[Janet Kenny]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

There is much I like about this sonnet, but it has four major stumbling blocks for me.

I hang up on place / mats and not even a hyphen will save it for me.

I hang up on TROUsseau and aGO.

I hang up on the past, then present tenses ("Twelve dollars took", "she can tell")

I hang up on (and this may be all my fault) "hand-done" when I am expecting "hand-made". Possibly it is a regionalism, possibly it is standard and I am an ignorant lout.

I think too that the poet could have squeezed more out of the poem than is here, but that is not fair, because then I am interfering with the poet's plan and using my own.

I'm not sure how to interpret the closure, and that is most certainly my fault. On the one hand, I appreciate that handiwork was a creative outlet for many women who had few ways to express their artistic talents (from lace-making to hair-weaving).

On the other hand, I come from a long line of country women who kept doilies and elaborately embroidered gewgaws and doodads in chests because they were too fine to use. I have seen these items taken up and displayed in a circle of kinswomen and then returned to the cedar chest. These women also kept fine parlors which no one ever entered, except perhaps the preacher man on Christmas Eve or a pale missionary just home from China or Africa. Other rooms, one step down on the scale of fineness, were inhabited only when Company came.

Consequently, I am not the ideal reader for this poem, and probably should not even comment it, but I do so only to make the point that the failure or success of a poem is not always attributable to the poet, but often to the reader.

And that is important to keep in mind as the voters storm to the polls.

I am sorry I am such an unworthy audience.

Janice,
I loved reading your little essay. Beautiful! Thank you.
Janet

PS: As is Chris's piece above this post.