Category: Uncategorized

Bakkos, who is alone amongst the Olympians for his youth along the ancient. In Frenzy, Percival Everett’s adaptation of The Bacchae, pains are taken to emphasize how singular Dionysos is. He is the youngest of the primary twelve Greek gods, and perhaps would have been mortal had he not been re-birthed by Zeus. Dionysos is the only god, and one of the rare myths in which a child is born from a male figure. Even Athena was born from Zeus’s mind, she was never carried within a body, and she never had another parent. Dionysos, therefore is alone in this aspect, being the only Olympian to be twice-born. Everett takes pains in Frenzy to highlight each of the qualities that separate Dionysos from the other Greek gods, and this theme of isolation is one theme that persisted throughout the works of Everett that we’ve read for class.

Starting with a look into Frenzy, almost every character seems to exist alone. Besides Dionysos, who, in Everett’s version of The Bacchae, is a combination of god and mortal, Everett went out of his way to create a character to feel things for the young god. Vlepo, like his master, is isolated on behalf of the nature of his being. Throughout the story, there is much question into exactly what he is, and the bounds of his existence, that is, whether he is capable of human things. As the story closes, he comes to cease his questioning, and almost accept that he will never be like anyone, or anything that he sees. When once he felt love for Sibyl, in one of their final conversations, he is turned bitter and daring, and after she calls him a bitter man, he replies almost without hesitation ‘If a man I am’. Another time, as Bakkos requests him to bring the spirits along that may be Semele, Vlepo comments ‘and we all, god, shade, and whatever I was, filed out of that chamber…’. These quotes seem to identify his conceding to the wretched fate he has been given, and the shift of his mental state makes him cruel. His growing spite and cruelty only distance him more from the world, until neither he, nor Dionysos can tolerate the loneliness they feel.

Everett’s Frenzy concludes with Vlepo killing his master, bothar an act of independent will, and of compliance. In Everett’s variation of the Greek myth, he decides to make Dionysos the only of the Olympians able to sleep, and makes this a grand plot point as bystanders such as Tiresias watch him and ask if the half-god knows the danger of what he is doing, as Dionysos is also the only god that can die. As it happens, the wine god was aware of what his quest for sleep might lead to, as he asked of Vlepo, ‘After I have achieved sleep, real sleep, I want you to cut out my heart from this body and leave it unceremoniously on the ground.’ and proceeded to hand Vlepo the exact knife to do the deed. Everett’s Dionysos was a melancholy man, as aware of his mortality as he was of his immortality should no one kill him. Dionysos  could not bring himself to care about anything after his own discovery that time would eventually make everything meaningless. At one point, after Vlepo accuses him of wasting time with such Bacchic revels, the god responds “‘A waste of time?” he questioned, ‘But there is so much time. Do you know what I mean, Vlepo?” he asked, sadly. “There is just so much of it.’”. Dionysos cannot deal with an immortality of separation and distance, he couldn’t relate to anything, or anyone around him, and thus he couldn’t live with any of it. Separated from the world of mortals with the story of his birth, his parentage, and his powers over men, yet separated from the world of gods by his youth and mortality, Dionysos couldn’t tolerate his distance from the world.Separated from the world of mortals with the story of his birth, his parentage, and his powers over men, yet separated from the world of gods by his youth and mortality, Not Sidney Poitier did not understand how to approach his distance from the world. Throughout Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier, the protagonist begins his life distanced from others. Born of a hysterical pregnancy to a mother all believed to be insane, with no father in sight, and a name that confused most of his potential playmates into what he describes as ‘always receiving beatings from boys with whom I wished to play.’ Not learns to fesmerize purely to make it stop. He is distanced also from reality, through his life frequently slipping into the plot of a Sidney Poitier film, taking hold of him sometimes for months at a time, as in his experience in the South, getting arrested for being black, spending time in jail, and falling into the sequence of The Defiant Ones. Not Sidney’s life is anything but ordinary, and it is nothing that anyone else can relate to. Rather than death as a means to cope with the direction that his life has veered, Not Sidney, by the end of the novel, seems to become Sidney Poitier. This is an almost death that eradicates the confusion of calling someone ‘Not Sidney Poitier’, almost as if he is deciding that, rather than continuing to distance himself from the world, he would rather settle for being someone that he isn’t. Because for him, that falsehood sounds better than isolation.

