Unpacking “The Map”
From the tone of the poem, the speaker seems to be a woman who is sitting in the passenger seat of a car and seems to have a strained relationship with the driver at that moment. The tone of voice is passive and somewhat sad. The speaker utilizes the map as a way to illustrate the truth of where their relationship really is. This information tells me that maybe the man who is driving is in denial or could care less about the situation.
In my opinion, this is not a narrative poem because it is not telling a story. Instead, it is more like a lyric poem since it describes the speaker’s state of mind and feelings. Even though one person is talking or thinking throughout the whole poem, this poem contains a dialogue between two people through actions and gestures. For example, in stanza two the speaker says, “‘This is where we are,’ I say to you, my finger on the line, but I'm here, in my leather seat and you are there, hands too lightly on the steering wheel, fingers just touching the bottom. It scares me to hurdle through space according to your casual caress of our direction,” which indicates the driver’s actions and gestures in response to what the speaker says to him (Hellerstein, 2005, p. 5). The main interest is psychological. It is psychological because the speaker is reflecting on where the relationship is, and she compares the situation to nature, like how the road on the map corresponds to their relationship.
The author of this poem chose words that have double meanings. These words include: passed, lightly, bottom, scares, hurdle, afar, leaves, and dark. When I read this poem, I read it several times but in different points of view. The first time I read the first stanza, I thought the speaker is trying to use the map for a sense of direction because she and the driver do not know where they are going. Then, I reread that same stanza and found that it sounded kind of sad, especially at the part where it says, “The white circle is the exit we just passed; the small black diamond, the one we are approaching in the middle of the day (Hellerstein, 2005, p. 5).” It goes from white, which could be understood as being good; but then, it moves to black, which could be understood as being bad. This is where the word “passed” has a double meaning. The first time I read the stanza, this word meant to go or move onward. As I read it the second time, it meant to die. There are also lines with more than one meaning, but depending on the point of view the reader uses, it could mean something entirely different from what the author intended. Or, this is exactly what the author wanted. So, the language is both literal and non-literal.
Another thing that the author does is use some figurative language, using a few similes, metaphors, and personification, which evoke the reader’s senses. For me, I saw a car zooming down the freeway, passing exits, signs, and other vehicles. I could feel the map in my hands with the cold air-conditioning blowing in my face and causing the map to crackle against the forceful air. Also, I could hear the engine of the car as it pushed sixty-five miles an hour, roaring benevolently. This poem makes me feel like I am in the place of the speaker.
This poem tends to follow a regular pattern in the organization of the lines in stanzas by following chronological order. The speaker describes her thoughts and feelings with lucid words that summarize the situation, but not really making a story out of it. She thinks about where their relationship is going and hints it to her partner, but he really does not care. Then, she describes how she feels about his reaction and goes on about that, not really making it a story. I do not think the stanzas or lines would be better arranged in a different order. Each stanza contains nine lines as well. The first and third stanzas have a natural ends of phrasal unit, whereas the middle one is natural and seems to flow naturally without stopping and beginning in the middle. One form is used in this poem, which is “closed” because the line length for each stanza is the same. Something else I noticed was the first and last stanza somewhat rhymes. At the end of the fourth line of the first stanza it says “freeway”, and at the ninth line it says “way”. In addition, the twenty-first line says “see”, and at the twenty-sixth line it says “tree”. There may be some rhyming in this poem, but I don't hear any beats or sense of musical phrasing. The rhythm and rhyme work together by creating a special kind of flow where all of the words fit together.
This poem brought back some good memories while I read it. The setting of this is in a car, where the speaker is in the passenger seat trying to follow and read the map to the driver. This reminds me of all the times my dad and I would travel to softball games that were very far away. In stanza three where it says, “On the map, I try to fix our state of being in what I see from afar, like a hawk… (Hellerstein, 2005, p. 5),” reminds me of when my dad and I got into a fights in the car because of faulty directions that we received from the coach, which happened quite frequently. My dad always blamed me for misreading the directions, and I would argue back that it was not my fault. It was the directions. When he figured out I was telling the truth, the car became silent. Then, I was holding a map, trying to figure out where we were. Later on, we were able to laugh about all of those times.
