sam hART

The way Gabaldon writes kinda irks me... everything within the first 5 chapters seems very predictable which makes me question her strength as a writer. For example, in just the first chapter Gabaldon introduces the main character Claire and her husband Frank Randall; Gabaldon writes that Frank is deeply interested in history and his genealogy, he specifically focuses on his great ancestor that used to live in Scotland, Jonathan Randall. When Claire goes back in time she comes in contact with Jonathan on multiple occasions and she uses other knowledge of the land that she had gained recently from Frank. Also, before Claire’s untimely travel to the past she had a strong interest in botany. She had studied the different medicinal uses of all sorts of herbs and plants around her, and when she traveled in the past she still had her nursing abilities but lacked the supply of more modernistic medicine. This is where I think Gabaldon made it too easy for Claire to adapt because she was given the history of the land and how to survive off it, where as it might’ve been more interesting watching Claire struggle at least a fraction of the amount that any one else would’ve.

At first when looking for a book for the final project, my main criteria was it had to be a novel, and it had to be old enough to have criticism on it. As I continued looking for a book, it became more and more prevalent that I needed a book that I liked if I was going to be analyzing it this much. I finally stumbled upon the idea of Outlander! I have watched all of the TV series and come to love it for its rich history and tale of adventure, so I figured that it would be a perfect fit for my final project. After a bit of research, and with the knowledge that the book was written in early 1991, I was able to conclude that there was enough criticism on the book so I could complete this project.

This poem is a continuation of another one of Dema’s poems, “Red”, where she talks about periods and becoming a woman. In “Red”, she uses repetition and descriptive words to represent her pain and discomfort from this new bodily function, saying “Your own body betrays you”. She returns to that idea in “Not No Body”, by continuing the phrase saying “and I felt betrayed”. Dema uses very descriptive words in this passage, exaggerating a little from the truth, but still keeping to the main point that this was horrible. She uses the simile, “like waking up after the war has ended / all carnage and no story”. Though her period might not be as bad as a war she is still horrified, she woke up in a pool of blood no clue where it came from, only people telling her to hide it and be happy, realizing that she has lost control of her body. 

I feel like the picture is pretty self explanatory but I feel that the red/blood in the picture interrupts the white/the sheets just how Dema describes this bodily function.

This poem is set from the view point of a mother, she’s explaining the excruciating pains of child labor and how she couldn’t enjoy time with her child because she was in constant pain. But towards the end of the poem she has a big tone shift, saying “After tonight’s grand performance, / you are mistaken / to think I could not take back / the life that I have given”. She changes from this descriptive and painful voice, to sounding murderous and vengeful as if her child has betrayed her.

Dema also uses a metaphor referring back to the title of the book, “To hold you I unfolded every seam, / let them snip and unspool me”. The title of the book is “The Careless Seamstress”, she uses words like snip, unspool, and seam, which all correlate with sewing and being a seamstress

I was unable to find a photo or song that I thought perfectly replicated this poem, but the image in my mind is this woman/mother made of string that is slowly disappearing creating another person or her child.

I feel like Beck spoiled the joy of reading this poem before I actually got to read the poem, by inserting the context of the poem. Personally, I feel that she should have put the context at the end of the poem, possibly as a dedication; by doing this she could have strengthened her metaphors with the mystery of the subject. But while on the topic of it, her context paragraph basically tells the story of the poem from an outsiders view, “For Hassan Rabeh, young dancer displaced from Syria, who killed himself by jumping from a seventh-floor balcony in Beirut, Wednesday, June 22, 2016″.

Ok moving on to the actual poem now, I first want to focus on the format of the poem. Beck’s use of ampersands was her selective choice on how to start each line. I feel that because ampersands are used for the continuation of something, that this has a bit of irony to it because the poem is about the end of something. But Beck doesn’t only choose to use them at the beginning of each line, she also chooses to use ampersands throughout some lines. I wonder what significance ampersands have to Beck for her to use them so often?

Religion was another major factor to this poem, “&were you searching for your Palestine in Damascus, for your Damascus in Beirut,/&were you looking for Allah in the joint, the spine, the twirl?”. Beck was using a questioning voice when writing these lines, as if she was talking to her friend, Hassan Rabeh. She uses the Palestine and Allah to indirectly ask if he found his happy place in death, and if he was looking for peace in his plunge.

