Bicentennial-5 stanza review

Bicentennial  

5 stanza review:

The author Dan Chiasson is willing the reader to go back in time to one of his memories of when he was

at the 200th celebration of the North american Independence his first stanza to do it naturally and 

smoothly not to force yourself or feel dragged along,then he wants it to feel more like a story and less 

like a poem but to me he dose exactly that when he starts writing all cryptic "a spot in pairs where the 

princess died" My Mind sits on its small white tee" doing this loses me entirely as it feel like any other 

poem trying to hard to speak with out saying words ,then he bring it back into a story of when he was in 

New York with his friends partying and getting high then back into the cryptic poem " and in the mirror 

your own face is a gift" the author continues is story them cryptic poem format making the reader travel 

to the memory and think about the subject he wants you focus on

From the Bicentennial by Dan Chiasson

To her getting the quarter from her drawer

And putting it on the TV tray 
Next to her bed, next to the rosary,
And watched me react when she said
The word boy. What does R stand for,
Sister? Richard, she said, and I wondered
(Since I was a coin collector, too,
And knew the value of every coin)
How much less it now was worth engraved.

From my view point this part alone stands as a memory of him and a nun reflecting back on a coin she has of a childhood sweet heart which obviously hold a lot of sentimental value to her but to him he only its only value (monetary value) ,this shows how things can have two very distinct meanings to people