During one of the sessions in English class where I worked on a blog post with a group, I was given a sheet to reflect on how well I felt I was doing, along with where my strengths and weaknesses in the writing process lay. I had thought of it as a pretty simple task, and filled it out without much thought. However, when I got the sheet back the next day, I saw that Professor McCoy had left a note. I had written that I was doing a good job in conveying my opinion within the post itself, and she had written that there is a big difference between an opinion and a well-made and evidenced claim. What I gathered from the comment was that, in order for my blog posts to prove a point, they could not be purely opinionated, but rather had to be comprised of well supported claims. However, as I began to think about these seemingly different concepts, I realized that, in order for an essay to work, both opinions and evidenced claims have to be present. 

Before going into the importance of using both opinions and claims, it’s important to understand what each actually means. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, an opinion is defined as “a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter”. In simpler terms, this means that an opinion is how one decides to view a particular matter using only their current knowledge. A claim, on the other hand, is defined as, “an assertion open to challenge”. And while the definition doesn’t explicitly mention the need for evidence, I interpreted that the claim itself must have evidence in order for it to be challengeable. These two concepts oppose each other pretty strongly, with opinions being one’s personal views and another being grounded in facts. And yet, they also go hand and hand with each other during the course of essay writing; after all, an opinion is necessary for a claim to even exist. 

I feel that my writing in the past has encompassed this synonymousness well. In my fourth blog post, I talked about the book I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett, and how one of the characters within the story, Ted Turner, embodied the random nature of both the book itself and Percival Everett’s style of writing. This was what I considered to be one of my better blog posts, and part of this reason was that I made sure to back up any claims I made with evidence. For example, when referencing the contrasts between planning and randomness, I made sure to mention a quote from the book itself rather than relying on my own assertions. But in order for me to begin making the claim, I had to hold the opinion that Ted Turner embodied randomness. Had I not believed in this claim, my writing would have most likely suffered. At least for me, in order to get the conviction to write, I need to believe in what I’m writing. Otherwise, I’ll feel as though I’m writing lies. Opinions motivate claims. Therefore, in order to write a proper essay, or really any statement-based piece, I feel that there needs to be a balance between opinion and claim.

If a written work plans to make a convincing statement, it needs to include both backed claims and strongly held opinions in order to be cogent. Take Percival Everett’s Re:f (gesture), a collection of three groups of original poems centered around certain themes. The poems that struck me the most was the poem titled “6”, which concludes the book. In the poem, the following statement is made: “Seven men lost, but not seven.” (70) I interpreted this to mean that the concept of seven would still exist even if humans weren’t around, and I found the claim to be pretty interesting. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that the line didn’t really fit the criteria of being a claim. It has no evidence to back it up whatsoever; and although this poem doesn’t try to be too argumentative, it is still contending the nature of “seven”. Without proper support, the statement is nothing more than food for thought, and doesn’t actually prove anything. Though it is unclear as to whether these poems were written to actually argue any points, they seem to hold pretty strong opinions. But that’s all they really are. Opinions. The poems don’t offer any conclusive evidence. Only one side of the coin is present. And in order for the poems to make any solid argument, I feel that, just like in essay writing, they must include the balance mentioned before.  

Not every written piece needs to push an argument. Many famous literary works, such as 1984 or Lord of the Flies, provide the reader with engaging stories and what-if scenarios while not relying too hard on trying to push a belief. But even if it is not necessary, when an argument is made, it must be strong. And in order to be strong, it must have a balance of evidence and opinion. One benefits the other. Their balance is what an argument secure. 

One of my favorite musicals of all time is Les Miserables.  One day during my reading of I am Not Sidney Poitier I was watching the film adaptation of the musical and noticed a similar theme between the two.  The novel ends by Not Sidney allowing people to assume he is Sidney Poitier and accepting an award on his behalf.  He was talking to people that assumed he was Sidney as if he was actually Sidney Poitier and never corrected them. After a life of constantly explaining that he is not Sidney Poitier, he finally gives up and just lets people assume what they want to assume.  In Les Miserables a similar situation takes place.  Throughout these two situations, a character changes the way they identify themselves in order to better a situation.  Not Sidney begins identifying as Sidney Poitier and Eponine, from Les Miserables begins identifying as a boy in the June Rebellion war.

Throughout Les Miserables, a storyline develops a love story of a low-class girl named Eponine, and an upper-class boy named Marius.  Eponine had loved Marius since her childhood. Her family was of a higher class but then fell to a lower class because her parents were thieves, and their old tricks were no longer working.  Marius comes from a family of wealth but began disassociating with them because he was participating in a rebellion of the lower class. Eponine showed several hints throughout her life to show Marius that she was in love with him.  Marius seemed to never understand her feelings towards him and ignored her advances. A new girl, Cosette, comes to town and Marius falls in love with her immediately. Eponine didn’t want this to happen, so she decided to dress up as a boy and take part in a battle that Marius was also fighting in.  She gave up her identity as Eponine to force Marius to notice her. In the end, Eponine takes a bullet for Marius as her last attempt to show Marius how she feels. He realizes that this boy he had been fighting alongside was Eponine. He finally realizes how she has felt towards him, but it was too late.  Eponine completely stripped herself of her identity because she was tired of the life she had to live for many years. In order to finally get attention from others, she assumes the identity of a different person. The only way to finally achieve the life she wanted, she has to give up the life she had lived for years.  This is very comparable to Not Sidney Poitier.

