Thoughts about Dawn Lundy Martin's Poems

     Dawn Lundy Martin's poems are quite fascinating. They are simply descriptive and that's the best part. The two poems we are given to read are a little tricky to decipher. Martin is an activist and some of her work involves history, domestic violence and activism. Knowing this, it can help figure out what the poems mean. Although we are in the fiction portion of the class now, her work can still be a tool on how to show readers and writers how to "Show versus Tell" when writing a story or poem. The details are so mysterious and straight forward that it can gives us a sense on how to do something similar with our own work. 

     The first poem that is given is called Violent Rooms. It is very short, but greatly descriptive. It is almost cryptic. There can be multiple meanings from this poem. One idea that can be found is that the character in the story is talking about her father's life. By reading the page before the poem, it discusses that a character wants to talk about her father's life and what he was like before he was dead. When reading the poem, You don't get the feeling on who she is talking about until you start reading the second part. The character describes a bar stool, which with the page before, the character looks at a picture of her father and he is at a bar. The question is that is this poem showing what the father did to someone else, killing that person, or is it showing what someone did towards him? Overall, there is some display of some sort of violence. When I read this poem, the thought of maybe this was a odd way to describe a child. I say this because in the beginning, the character is describing someone else slowly pronouncing the words girl and suck, something a small child often does when they learn how to talk. The pronunciation can also be a way to show emotion from the other character. Like all other poetry pieces, this one can be deciphered in different ways and scenarios.

     The second poem is called The Morning Hour. This one is a little longer than the first poem, as well as a little more detailed. This poem can also have different meanings. The first thing that came to my head was that this was about a mother and her daughter, doing their daily routines. The more I read the story, the more I felt like these two women were slaves. The mother has "infinite lines of welt." Which was a form of wrongful discipline. It seems like the mother tries to do everything to protect her daughter and make sure she isn't harmed, but the mother gets harmed instead. The only care in her world is Olivia. The more the story goes on, the more it sounds like the two are in a ship or a wagon, traveling where to we do not know, The sentence, "And Olivia, what no memory can recall lost eternally inside covered wagons." shows this. The narrator, who may be the mother, has hope that these ways in that era will change and that her daughter will no longer live in that kind of life. This poem can also have meaning behind how it can be a struggle to others to get over hard times and hope and want to make sure that their children do not suffer like they did. 

     Overall, Martin's work is very intriguing and eye catching. Her work pulls the reader in and does not let go. She paints the images really well, even if the poem is short. Not a lot of people can do that, nor can they show so much power with only few words. Martin is a really good poet/writer and I would love to dive into more of her work. It would be very interesting to learn what her meaning is behind the two poems.