All of the elements put together give “The Map” multiple meanings. The chronological order of the poem made the content flow more naturally. There are quite a few themes to the poem depending on how you look at it, like a sexual, sad, mournful, and maybe even a hopeful theme. This poem is rich in meaning, providing bountiful explicit images for the reader to experience. From reading this poem, I feel like I have learned to open my mind more and be able to see other points of view.
Bibliography
Hellerstein, K. (2005). The Map. In C. P. Pennsylvania, Common Wealth (p. 5). University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
The Map
By Kathryn Hellerstein
By Kathryn Hellerstein
A map across my legs,
I locate us between the creases,
tracing my finger across the double red line
of the interstate freeway
we race along. The white circle is 5
the exit we just passed;
the small black diamond, the one
we are approaching
in the middle of the day.
I locate us between the creases,
tracing my finger across the double red line
of the interstate freeway
we race along. The white circle is 5
the exit we just passed;
the small black diamond, the one
we are approaching
in the middle of the day.
“This is where we are,” I say to you, 10
my finger on the line,
but I am here, in my leather seat,
and you are there, hands too lightly
on the steering wheel, fingers
just touching the bottom. 15
It scares me to hurtle through space
according to your casual
caress of our direction.
my finger on the line,
but I am here, in my leather seat,
and you are there, hands too lightly
on the steering wheel, fingers
just touching the bottom. 15
It scares me to hurtle through space
according to your casual
caress of our direction.
On the map, I try to fix
our state of being 20
in what I see
from afar, like that hawk,
a dark stroke against the blue,
circling above the woods’
reddening leaves 25
and one golden tree
stirring within.
our state of being 20
in what I see
from afar, like that hawk,
a dark stroke against the blue,
circling above the woods’
reddening leaves 25
and one golden tree
stirring within.
The Truth Behind The Meatrix
The comedy aspect of this video applies to young adults, mostly because it spoofs The Matrix, which is a movie targeting this age group. It is not hard to figure out which characters resemble one another in both of these films, and because of that, it makes it easier for the audience to relate each situation in The Meatrix to The Matrix, making it comical. The demeanors of the characters in The Meatrix match those of The Matrix. Even the voice similarities of Morpheus and Moopheus are uncanny, in the way that they are very similar. They both use the same deep tone in their voice, and they pause in between words to make it have a more dramatic effect to what they are saying, like when they both say, “Do you want to know what it is?” They say it exactly the same way. Free Range Studios captured Morpheus’s character extremely well. While the comedy aspect entertains the audience with humor from The Matrix, the animation part of the video play a significant role.
The animation component of The Meatrix makes it easy on the eyes. There are many videos out there on factory farming that use harsh footage of animals being poorly treated, which can be very upsetting to those with sensitive stomachs and psychologically damaging. A Documentary, such as Food Inc., is a good example of a severe or harsh film. Even though The Meatrix is animated, it still gets its point across effectively. Instead of showing real footage of chickens getting their beaks cut off, they show the shadows of chickens getting their beak cut off, which is still depicting to the audience the severity of the animal abuse but in a pleasing way. These features make it so everyone can watch it without feeling uncomfortable. Though it entertains the audience with the animated farm animals and minor comedic stunts, it is also spreading the cause of factory farming while informing the audience about it.
