Throughout the poetry book re: f(gesture), Percival Everett combines many series of poems into one book. The second section of the book contains a series of poems named “Body.” Percival Everett’s “Body” contains a series of poems describing different parts of a female’s anatomy. Throughout the series of poems, Percival Everett is using the Blazon form of a poem. A literary blazon refers to the categorization of physical attributes of a subject, usually female (poetryfoundation). Throughout the poems, Everett is attempting to tell a story. More specifically, the poems may be understood as suggesting the conceivement and birth of a child. Throughout Percival Everett’s poem “Body”, he breaks down one large idea using body parts of a female. The section contains nineteen different poems which each compartmentalize parts of the female anatomy, while also telling a story. Throughout my first time reading this poem, I couldn’t interpret it very easily. The names of the body parts were mostly in Latin, so I could only tell that a few of the titles of the poems were body parts. I even asked my father what some of them were because he’s a physical therapist, so I assumed he would know what they were, but he was just as clueless as I was. Within our discussion is class, though, my group figured out a basic interpretation of the poems. There was also a small disagreement within my group over the meaning of the poems. Everett is describing childbirth only using scientific terms but in an artistic way. He begins with the Hyoid Bone and ends with the Epigastric. The body parts don’t appear to follow any order or pattern but end up telling the story of a woman’s conception of a child.
The first section to stand out to me as a possible conception story is the “Orbicularis Palpebrarum.” The beginning of the poem didn’t give me many hints because it is describing body parts with no specific hints of a story. The ending of the poem, however, states, “send us a wink, thicker now, with that sphincter, with that muscle around the looking”(46). It continues with the description of body parts but describes body parts that are developing. At first, this didn’t appear to me as body parts developing. While discussing this matter with my group, they pointed this fact out to me. With this discussion, there developed a sort of disagreement among my group that led to some frustration later on in the discussion. Some of the group members didn’t see these poems as a conception story, while some of us saw it almost immediately. After the small argument was settled, we agreed to disagree and continued trying to find points that backed up our different arguments of the deeper meaning of the text. The next poem, which was basically a selling point to me on the conception argument, was “Obturator Internus.” The poem describes that it is part of the pelvis, but I had to research exactly what the body part is used for. It is used for stability of the femur bone in the hip socket (https://zionphysicaltherapy.com/obturator-internus-dysfunction), which is quite important for a woman carrying a child according to my physical therapist father. The poem describes the body part as, “completing the arch, the canal for passage”(49). The Obturator Internus appears to be one of the final completing structures of the body preparing for childbirth. Also, the “canal for passage”, is almost definitely referring to a child passing through the body of a woman. One of the only things that could be passing through a woman is a child, and this poem describes the story through poetic language that is sometimes difficult to decipher.
The final poem within the series entirely points to a child residing in the body of a woman. The first stanza within “The Epigastric” states, “The stomach before, filled with sweet air, supplying all that lies in the cavity…”(61). The statement describes a woman’s midsection being filled with air, then, describes an entity taking the supplements of the woman within the body. A fetus would be the most likely entity within a body to be taking nutrients from the mother. This poem is the most descriptive of the series to document the child living within a mother.
Through the use of a blazon, Percival Everett describes the conceivement of a child. Each poems’ title is a different body part within the anatomy of a female with a specific description that lead a reader to make assumptions of the reason for discussing only certain body parts. The poems contain phrases that make it difficult to depict the meaning of the poem. Discussion was one of the most helpful tools in order to find the underlying meaning. Discussing different meanings with peers can aid a person in figuring out the meaning that they think is best. My initial thoughts on these poems do not reflect my thoughts now.