kaye presents his work in this format which allows readers to get a sense of memories and their nature. The nature of memories is not a contained idea, rather many that transcend one another. Much like our exercise in class, many of us saw that one memory led to another and another, meshing many memories into one.  

Life is like this as well. Within each of us, there are pieces of memories that we carry with us. Certain memories become a part of us whether positive or negative. And they can be from any time on our own “timeline”, we carry memories from when we were six to sixteen and to our present. Kaye harnesses this motion of memories through the way he organizes Date and Time. He achieves this through the poems that seamlessly connect, and through some that seem to have no relevance. It is a paradox, the way life behaves like a paradox- being both messy and clear simultaneously, being hectic and calm, and somehow making up the lives we live.  

 

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