Beautiful white barns surrounded by luscious fields of green and alluring towering trees paint a refreshing picture in many peoples’ minds of where society gets their food. Companies, like Perdue, provide such a picture on their meat packaging that gives people this false reality. The Meatrix debunks this myth by explaining all of the risks factory farming opposes on society, including the maltreatment of animals by saying, “Factory farming corporations have been destroying communities and mistreating their workers for decades. Since 1950, over two million small hog farms have disappeared” (The Meatrix). Not only is this video political in the sense that it is covering the issue about how corporations and the government are promoting factory farming through deceptive measures and harming society, but, it is political in the sense that it is spreading a political message. At the end of The Meatrix, Moopheus finishes off his argument with this message: “But, it’s you, the consumer who has the real power. Don’t support the factory farming machine. There is a world of alternatives” (The Meatrix). That alone shows that this video is spreading a political message because he is telling the audience to not support factory farming and that the consumers make the decisions on where their food comes from. Free Range Studios is using the current factory farming issue to promote this video, making this video rhetorical. Dean defines rhetoric as being “the element of strategic choice, of being able to consider situation, purpose, timing, audience, culture, and available options when using a genre” (Dean 13). This video is arranged in a precise manner, which helps the political message aspect by presenting the information in the order from bad to worse, starting with cruelty to animals and ending with the destruction of communities. This method informs but mostly persuades the viewers about what is really going on and that it is wrong by easing them into vital information.
At the same time, The Meatrix is informative. Moopheus lays down fact after fact in this video. For instance, he says, “Animals are packed as closely together as possible. Most never see sunlight, touch ground, or get fresh air. Many can’t even turn around. These poor conditions cause fights and disease amongst the animals. To fix this, the corporate machine began systematic mutilations. Practices such as debeaking chickens…” and that the antibiotics given to the animals “breads super strains of resistant disease-causing germs” (The Meatrix).
The political and informative genres are blended into one another perfectly. Not only do they go hand in hand, but they are not easily separated out, which is a good because it gives the video a smooth flow, transitioning from one point to another. They both use the same information but in different ways. The facts alone are what makes this video informative, but also, the facts are used to back up its political points.
As for the strengths of these genres, they both use compelling facts that shock the audience, and they do it in a way that is kind of discrete. For example, Free Range Studios made The Meatrix visually appealing and not too graphic when exploring each problem. They showed the alien-like machine destroying hog farms, which is quickly summarizing how corporations are destroying the hog farms and replacing them with factory farms without scaring the audience with gruesome pictures.
A major weakness is that all of this information was being said, but there were no sources to back it up in the video. It is not very convincing, especially when there is no proof that this information is even true. Therefore, having no documented sources will make it easier for someone to “live in the fantasy” because they will think everything said in the video is not true. That is not to say that there was not any sources on the website the video was displayed on; there were a ton. At the end of this video, the ending credits only showed “Get involved” above the website address. That is not enough and gives Sustainable Table an unrealistic expectation that its audience will click onto its website after viewing the video. This is because though people might be interested in the topic, not seeing documented sources will most likely deter them from moving forward, making them unsure of whether or not the information is actually true. What they should have done to be more effective is show a list all of the materials used to get the information in scrolling credits. Seeing that the information in the video was from some official corporation or association, for example, will make this video appear to be credible at first glance, giving the video more significance in the viewer’s eyes. This could also give them more motivation to look up additional information. Another thing that can be done is have arrows pointing in the video, guiding the audience to the information on the website. Better yet, have active links pop up in the video that directs the audience right to the information. It is a YouTube video, so it has that feature. This will make it easier for viewers to look up additional information quickly and effectively.
The message in The Meatrix is “true”. It is easy to see what the message is. They want people to see factory farming for what it really is. Free Range Studios wants us to know where our food is coming from, along with the harm that it is causing to society and to the animals. Through this video, they are trying to pass this message along to those who are blinded by the images corporations paint in their mind by using multiple genres, such as such as comedy, animation, political, and informative to back up their message. So, this video is a cartoon spoofing The Matrix whose main purpose is to inform the general public about the risks of factory farming.
Works Cited
Dean, Deborah. "Explaining Genre Theory." Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE, 2008. 11-15.
Food, Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. 2008.
Hatz, Diane. "Raising Awareness of Sustainable Food Issues and Building Community via Integrated Use of New Media with Other Communication Approaches ." School of Public Health and Health Services (2012): 3. PDF.
