For my pantoum poem, I chose Stillbirth by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, which you can find, along with a reading of the poem by the author, here.A pantoum is a poem of any length made up of four-line stanzas, in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. Often, the first line of the poem is also the last line of the poem.
What is interesting about a pantoum (and other poems that repeat lines, such as a villanelle) is that when a line is repeated, small changes can affect the way that line is read and give it a different meaning. The first time the line "no longer an infant. A woman now, blond, thirty-two, appears it seems to speak of Laetitia, the speaker's stillborn daughter, saying that if she saw her now she would not longer be an infant, but a woman. In the next stanza, there is a colon at the end of the line which leads into the next line "I sometimes go months without remembering you," suggesting that the speaker is the 32-year old blond woman, who has matured and is not as haunted by the memory of Laetitia.
This poem does not exactly display anaphora (emphasizing words or phrases by repeating them at the beginnings of clauses), but it obviously employs repetition (not one of our devices, but a rhetorical device nonetheless). A pantoum in general would do this. However, I think that a pantoum was a particularly effective choice for this topic, because the repetition of each line shows that though now the memory of Laetitia is "not asking much space," that experience has lived with the speaker for years and years and is ingrained in her mind and the person she has become.
3 comments:
Thank you for finding and sharing that poem. I had a stillborn girl in 2003. I know the feeling the woman has when she hears her child's name.
That was a very depressing Pantoum. Anyway, I think that a pantoum was the perfect form of poetry to talk about stillbirth the way Laure-Anne Bosselaar wrote it. The emphasis on repetition gives a solemn tone to the poem. Also, it seems as though euphony was used in this poem. There is no harshness or discordance to this poem. Maybe it was the way Bosselaar read the poem, but it seemed as though the poem was written to be soothing. It is just like the way she is trying to portray how she feels whenever she hears her daughter's name.
I agree with Chris. I first want to say that this pantoum was very heart felt, and I really liked it. I also agree that the repetition emphasizes her appreciation for the grief not playing such a dramatic role in her life, and constantly reminding her of her still born child. However I feel that the constant repetition of her daughters name in this poem is a form of comfort for her, and a reminder that her daughter was once living. Bosselar is constantly repeating and reassuring herself that “no one in the car cold be her daughter”, but she still continues to search for her face. The use of repetition in this poem is also symbolizing how passionately Bosselar feels about her stillborn daughter, although she may try to forget it at times.
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