7. How(e) I Relate to Eve

Part of Eve's Discussion

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the river seems to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.



This is one of those things that I read and just keep thinking "I. Wish. I. Wrote. This." That doesn't happen often--usually I can enjoy a piece from afar, applauding a writer's talent and wondering 'What can I selfishly take from this?'-- but occasionally I want to be 100% selfish. I want it to be mine.

I feel like I could talk about this poem forever, but I'll narrow my love down to a few points.

First, I find it difficult to call this a poem--does anyone know if that's what it's "classified" as (wow, hate using that word in this context)? But because it's in a book of poetry, I'll call it that. The drastic shift from typical stanzas and line breaks is sudden (though at the beginning of the work) and we all know anything sudden draws your attention to it. The first time I read it, I didn't really read it, though. I quickly looked over it, then moved on to poems-proper. Now that I have, of course, it's my favorite.

The images and ideas, of course, are fantastic and though I may never have had a bird eat out of my hand, nor decline eating out of my hand, it's relatable. The way the ideas string together is my absolute favorite part, though--that she can use commas rather than any other punctuation mark and you can still read it logically, connecting the points together in a way that you otherwise wouldn't. It sets a fantastic rhythm, and I kind of obsess over rhythm.

The way this is written really reminds me of one of my favorite authors of all time, Audrey Niffenegger. I don't know if I can say she's a favorite author, because I've only read one of her books so far, but even though upon first glance at the plot the book seems like a sensationalized love story, it's not. Her writing style is absolutely gorgeous--expected images in a new way and long, drawn out lines, like in this poem. A quote from The Time Traveler's Wife can be found at the bottom of my Blog. So, of course, I liked that.

The title, too. As usual, I read the title but don't really think about it until I read through it, then I look back at it. It strikes me that the title is "PART of Eve's Discussion"...who else wants to know what happens before and after this??? Especially if it's written this way!

And last but not certainly not least, I'm relating to this poem big time right now. I have some hard-time stuff going on at home, and even if it's not what this poem is "about" (ew), it's exactly how I feel at the moment. Is that now the best thing--when you can read a poem and get lost for a while, forgetting everything going on in real life?