The Meatrix. Free Range Studios. 2003.
Unpacking “Imagining the Johnstown Flood”
Recently, I read “Imagining the Johnstown Flood” by Jerry Wemple and found it very interesting through the many elements he used. It provides numerous meanings, literal language, patterns, form, order, and subtle rhymes, which produces a certain kind of imagery for the reader, giving him his own “video clip” of what is going on throughout the poem. All of these factors make “Imagining the Johnstown Flood” successful. In my opinion, the author did everything right to get me interested in reading this poem by drawing me in from not only the title but the first line of stanza one, where it stops in mid-sentence. This made me want to keep reading, so I could finish the broken sentence that made me curious. Not only that, I had a connection with the poem. I interviewed him asking about his personal experiences as a poet and the construction of his poem, “Imagining the Johnstown Flood”.Dunmore, Pennsylvania, in the Central Susquehanna Valley, is where Jerry Wemple grew up (The Pennsylvania State University). He went to the University of Massachusetts and received his MFA (University). In Massachusetts, he worked as a newspaper reporter (Academia ). Wemple also served in the United States navy for some time (Academia ). His poem “You Can See It From Here” won the annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award (The Pennsylvania State University). He is the co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Poets & Writers). Jerry Wemple teaches English at Bloomsburg University, and creative nonfiction, literature about Pennsylvania and African-American life in rural Pennsylvania is what he is interested in (University).
The speaker of the poem “Imagining the Johnstown Flood” is the poet himself, but it could also be someone who witnessed the event. He is addressing those he sees by describing how they are handling the situation. For example, lines three to six, Wemple addresses a woman's husband through her action of reaching for him as he is being swept away by the current. There is a sad, mournful, and serious tone of voice because the poet describes how the flood is affecting the people of the town, including the death of others and how that, too, affects families who are trying to protect the ones they have left.
Heavy rain contributes to breaking the damn, which held twenty million tons of water that washed away the town, taking buildings, homes, along with families, and anything else that stood in the way of the rapid moving water. This takes place during 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The speaker's context of the disaster and how the people react to it affect the ideas and emotions which are represented. It brings about panic and chaos for the people who are trying to escape the man-eating water. There is a feeling of desperateness as parents try to scoop up their children as they float by tangled in hazardous debris. That alone gives off a dramatic and despairing vibe to see heartbroken families lose their own.
This poem does tell a story, starting backwards with effect instead of the cause. Basically, in the poem, it talks about how the flood causes tremendous damage; and then, it talks about how the flood started. Because this poem describes a place during a certain event, it could be considered a lyric poem. Although, it does not necessarily describe a state of mind or feeling. So, in my opinion, I believe it is not a lyric poem. The poem’s speaker delivers a performative monologue since he is not talking with another person, which makes it a very dramatic poem because he speaks about the disaster as it is going on. Line eleven to thirteen is a good example of how the poem is dramatic because it talks about someone who died in the flood. I believe the main interest is definitely psychological because the Johnstown flood of 1889 impacted everyone negatively as people died. And, those who did survive had nothing, unless, their family members survived, if they were lucky. Tremendous loss or those watching others suffer had to have psychologically damage people as they witnessed things a person should never have to see during their lifetime.
Many of the words that are used are depressing. Words such as tattered, cracked, grasping, sepia-toned, melodrama, passed, broken, and vacant. These words didn't seem to have a hidden meaning. They mean exactly what they were supposed to mean. For instance, sepia-toned can only mean one thing, a burnished color like you see in old photos. The language is mostly literal except for one occurrence where there is a simile used in line three it says, “Woman—empty arms outstretched like” and line four continues it saying, “Longfellow’s Evangeline grasping… (Wemple 178-179).”
