Shalom Carl

You don't have to like the poem.  Women from all over are saying the poem
tells their mother/daughter saga too.


kol tuv, Ryfkah

In a message dated 05.05.03 12:13:32 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< It seems that regarding this poem I stand alone: it is liked by everyone
else. So, perhaps I should make some greater effort to substantiate my
opinion that the driving insight is unpolished and requires, or
amounts to, repetition. Here is one way to look at it. Try substituting
"She was my mother" for each instance of "I am not my mother". What you
will find is that the poem is equally coherent yet flush with a
different insight. What this means is that the driving insight boils
down to the repetition of the one sentence: the rest of the poem does
not soundly support or inform the repeated clause. Another experiment:
try removing the repeated clause. What you might find in doing so is
that the poem becomes less overt, more subtle. One wouldn't be compelled
to encounter again and again the rather strange statement, "I am not my
mother", which nobody is anyway, and have to wonder what it really means.
It's almost as though "I am not my mother" is just a placeholder for the
writer, like a scaffold for builders, to be removed after the fact.
Nobody wants to look at the overt scaffold structure of a finished
building, but the structure is present, hinted at, supporting the
finished product.

Another way to look at it is, suppose "I am not my mother" to be the
lunatic screams of a crazed and institutionalized person. Is it hard to
imagine that? The strangeness of it, the repetitions, amount to a form
of insanity. It strikes me as out of place.

I think what has happened with this poem is that the readers have been
too willing to infuse it with their own interpretations, to give it the
benefit of the doubt. People read it with a view to their experiences of
their own mothers, etc., and I think its poetical nature is being
examined less closely. The details surrounding the lilac bush are rather
insipid, I think because so much repetition has been relied upon. The
writer here is essentially leaving scaffolding in place after the
building is declared finished.


Carl >>