30 November -0001
Letting Go
The Last Words Of My English Grandmother
There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed--
Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,
Gimme something to eat--
They're starving me--
I'm all right-- I won't go
to the hospital. No, no, no
Give me something to eat!
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well
you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please--
Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher--
Is this what you call
making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear--
Oh you think you're smart
you young people,
she said, but I'll tell you
you don't know anything.
Then we started.
On the way
we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,
What are all those
fuzzy looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I'm tired
of them and rolled her head away.
William Carlos Williams
We read the above poem to ourselves, and then listened to it being read. We then talked over our first impressions of the poem; we focused on the significance of ‘last words’, and more generally on ‘last times’ (of seeing someone, of doing something you love or hate, of wearing a pair of jeans or a wedding ring). We looked at how WCW moved the poem along through his use of dialogue and action, at what the lines told us about his grandmother, and what it suggested about their relationship. A consistent opinion was regards the directness of the poem, how the truth of the story was unvarnished for the sake of memory-- and how this gave the voice of the poem integrity.
The exercise was to explore a ‘last time’ through free-writing.
Archive
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