One poem I found meaningful started with the line "death is a good argument"
I think this poem is rather beautiful in a strange way. It's ironic because our society views death in a negative way. Instead Brandt says it's
better than fathers,
better than God.
lighting us together into the night.
better than the entire library of Western thought,
better than promises, flowers, panting, gold.
i long again for the old pain,
Pain is good because it creates balance in our lives. When our body hurts, we are inevitably forced to acknowledge this pain, and try to fix it. Eventually, we feel better again, so in awareness of this cycle, we can find joy in our pain.
I thought this fit well after the poem that preceded it, starting with the line "poem for a guy who's thought about feminism"
The last lines of this poem state
there's holocaust
between us,
& I'm tired of dying.
This poem to me uses feminism as a metaphor for the struggle between all human beings to gain power or control. She says
the poem is bigger
than i am. the poem
is hungry, & insists
on its own truth.
This to me symbolizes the idea described in a book like Lord of the Flies where a group of civilized kids are stranded on a island, and eventually for a primal society killing an outcast of the group. The idea that deep down, no matter how hard we try, humans can not move past selfish survival instinct. As Di says because we're too tired of death. Too tired of pain.
It's comforting to me that this poem is followed by "death is a good argument", because it implies that Di has to some extent made peace with this issue.
I think you picked interesting poems to look at, and I also like your analysis. I've never thought about pain being a particularly good thing before, but like you said, it does make us aware that something is wrong so we can fix it. I agree with you that death is generally viewed negatively, even in Mennonite contexts sometimes. Oddly enough, this poem reminded me of a quote from Harry Potter about death: "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." I don't think Brandt is saying death is an adventure exactly, but it's refreshing to read about the subject of death from a positive perspective.
ReplyDeleteJacob, I thought this was a great analysis of the poems, but I also disagree with you one on aspect. You state that "poem for a guy who's" uses feminism as a metaphor for "the struggle between all human beings to gain power or control." While I think that's true, I think feminism is not the metaphor so much as the catalyst for this poem, as well as how Brandt names and identifies this power imbalance. I also think this could be broadened to represent many other power imbalances, I think she is ultimately talking about the power men have that women don't have and also speaking about and directly to a specific group of omen. So I agree with you for the most part, but I think it's important not to downplay the specificity of this poem.
ReplyDeleteYour right. Maybe example is a better word then metaphor. Certainly, the horrors of a patriarchal society are very real, as Di shows in other poems. I don't mean to down play the importance of feminism.
DeleteI love the idea of needing pain. I mean look at lepers. They can't feel pain on their skin or outer body at all, and that doesn't end up being a positive thing. They get cut and don't know it and bleed out for a long time. Pain is the body's way of telling us something needs to change. That the situation requires our action. This applied to life in a greater way points toward death being something great. It reminds us we must act. It reminds us that our lives matter, that we must take action. Because if we don't we'll be dead before we realize we've been bleeding out.
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