Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WORD POWER, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: First doll, I rocked her blue-eyed blink in my lap Last Line: "I proclaimed, ""dirty." Subject(s): Dolls; Language; Names; Toys; Words; Vocabulary | ||||||||
First doll, I rocked her blue-eyed blink in my lap - eyelashes blunt as toothbrushes, pink pout of mouth. "Name her," Mother and her friend commanded. I fanned through two and a half years of words to find the one to blazon my knowledge of Eve's apple core of motherhood, to find the best word my mother'd taught me. "Dirty," I announced. The two recoiled, cajoled, and pled a change. Despairing, they suggested some babies had two names; but I'd been given one and so I gave. On trains, in butcher shops, in hotel lobbies, looking up at benign, pink, stooping powder-scented faces and their queries, anticipating her embarrassed smile and their recoil, I proclaimed, "Dirty." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOWYOUBEENS' by TERRANCE HAYES MY LIFE: REASON LOOKS FOR TWO, THEN ARRANGES IT FROM THERE by LYN HEJINIAN THE FATALIST: THE BEST WORDS by LYN HEJINIAN WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY: 17 by LYN HEJINIAN CANADA IN ENGLISH by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA THERE IS NO WORD by TONY HOAGLAND CONSIDERED SPEECH by JOHN HOLLANDER AND MOST OF ALL, I WANNA THANK ?Ǫ by JOHN HOLLANDER |
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