Blog #5
Allison Townsend’s “The Favorite” was fairly interesting to me. This poem, which read easily, in part because the tone was pretty casual and the setup was easy to follow, with the stanzas each being 9 lines. It read almost like prose. I love the idea of picking a favorite. But another rape victim redeemed through art? No, I don’t really want to read another one of those… It could just be my mood (after staying up late watching Vivien Leigh specials on AMC, I don’t want to deal with drama). Plus it seemed like a cliché to have the scene develop in a carnival, a location where everything is grotesque, but masked; a mysterious place where things aren’t what they appear. But I liked the viewpoint of reading from the vantage point of a professor, not the 18 year old. The distance that was initially there was stripped by the end, so it twisted the poem and revealed insight about both characters. It was crafted well.
I really liked your comment about the carnival. I found it very insightful, and I hadn’t even considered the connection with the carnival and the assault.