Sunday (with a line from Di Brandt)
sit still stop your breathing look
at this holy world you inhabit look at
this indecent body you inhabit hold its
verve its sounds hold your breath in
these walls it is requiring so much of
our energy for you to exist are you
some kind of intruder a born thief
steal our innocence carry your love
all in your gut all in your mouth all
open and aching we are letting you
live stop prodding
sit still & listen
Reflection on "Sunday"
For this imitation/response to Di Brandt's "say to yourself each time," I tried imitating Brandt's form, namely through enjambment and lack of punctuation and capital letters. I also ended up using two of Brandt's lines, rather than just one. The first line of my poem is part of a line from Brandt's and the closing line of the poem is the same as Brandt's. Not using punctuation was actually harder than I initially thought it would be. I tend not to use periods in my work, so leaving those out wasn't much of a challenge, but when I looked over the poem, I noticed there were still a few commas here and there, so I removed them.
In terms of theme, I followed Brandt's themes and narratives with my own. From what I understood of "say to yourself each time," the voice/narrator of the poem is speaking to Brandt or at least to Mennonite women, demonstrating some of the silencing and control of women in the Mennonite church. "Sunday," follows in that theme, but in terms of things I learned and heard growing up in an Evangelical Covenant church.
I like your imitation, Hayley! I also appreciate the difficulty of writing a poem (or anything, really) without commas. I think to read Brandt's work, you almost have to change the way you read in order to understand it; I have to read her poems multiple times before I get them. Did you have to change the way you write poetry at all to do your imitation?
ReplyDeleteThis is great! I like the way you end a sentence and start a new one, in the same way Brandt does. I feel like I still read it in sentences, but I get to choose where the commas go. Very nice!
ReplyDeleteLovely exercise in imitating di's style and creating your own content. I especially like your use of "verve" and the phrase "it is requiring so much of our energy for you to exist." It makes me curious about who the "our" refers to in that sentence. I also like the last three lines and how they fold into each other. Glad you could make a connection between your religious upbringing and her poem.
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful, Hayley! I am really starting to enjoy this no punctuation thing. I know very, very little about the Evangelical Covenant Church so I greatly appreciate learning about it, especially via poetry! I really love your use of repetition, in the words "indecent" and "inhabit." But overall, beautifully done!
ReplyDeleteGreat poem! It took me a few reads to get a grip on it, as it is with much good poetry. My idea of this is that it is from the perspective of a the parents talking to a child. From that perspective i see how the lines show both good and bad instruction, telling a child to sit still and "look
ReplyDeleteat this holy world you inhabit," telling the child to experience the world around her. But also they tell her that she is really hard to deal with and that they are letting her live by providing the energy for her to live and that she sucks love form them. Hmm, what a strange relationship that is. Of course it could be a different relationship, but clearly unhealthy from whatever perspective it is in.