As a whole, the poem evokes all of the senses, and there are many examples. When I read “Imagining the Johnstown Flood”, I can see everything that is happening, such as the frightened people grabbing onto anything that is sturdy enough to hold them up out of the water. The sound of rushing water shoving debris against people, left over structures that are still barely standing, and more debris; and, I can hear the screams of people who are being washed away as they cling to life. Also, I can hear the hollers of mothers and fathers who are trying to rescue their children. What I smell is muddy water and the pouring rain. I can taste dirty water that is infiltrating my lungs as I am trying to escape my doom. Soggy splinters in my hands cause an agonizing pain like wet bamboo under one’s fingernails, which was caused by trying to quickly grab a floating support beam that came from one of the houses. But, that is not close to being all that happens. The constant bombardment of heavy and large debris as I barely stay afloat in the cold murky water is tiring. Reading this poem makes me feel a part of it like I am also experiencing the traumatic event.
The words are ordered in such a way where the lines or stanzas end in the middle of a sentence; but, it is rearranged so that the word that leads off makes the reader want to guess what the following word is, making the reader continue reading the poem. I find it as a brilliant way to entice the reader. There is a regular pattern of lines and stanzas, breaking off in mid-sentence. Another thing is punctuation is used frequently. Periods are mostly used even with incomplete sentences. Not many of what is used are comas, and they are not used at the end of lines, just for listing things. A good example of both of these things is stanza four, line seven where it says, “Gown. The tattered family clinging,” and eight where it says, “to a cracked roof. The stuff… (Wemple).” Each stanza contains two lines, and most of the lines contain five words. Because of this, the poem is “closed”. Many endings of the lines end in “ing” and there are two lines, twenty-four and twenty-five, that end in “er”, giving the poem a subtle rhyme. There are not any alliterations or musical phrasing. The subtle rhyming works together with rhythm by making the poem flow pleasantly and easier to understand.
The title of this poem drew me in immediately. My mother’s side of the family is from Johnstown, and I remember her telling me about the three devastating floods. She told me she lived through the 1977 flood where the water was eight and a half feet deep. My mother also mentioned the building that had the three water levels marked off with the corresponding flood. Thinking about how she lived through that even if it was not as bad as the other two, makes me feel a little scared. When I did some research on the floods, it was not the water itself that killed the most people; it was the debris colliding into people. One wrong move and my mother could have been killed, and I would have never been born.
All of these elements put together make the poem flow nicely along with making it easier to comprehend. The way the words are put together brings out emphasis on the descriptions to make it sound very dramatic. These elements make it easier to distinguish the sad, mournful, and serious themes. The form is how the poem is constructed through patterns, word choice or vocabulary, the type of meaning, which in this case is literal, organization, and word sounds. Content is the meaning of everything put together, such as context of each word and how it relates to what is being read or how the full “story” is perceived. “Imagining the Johnstown Flood” by Jerry Wemple is very interesting to read because of the many elements he used.
After conducting an interview via e-mail with Jerry Wemple, I learned that it is a long process. Sending e-mails back and forth was part of it, but the main part was thinking about the right questions to ask after a little research. Then, I had to wait for his reply once I sent them to him. Once I received his answers, I had to make sure I understood everything he said. Lastly, was the thank you e-mail, which was easy enough. Nothing surprised me as I was doing this. His answers were well formulated and somewhat interesting. I tried to ask questions based on my experiences as a writer to see if there were any similarities. For example, I asked him, “What do you do when you have writer’s block?” His answer was different from mine. He goes through a series of exercises with boundaries, and reads. For me, I listen to music to grab the feelings that are given off each song and use it to build images. Another thing I do is talk to friends about anything other than what I’m writing, which provide me with ideas. My perspective and understanding did not change. I understood it and perceived the poem the same way Wemple did.