Throughout the novel I Am Not Sidney Poitier, the main character Not Sidney Poitier goes through life constantly having to explain to people that his name is Not Sidney Poitier, and when he gets older, that he is not the actor Sidney Poitier.  He meets many people throughout his life, and the problem constantly presents itself. At the end of the novel, Not Sidney gets off a plane at LAX and is greeted by a driver waiting for Sidney Poitier.  The driver assumes that Not Sidney is Sidney Poitier and Not Sidney is tired of explaining that he is not him so he joins the driver and is taken to an award ceremony. He is aware that he is still Not Sidney but doesn’t say anything to anyone regarding this fact.  He accepts the award on Sidney Poitier’s behalf and allows everyone to assume that he is Sidney Poitier. On the last page of the novel, Not Sidney states that the people in the audience of the ceremony do not know him, but they may know him better than he knows himself (234).  He is confused by his identity because it is constantly questioned throughout his life. A label is just a label and it doesn’t matter because the only aspect of a person that matters is what’s on the inside. Names mean nothing because it doesn’t tell anything about the person, it forces people to make assumptions. 

 Les Miserables and I am Not Sidney Poitier reflect each other greatly.  Although both characters parted from their original identity, it didn’t change the outcome of their situations.  Eponine did not get Marius to fall in love with her because no matter what identity she chooses to assume on the outside, she will remain to be the same person on the inside.  In Not Sidney’s case, people will assume who they think he is on the outside, while only Not Sidney will know who he actually is. Outside identity does not reflect who people identify as on the inside.  Changing a label will not change the person.

Order, organization, clarity, a system; these are all expected when reading something. Any story has a story line, and whether the author decides to tell it straight through, or jump around in time, as long as it’s being told clearly, the story’s order remains the same in the end. In something like a dictionary, it has organization; usually alphabetically. The same goes for the fourth edition of The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray; it is structured alphabetically, but it really shouldn’t be.

If there is a glossary full of literary terms, it should be organized in a certain way. It should categorize the words based off of how they are used. For example, “archetypal criticism” should be placed near “new criticism”, because they are both types of criticism. However, because Murfin and Supryia’s glossary is in alphabetical order, these two terms are 262 pages apart. If somebody has to write a paper on different forms of criticism, they would have to flip back and forth between countless pages just to find all of them. “New criticism” is on page 286, “applied criticism” is on page twenty-three, and that page just tells you to go find “practical criticism”, but of course it doesn’t let you know that it’s on page 347. If the book was organized by category, they would all be next to each other. Another reason why using alphabetical order to organize this glossary is bad is because of the same reason that nobody likes looking up “practical criticism”; it just tells you to look up a different word. For example, the term “apologue” has a definition on page 22, and it just says, “see fable”. “Fable is on page 139, but it’s not like the book tells you that. You have to flip around pages for a minute before finally finding it. So, it seems that alphabetically is not always the best way to organize something.

In Percival Everett’s collection of poems, re: f(gesture), the first section is entitled (Zulus). The poems under this section are each represented by a different letter of the alphabet, so of course, they’re in alphabetical order. Although they’re technically are organized, most of these poems do not actually need to be in any special order, because they don’t relate. Some of them though, should be next to each other. In my last blog post, I mentioned that poems F and K relate to each other, sharing themes of both the trojan war, and the children of Leda, the queen of Sparta. So, in my mind, K should follow immediately after F. By keeping these poems five pages apart, it is likely that a reader will simply miss any sort of connections they have, just as I did the first time I read (Zulus). Other than those two poems, none of the other poems appear to relate to each other, so once again, it seems that alphabetically is not always the best way to organize something. His next set of poems is entitled (Body). Again, these poems have a structure, but this time it is not alphabetically. There is no visible structure at least, and since the poems in (Zulus) didn’t connect, one would assume that these don’t either. However, after reading them, it becomes clear that they do. I explained their connections in my previous blog post, “Celebrating Life”. The entire collection of poems is Percival Everett’s idea of celebrating life. He begins with attraction, moves onto passion, and ends it with birth. So, this in his first section, (Zulus), he organizes it alphabetically, although the order doesn’t actually matter. In (Body), he makes it look like it has no structure, but there actually is, and he uses the order to tell a story. The third and final section in re: f(gesture), entitled (Logic), is organized numerically. 1 is all about a single object. No object in specific, maybe not even an object, but still a singular thing. 2 is about X, the variable. 3 is about remembering someone, but also remembering if they even exist. So far, they do not relate to each other specifically, and only 1 related to its title. Reading on to 4 and 5, once again, we see that these poems do not have to be in any specific order either. This brings us to the final poem in the collection, 6.

