Elise\’s Blog

Chryss Yost “Lai with Sounds of Skin”

- Lai is a type of French poem

- Aabaabaa rhyme scheme

- Reverse role of linen and skin–> “Shall we dress in skin/ our living linen?”–> dressing linen in skin rather than dressing skin in linen

- Linen–> reference to bed sheets

- weftà cloth or textile–> “bone weft”–> cloth of bone

- Linen/skin and bone weft–> both are connecting human body to fabric

- “pull of masculine/ into feminine”–> refers to sex–> woman is linen/skin and man is bone weft?

- “the heft”–> bulk/ bolt of fabric–> bolt of linen

- Weaving fabric is being compared to sex-> “the warp, weave, and spin/ of carded days in/ tightly twisted thin/ yarns that we begin-”

- “skin to skein to skin”–> human skin to a spool of thread–> skein also means series of like things–> skin and skein are pronounced the same way

- Alliterations: “living linen”, “tightly twisted thin”, “like wool/ like will”, “spoken to silken”, “skin to skein to skin”

- Overall–> author is comparing sex to fabric/ making fabric

T.S. Eliot’s “Virginia”

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.

(___= alliteration)

Although Eliot does not make the end words of his poem rhyme, he uses alliteration to make his poem flow and have musical elements. He uses words that start with a letter (“Red river, red river,”) to produce that kind of alliteration as well as using a rhyming alliteration within the lines such as “No will is still” and “Wait. Gates wait.” In doing this he creates a rhythm in his poem that makes up for its lack of ending rhymes.