In the comp/rhet field*, much of the discourse about writing focuses on the act of writing as a process rather than a product, and underscores the importance of specific contexts, audiences, and purposes. Ideally, then, learning to improve our writing depends at least in part on understanding its illocutionary aspect, and developing an array of stylistic devices, a grab bag from which to select and put into use, in particular contexts for particular purposes.
To think of these features of the act of writing when reading Sondra’s essay sharing her (previously private) poetry is fascinating. Indeed, as the revelations unfold through the piece, questions of voice, context, and audience can proliferate in complex and intriguing ways. We write in solitude (even when we are not alone when we write), but often we are cognizant of an eventual audience, even if only an abstract one, and this conceptualized audience often shapes the choices we make. Initially, and for many years, the audience for Sondra’s verse was Sondra. Full stop. For me, knowing this fact changes the contours of, re-situates, Sondra’s writing here; her disclosures initiate the reader into an exclusive audience, hitherto comprising of her alone! The private nature of the poems for me rendered them more fragile somehow, the performative element of writing tempered by the fact that this was originally a performance for an audience of one.
There is such palpable, gendered violence underscoring “Nose Job:” broken bones, needles up nostrils, purple, swollen faces, blood red eyes. I find it interesting that even in hindsight, looking at events with the benefit of many years distance from them, Sondra still views the decision of her mother and sister to undergo rhinoplasty in principally aesthetic terms: “I found the idea of plastic surgery appalling. It seemed so drastic. I just couldn’t embrace the pursuit of beauty in the wholehearted way my mother and sister did.” (133) Sondra, let’s talk more about this.
*Though many would classify rhetoric and composition as separate, if related, areas of study
