This comes from "THERE WAS EARTH INSIDE THEM, and they dug"--Paul Celan. I'm particularly interested in the repetition of the certain words and phrases.
There was silicone inside her, and she cried.
She cried and she cried, and my day went by
and I cursed my father, and some god,
who, so I heard, watched all this happen,
who, so I heard, did not impede.
She cried and did nothing else;
she did not eat, cooked nothing from scratch,
let my sister and me live off the courtesy of neighbors.
She cried.
Then, suddenly, a quiet undercurrent of nothing,
and there came a dry heave of winds, and nothing fell.
I cried, you cried, and all the birds cried too.
A one, a none, a no one, a you:
Where did you go when no one could go?
Did you cry when she cried?
yet on your shoulder no one cries.
Taylor:
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this piece. I like the tension that I get through the repetition and the short choppy sentences. I think the primitiveness of the piece draws a lot of attention to the subject matter and the tenseness that is present throughout the entire piece. I think you did a really good job of embodying a lot of what the original piece was trying to do while still maintaining your own voice, which is impressive given the fact that we generally tend to borrow the voice of other writers as we try to pull inspiration from their work. I want a little more detail pertaining to the mom, not saying that I don’t know enough about her, but I feel as though she is an essential element to the piece as a whole, besides the narrator, and should she be included just a little more. However, I think that is a trivial detail that maybe I just want more of. I also think the father could deserve a little more detail. Not necessarily to be present in the poem, because it is clear that he is no longer there, but maybe more of their feelings toward him, or what drove him away.