Response # 8

Shelby Scott

Writing and Lit

Response #8

Eric Olson

So this week, I must disclaim everything I previously said about all post-modern American poets being whack jobs, crazies, or the equivalents of Chinese water torture in human form. I felt that I was able to grasp the concept of the reading because in class we went over ‘denotation versus connotation’ when it comes to words in poetry, and that made things so much easier for me. In class we were asked to look at Diane Di Prima, who is the only female beat poet, and I can happily say that I have finally had my epiphany moment; I actually understood what the hell one of these poems meant. It was like the Heavens opened up and I saw that one little ray of sunshine break through the clouds to shine on my face… or something like that. It might not have been that big a deal for most, but honestly, it made my day. I felt that reading this book was like trying to decipher chemistry with its formulas written in a foreign language, but I’ve finally found the Rosetta stone.

In my response, Eric told me that poetry isn't something that you can crack, because the meaning is so subjective. Respectfully, I agreed, but in my own mind, I still believed that I was missing a key link for solving the puzzle. I felt that the feminism in The Practice of Magical Evocation did so much justice in comparing the creation a piece of art to the birthing of a child and to the way women are viewed in society. I felt like everything finally clicked for me with this poem. It became really relatable to me in the second stanza, especially where it says, “(stroke after stroke) built for masochistic calm.” There's no way to fully understand what the poet means, since poetry is so subjective, but in this stanza you can see that she's using some sexually loaded language to get her points across- that a woman is only a tool to be used. When bringing this back to my work, I start to think of any poem that I've ever written in my entire life. During the writing process it sometimes seems too hard, you begin to question why you're even a writer, and then for every ten moments that you encounter like that- you give birth to an idea that is so fantastic that you think your only purpose on this world is to write- that right there is the calm that the poem speaks about.

Throughout this piece I found myself going back to the structure of the poem. It starts off with a quote about women by Gary Snyder: “The female is fertile, and discipline (contra naturam) only confuses her.” I feel that through the structure, you can infer that this poem is like a girl who is starting a new relationship. In the beginning, things are sweet because she’s naive. Then the young girl becomes a woman and is finally able to see what life means for her. She starts her life as a woman giving birth right before our understanding. The quote is where her “contractions” start and as she continues the first stanza “I am woman and my poems are woman’s: easy to say this, the female is ductile and…” When I read that, I thought she was starting off a young woman, but now with age she has acquired a knowledge which society has now strapped to her chest. She is merely a woman.