“Seven men

can be obliterated,

burned or hanged

or drowned in a lake

and forgotten.

Men gone, but

not seven.

Seven men lost,

but not seven.

Seven is, will be.

All men will die

but not seven.”

            To start off, this poem is entitled 6, but it’s all about the number seven. Everett is making the point that seven men can be completely wiped off the face of the planet, yet seven never changes. Sure, men died, but it was still seven of them. The men can disappear, but the fact that it was seven of them never will. So not only is the poem 6 all about seven, it’s about how it doesn’t matter what happens to something, what it is will never change. I see this as a way of saying that structure is not actually important. Whether something is organized alphabetically, numerically, or completely random, their meaning won’t change, and any of the that connected before will still connect in a different order. Maybe that’s why he structured (Zulus) alphabetically but made the two poems that connected to each other be 5 pages apart. So, maybe structure doesn’t matter.

F is for the feathered thrust

And the birth of twins.

Leda never felt a thing.

Penetrated by the force majeure,

A trick in the air.

F is for fuck.

Finis coronat opus.

F is for Frankenstein,

Who did not name his baby.

Always name offspring.

“De donde vienos, amor, mi ninos?”

-Percival Everett

Throughout Percival Everett’s “Zulus”, he constructs poems that each begin with a letter of the alphabet following alphabetical order.  The poem beginning with the letter F tells a story that has a commonality with some of the other poems within the series. The consistent statement made within several of the poems is, “always name offspring”(20).  The other poems that contain this statement refer to different concepts within each poem, but they allude to the same conclusion that naming a child is crucial. Not naming a child upon birth can lead to the child not living a good and fulfilled life, and the poem contains examples of this occurring such as the story of Frankenstein and the Greek mythology story of Leda and the Swan.  These recurring themes within the poems, I thought was quite contradictory of Perical Everett to be endorsing. Percival Everett does not endorse labels. A name is considered a label and he is endorsing naming children immediately otherwise the child will not live a fulfilled life, or causing harm to others involved with the child. The poems’ messages mostly all connect with each other but do not endorse the beliefs that Percival Everett usually preaches.

Within the poem beginning with the letter F, Percival Everett mentions two stories having to do with the creation of children.  The first is the story of Leda and the Swan. I was not aware of this story prior to reading the poems, but some of my group members during the discussion of this poem educated me on the topic.  According to an article titled Leda and Zeus in Greek Mythology (https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/leda.html), Leda and the Swan involves a woman named Leda, and the Greek god Zeus.  Leda is a beautiful woman who attracted the attention of Zeus. Zeus disguises himself as a swan and impregnates Leda without her knowledge, described in the poem as Leda never feeling a thing (20).  Within the same day, Leda also sleeps with her husband and multiple children are born. The children face lives of being tormented by other gods because of the way they were conceived. This triggers the argument of children needing to be born out of a pure background.  These children face a life of wrath from other gods because of the way they were conceived.

The next allusion made within the F poem is the story of “Frankenstein”.  The author of “Frankenstein” began the story after experiencing a traumatic event.  At eighteen years old, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley fell pregnant with a child according to an article in The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein).  After not naming the child, she found the baby dead after a night of not feeding the child.  She then writes the story of Frankenstein. A mad scientist creates a monster that he never gave a name.  The monster is depicted as a horrific being. The scientist that created the monster is eventually killed by the monster.  This supports the meaning behind the “F” poem by Percival Everett. The poem alludes to the fact that parents need to name their children or something horrific will happen.  The scientist who made a creation full of desire was killed by that very creation, and the reason for this could be because he never named the monster. The monster was never given an identity, which led to a downfall within the story.

Both of these examples are contradictory to the opinions of Percival Everett.  Everett doesn’t believe in categorization, as discussed in one of my previous blog posts, (https://readerandtext.sunygeneseoenglish.org/2019/12/04/do-you-like-genre-i-do/).  For him to state throughout these poems that children need to be named, is quite contradictory of his statements within interviews.  He is aware that labels exist within society but chooses to ignore them within his own life. Writing these poems, and advocating for the labeling of a child goes against everything he usually advocates.  I don’t know the exact reason for this, but I have an idea. Though he doesn’t totally believe in labels, he may think they are sometimes necessary.  

