Welcome to the blog for Prof. John Talbird's English 220 class. The purpose of this site is two-fold: 1) to continue the conversations we start in class (or to start conversations before we get to class) and 2) to practice our writing/reading on a weekly basis in an informal forum.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Bicentennial
I believe that Chiasson in the first stanza is referring to wanting to belong somewhere. The author uses: dragonflies in the sky, ferries in the water, frames in a film, these are all examples of naturally occuring roles or obvious placements. This reiterates the author's wish of belonging somewhere naturally. The author also refers to his past days in New York taking ecstasy with his friends. These memories, as written, are very nostalgic and have a sense of comradeship as he describes: "Everyone in the room was beautiful And in the mirror, your own face was a gift, For which you owed total strangers thanks." Perhaps before these days, the subject did not feel this way about himself.
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In this stanza, Chiasson talks about the church with attached dormitory near his childhood home. He talks about the character of the student body collectively and describes them as kind and mousy. The author then continues to add, in the last sentence, that those girls are now almost sixty years old. I feel almost as though Chiasson uses memories as a ghost of time. The church is no longer there, the female students had a unison kindness which is almost their "code"- eerily, and Chiasson finishes the stanza stating those girls are now decades older. He goes from memory to reality.
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