But there seems to be a need to control this overwhelm: the poem is in couplets which contain thoughts into digestible moments. Despite the formal restraint these images/feelings still push into each other through enjambment: "Because the blade held by the hand is still a blade / even when used for crushing and not cutting". This pressing together shows that the speaker is trying to hold two conflicting ideas at once and give them the ability to exist simultaneously. She holds together the desire to push away grief and the desire to remember.
In this poem she's taking the curative position that through naming, through remembering, one begins to heal. The grief "unnamed but questioned" is praised alongside the ailanthus moth "spinning its coarse silk because it cannot stop and it must". This last image is compelling in that it relates to the speaker's own act of writing and narrating as remembering, an act as natural as breathing or spinning silk if you're a moth. The poem can open to a more general social critique: that one must be open to the pain and grief of others, to keep our complicity in the system in check--because the blade that we use to crush can still cut.
In this poem she's taking the curative position that through naming, through remembering, one begins to heal. The grief "unnamed but questioned" is praised alongside the ailanthus moth "spinning its coarse silk because it cannot stop and it must". This last image is compelling in that it relates to the speaker's own act of writing and narrating as remembering, an act as natural as breathing or spinning silk if you're a moth. The poem can open to a more general social critique: that one must be open to the pain and grief of others, to keep our complicity in the system in check--because the blade that we use to crush can still cut.
The line "spinning its coarse silk because it cannot stop and it must" really stuck out to me too. The first time I read it, I interpreted it as "it must [stop]," as though there is a tension between talking about struggle and healing from that struggle. Now that I reread it (and thanks to your analysis, Avren), I realize that you can also see it as the deep inherent need to tell one's story ("it must [spin its coarse silk]"). I love how that one line can elicit so much and can be interpreted in both ways.
ReplyDeleteThere it is Avren!
ReplyDelete"But there seems to be a need to control this overwhelm: the poem is in couplets which contain thoughts into digestible moments. Despite the formal restraint these images/feelings still push into each other through enjambment: "Because the blade held by the hand is still a blade / even when used for crushing and not cutting". This pressing together shows that the speaker is trying to hold two conflicting ideas at once and give them the ability to exist simultaneously. She holds together the desire to push away grief and the desire to remember." The interrogation of the poem on more than a content level, but content and form and use. I appreciate this so much.
e