What do you think about "Porn"? It's provocative. Do you find its imagery disturbing, titillating? Is it about something other than porn?
"Smalltown Lift" is what we call a prose poem. How is it different than the other poems we've read? Would you have called this a poem if it weren't listed under the poetry section in this anthology? Why or why not? Why isn't it a story?
What does it mean to "meep"?
Why is "The Difference" told in couplets?
What questions do you have about the poems?
Porn by Dorothea Lasky was a poem that used very provocative words. It was hard reading this aloud and quite embarrassing even in the sanction of my own room. When i read it aloud i realized it was more of a feeling of disgust, and just hurt within the lines. My take on it was that this poem was written by someone who has a disconnect with emotions and sex. My first assumption was that this poet was sexually abused, or taken advantage of. i assumed this because of the line:
ReplyDelete"someone who darkened me, a million times over"
I questioned if this poem had a different interpretation or did anyone who read it have the same first assumption? did she actually enjoy watching the porn?
I will totally agree with you. It was quite disturbing to read aloud, because I have my seven and six years old sons. So for me reading it aloud wasn’t a good experience for me. According to my understanding it was talking about the poet past probably she was abused by someone that was very close to her.
DeleteI think that's part of the argument, Taylor. That Lasky is saying that porn is a separation between emotions and sex and that's why she describes such horrific imagery in a deadpan way. Nice reading.
DeleteI found Porn to have resemblance of a woman who is free of being out of a relationship. She is upset that she just watched a porn film about a woman out of a relationship. In Smalltown Lift it is different than other poems we've read, because it is as shorter, and does not have any stanzas. if it weren't listed under the poetry section I would not have considered it a poem, because it does not have the rhythm a poem would normally have. What it means to meep is to make a high pitched sound. The Difference is told in couplets because it is trying to tell us it is trying to tell us different scenes of stuff going on throughout the poem.
ReplyDeleteQuestion I have about this poem are why are there stanzas broken up in different ways? Also why in the poem Smalltown Lift are there no stanzas, or spaces?
ReplyDelete"Porn" by Dorothea Lasky, it is a very strong and mature poem. In this poem, the speaker never experience such a thing called "love". From my perceptive, she is in her youth and exploring her freedom, to do what she want, without any judgments. In Smalltown Lift, is a prose poem and it has a story plot. The whole image is in one paragraph. The characters and their actions are beautifully illustrated.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of the poem is the third stanza because Lasky established a connection between the reader and her. Also in the third stanza second line, she challenged the reader that she has watched more porn than the reader. In other words, the reader can't watch more porn than she. Which is like a dare to the reader.
ReplyDeleteFor the poem "Porn", I feel like the poet is extremely daring. The harsh words when being said out loud can make people very uncomfortable, but it was pretty funny to read it in class and see how embarrassed everyone was over just words. The poets use of the vulgar diction, in my opinion is very contradicting and ironic because poems are known to be soft and sweet. However, Dorothea Lasky had a very different agenda and I think it was cool of her, especially as a female to publish this piece.
ReplyDeleteNice reply, Tori. I agree, it is daring. And it is funny that we can be embarrassed by words. These are the same types of words we hear in movies and we're not embarrassed. Why do you think we were embarrassed last Tuesday in class?
DeleteI think it has a lot to do with our setting and us actually having the words come out of our mouths, rather than watching them on the screen in front of us. Also, not really the diction we're used to talking about in a classroom.
Delete“Smalltown Lift" is written as a paragraph while almost all the poems I’ve read in the past have line breaks and is broken into stanzas. If it wasn’t listed under the Poem section in the table of contents, I would have thought it was a really short story. I wouldn’t have called it poem because from what I’ve been taught and told, poems aren’t exactly written like a paragraph nor tells this much story. You have to usually do a lot of thinking to get the true meaning behind a poem. There’s so much figurative language that’s thrown in by poets that you have to really break down to get a clearer image in your head. However, in “Smalltown Lift” the plot of the prose poem was laid out right in front of me. It talks about a boy and a girl on a date in a bowling alley and they’re in a photobooth about to tell each other secrets. It didn’t take much time for me to learn what the narrator was talking about. Despite the structure and the way the story is told, I think it could pass to be a poem because of hidden rhythm it has to it.
ReplyDeleteThe poem titled "porn" was a very out there kind of poem. It truly is a very provocative poem and I feel the poet purposely did it this way to shock and startle the reader. When initially reading the poem I did find the imagery a little disturbing and the title fits the poem well. It fits it well because it describes the reality of porn so well, if you really think about it those of us who watch porn are kind of weirdos looking onto someone else having sex. No the title and the poem correlate perfectly both shock the reader with the same intensity.
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