Daimys – Response to "Hep"

[Website Services Admin]

#587

I loved Pinard’s piece! I have to admit, when I first started reading it, I was a bit turned off by all the trapeze jargon. But she quickly reeled me in.

At first, the tone, for me, was journalistic. She explains where the word trapeze comes from, gave the reader citations about the first trapeze artist who also invented the leotard. I think this made me comfortable because it seems like the type of things I’m used to reading (and would later realize that kind of thing I strive to do in my academic work – mixing the personal with the academic). But as the story progresses, she abandons that tone and opts for one of vulnerability and mourning. She describes beautifully the story about her aunts, and about her mother. She peels back layer after layer until we get to the center of her story. She’s also a master of analogy – tying together writing, flying, and loss as moments of feeling the pressure/tension but also the victory of those acts. The tension in the anticipation of flying is like the tension of writing the perfect poetic line, the loss of her mother shape the writing of her pieces, the wave from her mother is the motion of flying.

There’s a sense throughout the piece of other people’s voice. She allows for the other characters to speak without making it seem like an extension of her ideas or voice. One example I can think of is her descriptions of the aunts when she describes their telling her that her mother was among angels. For me, her description allowed to aunts to exist without judgement; Pinard’s judgment was her skepticism toward angels, not the aunts.

One beautiful section is:

“I could create her in my mind, again and again, and of course, revise her as I saw fit: I literally shaped her, thus, bringing her to life in my mind. This practice was emotionally comforting, I’m sure, but also engaged me in the act of making and shaping, that leap of faith, that terribly scary but satisfying thing we do when we resin expression through the use of form.”

This is a perfect example of he she is able to talk about loss, flying, and writing all at once, while still allowing for those separate ideas to exist on their own.

[Sondra Perl]

#594

Daimys,

I love how you highlight Pinard’s ability to “talk about loss, flying, and writing all at once.” That too is one of my favorite aspects of Pinard’s piece. I think the ways that flight, through different mediums, is articulated is really artful. And it makes me re-think the kind of stakes we bring to writing. It’s interesting, because this is a question that came up in class last week: what are the stakes of what one is writing. I think that Pinard’s piece examines how writing, on some level, courts risk. Which is to say that good writing engages with risk, which I think is deeply connected to postures of vulnerability. Throughout Pinard’s essay, the speaker is rendered vulnerable through her truth-telling–her painful recollections of trauma and grief–and she experiences a paradoxical power that occurs via powerlessness. Again the image of flight is effective when considering these ideas, because all flight involves a gesture of release, and new understanding of control through a concession of control. For me, writing involves the same kind of concession. Only when I step out into the unknown, and leap into risk, do I experience the exhilarating capacities of the writing process. I think your point speaks beautifully to these qualities in Pinard’s essay.

[Website Services Admin]

#600

Patrick, I wish I could make a portable you and just take you around for motivational/poetic necessities! You should look into this.

Now that I think about it, I guess this would be a book written by you….but seriously!

[Author]

Posts