Quotation: “Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.” (Whitman, section 11).
Comment: Through the lens of Mulvey’s theory, this line in particular stands out to me in the idea that the woman is only there to decide which man she likes best. She has no other purpose in the poem than to be the subject of the men’s desire and pursuit. Although not everyone would approach this poem the same, and it could be also in part because we have recently been discussing feminism in film and writing. But from this perspective, the woman is seen only as something to impress and wonder about, rather than a person with her own objectives and plan. Through the lens of this poem, the woman’s only motive is to sneak in and see all the men swimming. Something else that confuses me is the second sentence of this quote, where the homeliest men are beautiful. But also in contrast to this feminist view, the more recent learning of queer studies also raises the possibility that the author is using this poem as a proxy for his own desire, rather than that of the woman in the poem. When viewed in this way, the poem can be interpreted in a completely new way.
Question: Knowing what I know now, would my reaction to the poem have been different if I had not read these chapters in Parker beforehand? Or am I simply more informed now? Would other people react in a similar manner to the way that I did? As I stated in the comment section, what does this mean when the poem states that the homeliest of the men are beautiful to her? Why does the speaker think that?
Quotation from Blanco’s “One Today”: “And always one moon/ like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop /and every window, of one country—all of us—/ facing the stars /hope—a new constellation /waiting for us to map it, /waiting for us to name it—together”.
Comment: I really resonate with how Blanco uses so many nature references to discuss the topic of unity. Just like with Gorman’s poem, focusing on that unity and using nature to say how we are all connected was really powerful. Regardless of who people voted for at the time, the whole idea of these poems are to unify everyone under this new way that will be for the next four years. No one truly knows what these years will bring or what will happen, but we all need to go through it together as one country, because that is what we are, and that is how we will thrive: unified.
