What the Body Can Say

The fifth poem in the collection, this is the first one to interest me, but like the other four, it feels dashed off, undedited; and I keep asking myself why these poems should deserve my time if they weren't good enough for the author's. The crux of this poem is how well the body can communicate, particularly that of the narrator's mother:

that day not long before her death--her face tilted up

at me, her mouth falling open, wordless, just as
we open our mouths in church to take in the wafer,

meaning communion? What matters is context--

and the poem doesn't give us any context for the mother's body language.

By this point I'm only reading the book because I made a commitment for the month. Other than linebreaks, and perhaps the poet's politics or heritage, this is neither poetry nor good writing. And this book won a Pulitzer--what has our culture fallen to?

Graveyard Blues

This poem rhymes.

If you're expecting more than that, then you're welcome to join me in disappointment alley. The rhyme scheme is AAa, with two of the four tercets ending in slant rhyme. Not only are the repeated rhyme words used in identical ways, but their entire lines are redundant:

It rained the whole time we were laying her down;
Rained from church to grave when we put her down.
The suck of mud at our feet was a hollow sound.

To top it off, the slant rhyme is a stronger, more demanding sound, i.e. less hollow. And the content is handled just as poorly as the form. For example, one can "put down" an animal, and the phrasing of L2 carries that connotation, though unsuccessfully. A simple rearrangement could fix that though:

It rained the whole time when we put her down;
Rained from church to grave when we were laying her down.

I have to wonder, did the poet misuse her words or not even realize the effect they would have?

The Southern Crescent

Several things stand out in the second stanza, so I'll quote it in full:

Ahead of her, days of travel, one town
after the next, and California--a word
she can't stop repeating. Over and over
she will practice meeting her father, imagine
how he must look, how different now
from the one photo she has of him. She will
look at it once more, pulling into the station
at Los Angeles, and then again and again
on the platform, no one like him in sight.

I like the break after "a word", because of the way it layers the meaning. The sentence conveys the character's excitement and anticipation, but the line break lets us know that her expectations will be disappointed.

However, the next sentence crumples under its own redundancy and vagueness. Consider an alternative:

. . . . Over and over
she will imagine meeting her father:
how different he looks from the photo,
or how similar; rushing to him
to be held, or waiting shyly for him
to notice her.

In the original, "imagine how he must look" only repeats information from the other clauses in the sentence. Plus, we aren't given any of her actual fantasies, which could provide a lot of characterization and emotional setting.

And lastly, having the character look at the photo again and again on the platform successfully shows her being stood up. Announcing it again right afterward shows that the author either doesn't trust herself or the reader, and both failures are just different ways of answering why this poem wastes its readers' time

Theories of Time and Space

The book arranges all but the first piece into three numbered sections. Presumably this poem will act as a lens for the later works, so I may refer back to it throughout the month.

Starting with mostly equal line lengths, then grouping itself into ten couplets, this piece definitely looks like a poem. A quick comparison shows the importance of that choice, "Try this: head south on Mississippi 49, one-by-one mile markers ticking off another minute of your life. Follow this to its natural conclusion--dead end at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches in a sky threatening rain." Does this strike you as poetry? It is, so let's try a little experiment. Interpret the above quote.

To me, the reader is being told to imagine himself on a long drive that stops not when he chooses, but when the road ends, i.e. at death. The ocean represents that end, but as a storm rather than a peaceful rest.

Now consider the quote with line and stanza breaks:

. . . . Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49 one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion--dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. . . .

How do the linebreaks and stanzas change or enhance your interpretation? For me, it doesn't. In particular, my ear and mind want to compare the breaks at "Try this:" and "Follow this", but the effort seems wasted. If I treat the repetition as a reinforcement of "this", then the result feels like finger jabbing rather than legitimate underscoring to reveal the significance of the referent. On the other hand, contrasting "try" and "follow" adds nothing to the meaning and seems like an unintended and unnoticed accident of the poet's choices.

"Native Guard" by Natasha Trethewey

Like most bookworms, I buy 'em faster than I read 'em, so I just brushed off some dust and stuffed a dog-eared receipt in for the bookmark. "Dinner's ready" though, but I'll try to comment on the first poem later tonight.

• "Theories of Time and Space"


• "The Southern Crescent"


• "Graveyard Blues"


• "What the Body Can Say"