Sad that she can see the pain of the dog as it flinches when its name is called after having “spread the weight of its own abuse” on her with its barking. And her largeness makes sense in that by getting big it somehow makes her feel more real perhaps, as if she has to be contended with by everyone else – though she sure does seem to feel empty inside – like eating McDonalds.
Daily Archives: September 21, 2019
page 169 of 294 of There There
Funny how the name Ronald McDonald is what brings her to come to tell Lucas the truth about maybe / maybe not killing Ronald. And it’s all fake food, fake, made up stuff that doesn’t really do much for you on the inside except keep you from feeling hungry for a little while but not actually nourish you,
page 167 of 294 of There There
I like the image of the test-pattern Indian telling her to run after she hit Ronald over the head with the bat and as they ran from that situation. Maybe it’s because it’s like seeing your story (the bat’s name was “Storey”) play out on TV, but on a channel only you can tune into.
page 163 of 294 of There There
Oh, OK, so Lucas, who we know is Dene’s (dead) Uncle, also had a relationship with Opal when they were both in foster care. Somehow this connects nicely to the spider and how they never killed a spider because “spiders carry miles of story in their bodies” “miles of home and trap”. The use of trap in interesting since it means stuck somewhere they don’t want to be.
page 161 of 294 of There There
I wonder if Opal’s superstitions are just a way for her to feel as if she has some control in an otherwise chaotic / apathetic universe?
page 160 of 294 of There There
Nice image of the traditional dance being reflected back as if thru time in the department store three-panel mirror.
page 160 of 294 of There There
More mirrors, more reflections. She too doesn’t like looking at her reflection in the mirror – to many years on her face I suppose.
I’m “wife” – I’ve finished that
Very unusual poem considering we know she never married. Here she imagines being a wife as like being a “Czar”, an absolute ruler in full control of one’s domain, and she likes this feeling of power. She compares this to “the Girl’s life” which is an unmarried “pain” in which she has no control over her life and would be how she actually felt about her situation.
This poem speaks to the roles available to women through most of human history in that the best life might have had to offer is to be defined by their relationship with a man and, failing that, then being single is just “pain”. When Emily wrote this she was, and always would be, a single and unmarried woman which while she describes as being a “pain” she was also free to devote herself to her poetry, an art form which would allow her to (naively) imagine being a wife as being like a “Czar” of Russia, such as Catherine II. Of course being married is nothing like what she’s imagining here, but perhaps what she is getting at is that instead of being married to a man, she is married to her art?
As someone married to poetry, she is “Czar” of the domain of her imagination, she can conjure up anything she pleases and command her pen to do what she wishes – she is in total control. And before she was married to her art, perhaps she saw herself as a naive “girl” who had yet to take control of her life before she discovered the power of her poetry. Her poetry can take her all the way into “Heaven”, when previously she was merely stuck on “Earth” and the real world having to deal with real world “pain” and issues. And so she doesn’t want to “compare” her new life as a “Wife” to poetry because everything before that time “was pain”.