One thing I find ironic is the title... It’s titled “Body” but she references equally, if not more, to his person and soul, rather than his body. So why would she title it Body?

This poem made me think of the song Jumper by Third Eye Blind, because both talk about (at least the chorus of the song) someone desiring or committing suicide by jumping of a ledge of sorts, and a friend wishing they could do something.

https://open.spotify.com/track/3354J49VpkbZJho7Ztdzpw?si=gryBrL1DQL2xTIE5Hgzy-A

Poem: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2016/november/three-poems-zeina-hashem-beck

This poem required me to read through it a few times to get the full understanding of what Dema was trying to say. So to summarize, this poem is about Dema, or the speaker in the poem, having an inner battle on deciding where their voice fits in. She thinks that her words will have a lot of meaning, but to a man they mean nothing because he just claims that he doesn’t understand her. So she buries her thoughts and words (her tongue), so that no one can come and take what she values from her.

A quote that really stood out to me was: 

“Who amongst us knows whether our mothers truly favor silence

or whether the price of asking a man where he has been

is far greater than the shame of knowing?”

This quote helped put Dema’s ideas into perspective, by comparing the original statements of keeping quiet to a marriage. Dema also chose to use the word “shame” in this quote which is very interesting because shame is caused by wrong or foolish behavior; this implies that by her asking the question, she put herself in the position of humiliation.

Another really interesting part of this poem is how Dema started it. She opened with a statement in Southern Sotho that was italicized “Monna ga a botswe kwa a tswang teng”, which directly translates to “the man is not questioned where he came from”. I feel that this quote directly correlates with my previous quote, in the sense that no one ever shames the man in those types of situations but for a woman to question a mans behavior is shameful. The only question I would have with this piece is why Dema chose to write it in Southern Sotho, did it add more significance to the piece?  

A common metaphor Dema used in this poem was the comparison of her tongue to her voice. She did this to show that losing her voice would be as painful as losing a body part or part of yourself.

This poem made me think of the saying “the cats got your tongue” because of the idea that men can control what you say, and how a tongue is what helps you speak.

This poem is an elegy that tells the story of 3 daughters who didn’t show much care for their mother until she had passed. Dema uses her words to indirectly show time change. For example in this line she states “There she is bent over the candlelight, prom dress draped over her knee” and later she says “batting on time, to pad three layers each for her daughters’ wedding quilts”. In the first quote she mentions her mother making prom dresses, which are typically related to high school and younger girls. Then later in the second quote she creates an image of her mother making her and her sisters wedding dresses, these two lines help create the contrast in time throughout the story/poem. Another thing that Dema did that really caught my eye was referencing things she’s said in the past. She says, “We are sorry we never said sorry” and later in the story the mother says “say sorry to your sister. It’s what you say to someone you love.” So she used the concept of the daughters all saying sorry to their mother to convey the emotion of love.

The title used here is great because it starts off by stating exactly what the poem is, an elegy; which is a poem of reflection on those who are dead. The title also says “the half done quilt”, which is a great representation of the mothers life, if she had finished one sewing project there was always another one only half done.

There were some parts of this poem that were difficult for me to understand, one being that I didn’t know what an elegy was. For that issue I just had to google it but others I had to use the TPCASTT method to come to a full understanding of what was going on.

This poem had reminded me of the song “Supermarket Flowers” by Ed Sheeran because both are about remembering a dead mother and relying on other family members to help get you through the emotions.

https://youtu.be/bIB8EWqCPrQ - Supermarket Flowers

Before I had landed on TJ as my mentor poet, I had considered using Neil Hilborn because I loved the way he performed each of his poems with such emotion. Though I did love Neil, I was already familiar with his poems, which is one factor that pushed me towards TJ. But it wasn’t because I was unfamiliar with TJ that I chose her, it was more because she was able to present her poems, like Neil, but in such a different way. For Neil, it was almost like he was acting, but with TJ she used her surroundings to tell a story and move the listener/reader. The first poem of TJ’s that I saw was “Dreams”

Dreams                                                                                                        Dreams are evil I prefer nightmares They show you what goes on in here Reflects what goes on out there

That stanza, right off the bat, caught my attention. She took dreams, something most of us see as positive, and called them evil compared them to nightmares. By bringing such an interesting topic to the table, Dema had automatically drawn me in. But the poem that made me fully commit to her as my mentor poet was “Neon Poem”.

https://youtu.be/ACSWgZcV4DQ