Imagining the Johnstown Flood
By Jerry Wemple
By Jerry Wemple
After the W.A. Rodgers illustration from Harper’s Weekly
One hundred years later, the picture
seems so overdone. The sepia-toned
seems so overdone. The sepia-toned
woman—empty arms outstretched like
Longfellow’s Evangeline grasping
Longfellow’s Evangeline grasping
for Gabriel—reaches toward her
bearded husband, child in a dressing
bearded husband, child in a dressing
gown. The tattered family clinging
to a cracked roof. The stuff
to a cracked roof. The stuff
of melodrama. Giant splinters
of trees, houses, furnishings,
of trees, houses, furnishings,
wagons, a perambulator. A face
of one already passed, looking
of one already passed, looking
up from beneath and beyond.
And everywhere the water. Waves.
And everywhere the water. Waves.
Rain. Surges. Surges. Surges.
Yet look closer. Bring your eyes
Yet look closer. Bring your eyes
Down from the steep cliffs that still
line the Conemaugh Valley, away from
line the Conemaugh Valley, away from
The 20 million tons of torrent
sweeping south from the broken dam.
sweeping south from the broken dam.
Come away from the twin
church steeples, all that’s left
church steeples, all that’s left
of the Lord’s place.
Come back to her. Someone younger
Come back to her. Someone younger
than you are now. With ten short fingers
and two vacant eyes.
and two vacant eyes.
Interview with Jerry Wemple
Leto: When did you first start writing, what made you feel the need to express yourself in this way?Wemple: I learned to read at a fairly young age, at four or so. Writing just seemed to follow. I remember writing “poems” in first grade. I actually got one published in the school newspaper.
Leto: What types of poems do you find yourself writing most? Do you have a recurring type?
Wemple: I often write narrative poems, but not always. Right now I am at work on a series of poems that stem from my memories of a well-dressed man who used to wander around town when I was a kid. (I grew up in Sunbury, a small town about 60 miles north of Harrisburg.) These poems tell a story, and they are mostly twelve lines with ten syllables in each line. I lave about forty of them so far. But I think I write in a variety of ways. Sometimes I write historical poems, sometimes I write about things that happened to me or that I witnessed.
Leto: What kind of work are you most drawn to reading yourself? Do you find yourself reading work similar to your own, or completely different?
Wemple: I read lots. I am always reading two or three different things. I heard a talk by the Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer Junot Diaz last year and what he talked about has his life as a reader. If you want to write, Diaz, and lots of other folks, say you have to be a reader first and foremost. I read lots of poetry. Among my favorites are Richard Hugo, who I like because he finds beauty in things that others often overlook, Langston Hughes, and William Carlos Williams. I used to not like the post-war English poet Philip Larkin, but now I do. Of course, I like lots of our great Pennsylvania poets such as Harry Humes and Julia Kasdorf. I also spend lots of time reading nonfiction. Stephen Elliott, author of the memoir The Adderall Diaries, is a fantastic writer. I can’t say I look for people who I write like, but I can say I learn a lot about writing from reading good writers, and borrow what I can from them.
Leto: What’s your favorite poem that you have created?
Wemple: I don’t have a single favorite poem, but one of my most successful poems has been “#39,” which was written about Roy Campenella, a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. I remember seeing a TV movie about Campenella when I was a kid. When I was in graduate school, I decided to write a poem about him, but really did not know enough to write the poem. So I read five books about Campenella and the Dodgers. That poem has been published in a couple of journals and several anthologies, and in one of my own poetry collections. When I read it to audiences, even though I may have read twenty other poems, someone always comes up to me to talk about the poem. So in that way I find it successful and a favorite.
Leto: How do you get in the mental place where you find this deeper interior and write?
Wemple: I don’t think there is a trick. You just need to write. I could be in a crowded space. It could be in a quiet room. It could be you have all day. It could be you have ten minutes. If you want to write, you write. Sometimes you are more successful than others, but I’ve written some good drafts in ten minutes.
Leto: Where is your favorite place to write?
Wemple: Wherever I can find some desk space. I used to think I needed someplace special, and I do have an office at work and at home, but lots of my writing, perhaps most of it, is not done in these spaces.
Leto: What do you do when you have writer’s block?
