Lindsey's Response to Revealing Secrets/Poems

[Sondra Perl]

#630

This reading offers a rare and (occasionally) uncomfortable perspective of the interior mechanisms of a writer/professor, who just happens to be our professor. We are given a glimpse of her personal life, and with that recognize her to be a writer/memoirist/poet. It’s fascinating to read Professor Perl’s thoughts as she struggles with the whys and ways of her family. She finds that poetry is the best tool to express her art while also analyzing her family and their relation to each other.

Because we are privy to her intimate details, we instantly defend her honesty with respect. Once we establish that we are on fragile soil, I allow myself to read deeper into the meaning and the perspective of all voices involved in her work. The nuances that make Perl unique and the ones that offer common ground; enhance her talent to convey the pervasive sensitive depth of poetry. As she developed as a person, through the trinity of life (time, patience, and wisdom) her poems materialized with a firmer commitment to language. By using poetry Perl communicates feelings that long prose can’t quite not achieve.

When poetry works for me, it lets me deconstruct language and reconstruct it by economizing words. Because of this disseminating and the striping away of the abundance of excessive words, we can distill the remaining words that essentially are the pillar of the text, the essential ingredients.

Poetry affords me the ability to pluck words as if creating a bouquet of flowers; only using the vital ones and concealing the rest, while also revealing the words between the lines. Professor Perl writes about how to “reveal a memory by narrowing it to a few telling details.” (130) I believe by doing this we are actually occupying with the space between words.

As a photographer/collagist, I can relate to the poet. I often shoot first and ask questions later. By that I mean, I first discover the image I want to explore and then spend time examining the details. At this point I can start to edit. As a photographer and collagist, I work specifically with negative and positive space to convey meaning. I think poetry utilizes negative/positive space to also convey meaning.

[Anonymous]

#636

Lindsey,

I relate so much to your sentence, “Because we are privy to her intimate details, we instantly defend her honesty with respect.” I hadn’t realized that until you wrote it. I noticed that when reading Prof. Perl’s piece I was almost defending her voice and would not question any aspect of it. Not that I would have for any of the other pieces, but because I know the writer of this piece as physically existing in my eyes. It makes me question why am I okay with writing something extremely personally and sharing it with people I will more than likely never meet, but then how reserved and anxiety ridden I get when I know this physical being will be in front of me reading my work. But then I realize that I am more defensive of the writing of people who are in my physical presence. Maybe it’s because I understand the vulnerability that they have exposed themselves to? And perhaps the bravery it truly does take to share your mind and physical existence simultaneously?

-Joanna

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