“Love”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57416 Tina Chang’s “Love” is a deeply moving poem that explores the relationships we have with our families and the secrets we keep from them. At the beginning of the poem Chang discusses the relationship she has been keeping from her mother in fear of her disapproving of his skin color. Along with this, she explains how it bothers her how much we as people keep from our mothers, although she does the same. Near the end Chang reflects on memories from her childhood and how she truly is her mother’s daughter. These thoughts lead Chang to believe that we tend to take our families and the relationships we have with them for granted. She says, “Does truth matter when it's floating face up or face down?” The answer to this isn't simple, although it can be agreed the reason we are not always face up with our truths is because we fear the aftermath. Overall, “Love” is a poem that everyone can connect to, which is Chang’s aim all along. From this poem we can all reflect on the relationships we haven't fully appreciated and the face down truths we have given in order to protect those same relationships.
2 Comments
1/13/2017 06:44:35 am
Hey Nora!
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Josie Kremer
2/3/2017 04:59:21 am
I like your analysis a lot. This seems to be a very personal poem while having impersonal implications that everybody can relate to, which seems to be the point. We all have "face down truths" yet we see ours in a different light from others'. The second line in the poem is interesting in how Chang immediately compares her mother to an entire republic, and how Chang defies her in "stairwell secrets" and "backhanded deals"—she does not see her mother as a single person, but rather an entire entity, made up of smaller bodies and covering other branches as a nation or government. It almost seems as if she fears her mother, revealed in the word choices in the lines, "My mother now is taking her sheers and cutting / through live shrimp." The last few lines are definitely something to consider as well, given the strange image of a flickering string of teeth. Good job!
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