The poem that jumped out at me the most was On My Mind. I found it very interesting that the author thought that this woman, who we would consider "white trash", was so incredibly lovely. He speaks of her gold tooth and extensive cigarette smoking as if they were charming qualities. He even says that he loved her, but he knew that he shouldn't because she was the type of woman who would think nothing of him. I love the metaphor he uses to say this: "for she could brush me away like a curl of smoke."
I loved the structure and punctuation of the poem. My favorite author, Ellen Hopkins, structures her poems very similarly. I am currently reading her book Perfect and the flow of the poems from that book was fresh in my mind when I read Toqueville, so On My Mind stood out to me. Her poems are also only a page or two long, so i opted for the shorter poem.
The poem takes place in a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Keeping that in mind when i re-read the poem, I realized that he must be in an area where many rednecks live. He talks about how she wants to keep a man around and keep her son in school and keep her daughter from becoming a teen mom, which means that they probably live in a lower income area. Pregnancy rates are higher among impoverished teens, as are drop out rates. It's difficult for a single mother to raise two teenage children on her own on a factory worker's salary, so that must be why she wants to keep a man around.
No comments:
Post a Comment