This is a reading response to "Returning Madame Bovary." I really like this poem due to the truth and explicit nature of it. Katie Chaple read this poem when she came to the University of West Georgia and she read this with such a calm and neutral tone, that you were able to just listen and understand what she was trying to say. I love how her poems have to do with women and either the power that they have, or the ways that they are portrayed to be powerless.
In this poem, Chaple utilizes the triggering and end subject ideas that Hugo has by starting with a scene at a store returning a book but changing to the idea that people have the unconscious desire to be wanted. And women hold the power to control men through their desire. This transition is so smooth because of the image in the first stanza. That image sets up the power that women have over men, but the second stanza confirms the unconscious desire both men and women have, through the image of the prisoner reaching past his bars and visitors to the attractive guard, something that he can't have.
That easy transition between the triggering and end subject is something that I want to perfect in my work.
I agree with you; Chaple does this very well in all her writing. She seems to effortlessly graze from subject to subject - bouncing, not jolting, from topic to topic without abandoning the common thread that ties these ideas together. If I could be half as successful as Chaple in this technique I would be very happy!
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