Reading Response Entry 1 (Week 3)

I really liked the piece "My Father's Love Letters." What I liked most was Komunyakaa's ability to break the lines in ways that had a subliminal message to them. Especially the line "He would beg/Promising to never beat her/ Again." The way in which he broke the lines made a message all on their own. I want to do that as a writer- I want to create little messages in the piece that are not just with the words and the what they say. This also comes with the words that Komunyakaa picks: "We sat in the quiet brutality/Of voltage meters & pipe threaders." What? Those are not the typical things that you would think of using, but in class we talked about how they fit better because they are foreign to the speaker (and the reader), much like this relationship between the speaker and the father. This is also the case with "The gleam of a five-pound wedge/On the concrete floor/Pulled a sunset/Through the doorway of his toolshed." This alludes to the fact that the speaker is wedged between his father and his mother writing these love letters, trying to pull light back into the darkened relationship. I love these allusions and subliminal messages. This is the kind of writing I want to produce.