Blog Five

Of Politics and Art

This poem is written from the point of view from the child in the classroom during the storm. This point of view gives us a lot of details about what went on in the classroom during the storm, but we don't get any idea of what the teacher, other children, or outsiders are thinking. This is very representative of a child's point of view because they are usually self focused rather then analyzing the thoughts and feelings of those around them. We also still don't know if they ever got rescued from the storm, if so how? This also reminds me of a child telling a story because they often get sidetracked or leave out large portions that most people would want to know to feel like they are getting the entire story. We also get the idea that the speaker thinks very highly of the teacher, she even says "sometimes a whole civilization can be dying peaceful in one young women". This again gives us the sense of that classroom and teacher being the child's center of life, as school is for a lot of young kids, but it also tells you just how deeply this child probably is to their teacher. The poem would be written very different if it had come from a child's point of view who did not appreciate their teacher in the same way, it may have focused more on the storm or wanting to get out of the small schoolhouse. I would not call this a elegy because even though it is speaking about someone that died, I don't get a sense of lament but rather of celebrating how wonderful this women was. I would consider this to be a narrative poem because the majority of the poem is spent reflecting and telling the story of the day that they got stuck in the storm at the schoolhouse, but then there is also this moment of reflection where it jumps to a memory where the speaker heard two other women talking about Melville, who their teacher was reading from when the storm happened. This jump in time sort of interrupts the narrative flow of the poem. Almost the entire poem is written in enjambment. The place that it stood out to me the most was in the fourth stanza where there is conversation among two women. Dialogue has a particular form you follow when you are writing a conversation between two people. He writing of the conversation however stands out particularly in the "Because there are No women in his one novel". If she had started the line with "Because" then you would have lost some of the impact "No women in his novel" made. Because the writer had that line standing alone however that is where my focus went when reading that particular quote from the conversation.

Blog Four

Pat Mora was born in 1942 and was raised in El Paso, Texas where she also obtained her undergraduate and her masters degree in art.  She is married and has three adult children. Her poems reflect bother her mexican culture, southwestern background, and religious beliefs. She especially enjoys writing stories for young readers while her poems are focused more for adults. Much of her work I have come across has had the theme of religion, specifically Catholicism. In the Catholic Church often uses saints to pray to and relate to. Pat Mora wrote an entire book of poems that are meant to be prayers to the saints. Being Catholic myself and having grown up in a large hispanic community I could really relate and identify with her style and subject. The poem I chose is one she wrote as a prayer to the saint Mary Magdalen.

Saint Mary Magdalen/Saint María Magdalena

"Her sins, which are many, are forgiven,"
Christ said, looking down at the dark rivers
of your hair, your head bowed, repentant.

For years, I thought of you as the great Sinner
with a capital S, a woman of the flesh
who made my tías frown, a paramour.

I stared at your image, at Christ's bare feet       enmeshed
in the swirls of your hair. You kneel, bow low,
bathe His feet with your tears, such sorrowfulness.

You rub the tangle of your hair although
polite society frowns that you dare dry
His feet with yourself, a beautiful tableau.

Opening your alabaster box, you apply
perfumes, sweet essences. You defy
sour mutters, kiss His feet, the righteous horrify.

Soft, your hands stroke Christ openly, not shy.
You are not tangled in the myth that flesh is evil
until men write your story. They simplify.

They say you flee to the desert, with a skull
and Cross, a wanton woman alone
in a cave, her banishment self-willed.

For years, I too thought you should atone
for smoldering, but who are we to judge you,
prim critics in our pompous monotone?