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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE FLOATING MORMON, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: That summer she hadn't struggled Last Line: Like parents' front-seat voices. Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Mormons; Women; Estrangement; Outcasts | |||
That summer she hadn't struggled to support herself. The salt had done it for her when she was thirteen on the Great Salt Lake, afloat beneath her parents' wind-borne cries. Behind white cloud-doors, she saw life as a sort of railway flat through which she'd pass from daughter, to wife, to mother, each defined, a furnished room in which she could devise the person to fit that place. Now, almost thirty, divorced, and shut out from her faith, she stuffs her daughter's lunch with Hershey bars - bribes for acceptance and ham sandwiches. Her furniture giving no identity, she weeps at comments on her graduate papers - "Banal, your thinking's commonplace" - asks, "How should I think?" as if thoughts were dresses. The white garage doors close on her last resort - to be a child curled on the back seat, eyes shut, floating on a long night journey, the motor murmuring like parents' front-seat voices. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF: 2. HERMAN THE BASTARD by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR LITTLE CITIZEN, LITTLE SURVIVOR by HAYDEN CARRUTH GOING OUT FOR CIGARETTES by BILLY COLLINS HOMO WILL NOT INHERIT by MARK DOTY DEFLECTION TOWARD THE RELATIVE MINOR by FORREST GANDER ON A CERTAIN FIELD IN AUVERS by JOHN HAINES ON LOVE: MARINA TSVETAEVA by EDWARD HIRSCH |
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