White Flowers
White Flowers
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Date
1989
Authors
Jayasundera, Ymitri
Advisor
Plumly, Stanley
Citation
DRUM DOI
Abstract
I think of the act of writing a poem as a
ritual--the precise timing, the arrangement of the
steps following one another until it becomes a whole,
an eternal return of the way memory works. The poems
are a means of walking--often blindly, hesitantly-into
the self as into a cave, vast and complete, and
the only light is the flashlight in my hand that shines
into a dark corner barely letting me see the images
that quickly disappear before the light. The
darkness, defining, takes on a life of its own, so that
the act of writing becomes listening to the silence
within the self as if the past can only be retraced by
hand. The central event in the speaker's life is the
death of her father. This book is framed by his
presence, as the poems in Part 11 are her attempt to
hold the past in place.