Wemple: I often give myself an exercise. That series of poems that I discussed earlier came out of a made-up exercise. I simply gave myself parameters: twelve lines each with ten syllables. The first few poems I wrote like this were bad. What I mean is that they were about subjects I’d written about before and in a better way. But around the fourth or fifth poem, I got onto a different track.
I will also read when I need to write. Reading something engaging works the brain and I start to think about writing, and then do.
Leto: Was there another reason beside the image you saw that made you decide to write the poem “Imagining the Johnstown Flood”? For example, was it a topic you were familiar with?
Wemple: I was on a two-day visit for a job interview in Johnstown and someone took me to the downtown flood museum and the dam site. I saw the reproduction of the illustration the poem references and when I got back to Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, I wrote the poem.
Leto: Have you ever been at the flood museum in the St. Michael's area?
Wemple: Yes, on that job interview, and since I got the job, I ended up living there for a few years and went out to the site a few more times.
Leto: What method did you use to come up with this poem? Did you write down words that first came to mind and then organize it? Or did you do something different?
Wemple: I can’t remember specifically, but usually I write out words and then shape the poem. Sometimes I move lines around. Often, very often, I am searching for better words. The process of coming up with a format first (as described earlier) is something I sometimes do, but not most often.
Leto: What was the main purpose in writing this poem?
Wemple: I was thinking about how the people must have felt, how specific people in the flood must have felt. The woman in the illustration, who perhaps has watched her family disappear, seemed engaging. But at the same time, it is all a bit overdone for our sensibility. We see horrors (or maybe we avoid them) every day on the news. Think of the hundreds of people – men, women, little children – being slaughtered in Syria right now. We become a bit desensitized. The Johnstown flood killed over 2,200 people, which is an amazing number. But each one was a person, with his or her own story, and each one was someone who was like you in some way.
Leto: How do you want others to perceive this poem?
Wemple: I simply wanted people to think about their connection to this tragedy, to any tragedy. We hear of massive numbers of people killed, and that sometimes stuns us. I’m sure you have seen the reading of the list of the victims of September 11. That’s one way of reminding us that September 11 killed individuals, not unnamed thousands.
Leto: There were 3 floods in Johnstown, which one are you referring to? I assume you were talking about the flood in 1889.
Wemple: Yes, the 1889 flood. Interestingly, the flood of 1977 did its own damage. As a result of the flood, Bethlehem Steel shut its down and the town has never recovered economically. Store never re-opened, people moved from town to look for other jobs, young people left soon after high school because of a lack of local opportunity. Look at the census statistics and you will find a dwindling community.
Leto: What where your thoughts and feelings while writing this?
Wemple: I am not sure I had any special thoughts while writing it. No matter the topic, my idea is to make a good poem, and to do that I have to pay attention to things like the sound and meaning of the words, the pace of the lines, line breaks, images and images clusters. While I am working on a poem, which always includes several revisions, I am like a mechanic, tinkering. At points, I am thinking, “Yeah, this is working, it’s pretty good,” or not. But I try not to judge the work in progress too much.
Works Cited
Academia . You Can See It from Here. 2011. 27 February 2012 http://bloomu.academia.edu/JerryWemple/Books/113690/You_Can_See_It_from_Here.
Hellerstein, Kathryn. "The Map." Pennsylvania, Contemporary Poets on. Common Wealth. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. 5.
Poets & Writers. Jerry Wemple. 2012. 27 February 2012 <http://www.pw.org/content/jerry_wemple>.
The Pennsylvania State University. Biography for Jerry Wemple. 22 June 2011. 27 February 2012 https://secureapps.libraries.psu.edu/PACFTB/bios/biography.cfm?AuthorID=1225.
University, Bloomsburg. A. G. "Jerry" Wemple. 2011. 27 February 2012 http://departments.bloomu.edu/english/faculty/wemple.htm.
Wemple, Marjorie Maddox and Jerry. Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets On Pennsylvania. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
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