Thank you sincerely, Rhina, for your time and for your engaging commentary on my poem.
You mentioned before that "poems are smarter than we are, and know what they need to be even before we do." I might carry that a step further and suggest that maybe a poem knows what it wants to say even more than the author does. That would seem the case with this poem, the more I read comments about it and the more I read it over and examine it.
David's interpretation is pretty much dead-on in so far as what I consciously intended with this poem, and AE is right in pointing out that originally, the speaker of this poem was Big Foot, the leader of the band of Miniconjou Sioux who were killed at Wounded Knee, and the idea for the poem came from the well-known photograph of his frozen body lying in the snow, but after a while I decided to try and make the piece speak for all of the victims in general, rather than from just one. I considered posting a link to the picture here but decided I'd better not. It can be found easily enough. Anyway, it's one of the most arresting and disturbing photos I've ever seen.
But as the poem went through its many changes (though never changing from a villanelle into something else) I think I managed to alter any and all of the lines which descibed the speaker as being irrefutably dead. I can easily see how you, and others, arrived at your interpretation, and at this point I welcome that interpretation, and I feel that I should be terribly grateful for it, as well. I am hoping now that the poem might be able to work on both levels: as the voice of the living and of the dead. Essentially, the speaker is in a sort of limbo, a twilight between life and death.
I think that two of the word choices, both of which have been validly criticized, were ultimately chosen to further this sense of ambiguity: "grown" and "surely".
I suppose I want "grown" to convey a sense of the dying as a slow and very gradual process, both symbolically because of the speaker's inability (and reluctance) to pass into the "spirit world", and because of the literal slowing, weakening, and freezing of the body.
As for "surely": I think that very often we use the word "surely" to indicate that we're really not so sure at all, as in "surely you can't be serious?" Yes, it's formal, but perhaps it's meant to indicate that the speaker isn't actually certain of whether he is alive or dead?
(And Bill, I really do see your point about "Because...", and I am presently wracking my brain to try and come up with a better way to work that stanza.)
Rhina, I want to thank you for honoring me with your time and your words, which have encouraged me beyond measure.
I want to thank everyone else for their comments as well, and Tim, of course, for selecting my poem, and I apologize for this long-winded post.
Bill
[This message has been edited by Williamb (edited December 24, 2003).]
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