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G R E G E R S O N O N H E
R S T Y L E :
"The consolidated, linear discipline of the 18th
century mind is Greek to me. I like a more syncopated syntax, a
quality of imagination that makes a sentence contain two voices
fighting it out rather than in harmony. I like a line that breaks
and frays. I use the language spoken by the people I grew up with
or people you hear in on-the-street interviews on TV. But I may
play that kind of talk against language from other sources."
Here is an example of her voice and technique
from the first stanza of her poem "Maculate." Most of the italicized
passages are adapted from the gospel of St. Luke. One of the narrator's
parents is speaking:
I remember going door to door, it must
have been
nineteen
thirty-six and half the town was out of work,
we always had the Red Cross drive in March
(consider
the lilies how they grow). The snowmelt
frozen hard again, and cinders on the shoveled
walks.
I was wearing your grandmother's boots.
(Consider the ravens, they have neither storehouse
nor barn.)
The grocer gave a nickel, I can see him yet,
Some people had nothing at all.
And I came
to Mrs. Exner's house (no thief
approacheth, neither moth). The woman
was so bent
with arthritis, nearly hooped
when she walked up the street with her bucket and mop
(not Solomon
in all his glory). The people
she cleaned for wouldn't keep a bucket in the house
(nor
moth). She gave me three new dollar
bills, I'll never forget it, I wanted the earth
to swallow
me up.
From Waterborne
(Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
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