Reply to comment

I want to add my agreement with the last two posts on the issue of politics/literature and the possible loss of pleasure experienced in their intersection.  I have a passionate love of literature and a strong distaste for politics.  I often wonder whether I really belong in this course...or at Bryn Mawr for that matter.  But hey, I'm a senior so it's a little late for that question.

I must say that I feel a little guilty about the way I expressed myself in class the other day.  I think my expression of "love" and wonder for the way Brooks titles her poem and the way in which she may be playing with ideas of life/death/being/loss in the piece comes from a purely literary place.  I get excited by beauty, ambiguity, sincerity and I don't always censor my immediate excitement over things.  Perhaps a better way to frame my statements would have been with literary language, ie: "I think the way Brooks titles her poem is a brilliant writing choice because it brings the ambiguity of the piece right to the forefront, opens up lots of interesting questions, etc."  I don't know.

The discourse in class about the use of certain kinds of language (my language even) to justify anti-choice stances is really something I never even considered.  I was pretty much floored by this idea.  And I'm glad that I was forced to consider it, forced to see that even though I might know how I feel about abortion issues and have no desire to hinder the pro-choice enterprise, language is really powerful and caution is very necessary. 

But seriously, I just think "The Mother" is a beautiful piece of art.  And in a political climate that is so divisive and, in my opinion, often disheartening because of that, I like the idea of the artistic world being a place where people can at least have something in common. A place to recognize our shared humanity.