Why does Percival Everett’s contradiction matter?  For me, this conveys the idea that beliefs do not have to be concrete.  Beliefs can be subjective and should be subjective. Opinions can change and that means that a person is intellectual learning and growing.  Everett’s opinion of labels should be fluid based on the situation. If giving a child a name can give them a better life than the alternative of not giving them a name, then the belief should change.  Labels can help one develop an identity, then if the label no longer fits the identity, the label should change. Labels should exist, but be subjective to the individual.

There are many commonalities among Percival Everett’s many works. Few authors utilize allusions as frequently as Percival Everett. Everett expertly alludes to countless other works in his novel “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” and in his collection of poems titled “re: f(gesture)”. It is impossible to look at Everett’s works through any lens other than an intertextual one. Researching each one of Everett’s many allusions between the novel and the collection of poems would take hours easily. Disregarding Everett’s allusions would not only be an injustice to his works, but it would also make understanding them extremely difficult. Intertextuality and allusions are invaluable to Everett’s writing, because the constant references to other works deepens the complexity of his writing and allows the reader to dive deep into the interconnectedness of his literature. 

According to “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms”, the term allusion is “an indirect reference, often to a person, event, statement, theme, or work. Allusions enrich meaning through the connotations they carry” (10). The second sentence is a great description of allusions because allusions do “enrich” literature through the “connotations” that they add to the work. That is what Everett’s literature is all about, enriching his work through complex connections with other works. When the connections come in between texts it is called “intertextuality”. Intertextuality according to “The Bedford” is the “condition of interconnectedness among texts, or the concept that any text is an amalgam of others, either because it exhibits signs of influence or because its language inevitably contains common points of reference” (215). The “interconnectedness” from Everett’s works to other works stems from his ability to make references that are sometimes blatant and sometimes very well hidden in plain sight. An example of a “blatant” reference is in “re: f(gesture)” when he says “In the Bible, Daniel knew much” (18). This is a clear nod to the Bible and Everett doesn’t seek to hide this allusion. However, in “I Am Not Sidney Poitier”, Patrice says “I guess that warden guy has got hisself one of dem sense of humor” (55). This quote is a not as clear nod to the movie “The Defiant Ones”, which famously starred Sidney Poitier. Without having seen “The Defiant Ones”, a reader could easily overlook this reference as original material that Everett conjured up himself. Understanding where these references derive from enhances the literature for the reader, and brings whole new meanings to Everett’s literature. 

Allusions are so vital to Everett’s work that “I am Not Sidney Poitier” is based almost entirely on them. Everett is alluding to award winning actor, Sidney Poitier and his many critically acclaimed films. As stated earlier in this blog, Everett utilized Sidney Poitier’s “The Defiant Ones”, but it certainly does not end there. Elements of “Lilies of the Field” take up the majority of the end of the novel, and it is just as important as “The Defiant Ones”. Everett’s utilization of greedy nuns that convince Not Sidney to do hard labor for them is straight out of “Lilies of the Field”. In “I Am Not Sidney Poitier”, Sister Irenaeus did everything she could to get a church built, telling Not Sidney “We must build the church” (201). This is a clear reference to Mother Maria in “Lilies of the Field” and her desire to “build a chapel”. The allusions doesn’t stop at “Lilies of the Field” however. The novel is riddled with little Sidney Poitier movie easter eggs, like Not Sidney’s dinner with his girlfriend’s parents. This awkward dinner is a reflection of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, which is another famous movie starring Sidney Poitier. In the novel, Not Sidney’s girlfriend, Maggie, has extremely racist parents even though she herself is African American. Not Sidney, is criticized, however, because he is a significantly darker skin tone than Maggie’s family. Maggie’s whole family is guilty of some level of racism, but her father is horrible and isn’t afraid to speak his mind. In one instance, Maggie’s father had the audacity to say “You are a bit on the dark side. Not that I care, but a fact is a fact” (149) to Not Sidney’s face. The whole premise of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is black man meeting his white wife’s racist family; so the connection is evident and considering it is another Sidney Poitier work, it is almost certainly a nod to the film. Everett’s references to Sidney Poitier’s many films in “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” shows that there are a vast amount of hidden allusions in his work that make his literature extremely complex. 

Everett loves to add allusions into his works in order to connect to other works. His collection of poems entitled “re: f(gesture” and his novel “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” utilize allusions throughout and wouldn’t be the works that they are without the many references. An intertextual web is built by Everett through the connections that he makes.

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.