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Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained | |||
The opening lines immediately immerse the reader in the Southern landscape, with "Sunlight's impasto on brightleaf" suggesting both the beauty and the thickness of untold stories layered in the environment. However, the presence of "moccasin-caduceus on cypress" introduces a serpentine, possibly deceptive or dangerous element, hinting at the complex duality of the South's beauty and its historical violence and oppression. Applewhite references "Unrepresentable Vacancies blotch the historical record," speaking to the gaps and omissions in the South's documented history, where the atrocities of slavery, lynchings, and racial violence are often sanitized or erased. The metaphor of the "dead bitch bares teeth in the mud ditch" serves as a stark, haunting image of this hidden violence, suggesting that the true stories of the South's past are as aggressive and unsettling as a threatened animal, even in death. The poem then critiques the modern attempts to pave over or commercialize the South's history, with expressways and shopping centers failing to encompass the depth of its legacy. Applewhite uses the metaphor of "tourist pastels" being "dumb as tombs," implying that these superficial, consumerist veneers silence the rich, tumultuous narratives that lie beneath. The challenge of representation extends to the realm of art, where no "palette has tar enough" or "oxymoronic pigment" capable of capturing the full spectrum of the Southern experience, from its vibrant life to its "coal midnight" of suffering and injustice. The poem suggests that both the literal and figurative landscapes of the South resist easy depiction, remaining "furious with its phantoms," or haunted by its history, in a way that eludes conventional artistic and linguistic expression. "Failure of Southern Representation: 1" is a powerful meditation on the limitations of art and language in conveying the complexity of the Southern experience. Applewhite's use of striking imagery and metaphor invites readers to contemplate the deep, often unspoken truths of the South's history and the ongoing struggle to adequately represent its beauty, violence, and resilience.
| Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TWO WITCHES: 1. THE WITCH OF COOS by ROBERT FROST THE ELF AND THE DORMOUSE by OLIVER BROOK HERFORD ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT by NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY THE OLD BURYING-GROUND by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER DEAD IN HIS BED by ADDIE LUCIA BALLOU THE BIRDS' BALL by C. W. BARDEEN TO M. I. by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS BEHIND THE LINE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN MR. MERRY'S LAMENT FOR LONG TOM by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD |
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