Response to Swamp Songs

This was my second time through Swamp Songs. The material is of course still powerful, but I was able to read this time with an eye for craft. I have much to say about this text and will most likely be blogging about it more in the future but for now I think I will focus on elements of craft that I noticed this time through.

The author's choice of tense is interesting in this text. For example, in "Eye of the Storm," the author begins in past tense. "It was 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit..." (6), but in the next paragraph the author shifts to present tense: "Today, more than thirty years later, I'm visiting my mother..." Also in "Controlling Francois"--"I was moved by how well he could write," is followed by a story told in present tense, "My family is having their traditional Christmas Eve party" (63).

The choice to use shifting tenses is effective in Swamp Songs--when the tense shifts to present the reader knows that this moment is important. The portions of the text in past tense set us up for the anecdotes told in present tense. And what is really achieved by this choice is that the author is truly IN her memories.

"Controlling Francois" is one of the most successful pieces in the book. The subject matter is powerful, but the author manages not to come across as maudlin, a feat that is perhaps only possible after some time has passed. Also, the comparison of the author's autobiography to the landscape is particularly successful here: "We are not unlike the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi, my brother and I...making our way to the same end through different routes" (77). This comparison is spot-on, the events of the author's life are not being stretched to fit the nature writing motif of the book.

Another craft-related observation I had was in "Eye of the Storm." The author takes us into a memory of her childhood and uses the lines, "I couldn't have understood then, but I think I was feeling..." and "I know I felt _____ (my dog ate the last word of this sentence) as a child, though I could not have expressed it" (8). These lines serve as a device for inserting higher level thinking into a child's perspective. This device is something I anticipate "stealing."

And perhaps a list for myself on what was powerful to me in Swamp Songs, portions of the book that I would like to reflect on and write about in the near future:

This was my third time through "Controlling Francois." The story is similar to my own experience in the loss of my brother. The story is not precisely similar in that my brother had no problems until schizophrenia began to eat away at his brain at age 17. He was the one who we all thought would make it, the one who would escape the family curse of mental illness. The closeness and the complicated nature of familial intimacy is familiar however. "There's something about our spirits that rhymes" (63) is a quote that I'd like to reflect on in the weeks to come. I think that this closeness is born of a complicated upbringing. I had a depressed, emotionally inconsistent and sometimes psychotic father and a depressed mother who routinely cried at dinner--though no one drank, hardly a drop. As someone who quit drinking right before it killed her, I am shocked that neither of my parents sought refuge in oblivion.
As Dan grew into a man, I was drawn to him. I'd spent years being conflicted and confused about my father and Dan was the only one who knew what it was like, the only one who was there. And now he's gone and it's this loss that has hit me hardest. I was lost, then found for a few years, then even more lost after his death.

I am also intrigued by the line, "I whisper something in his ear, feel empty and stupid, and walk out of the room" (71). I am curious--does the author not remember what she said or has she chosen not to tell. I remember exactly what I wrote in the note that I slipped into my brother's coffin. I'm willing to give away a lot in my writing, but I'm not sure that I want to give this away.

"I've come to understand this nakedness as a mask of sorts, nakedness a shield for nakedness. After all, if it appears you have revealed all, no one will be curious about what you have not revealed" (20). Masks and false intimacy have been a pattern for me. I have always considered my inability to hold back, my compulsion to reveal too much to be a fault of mine but it's been pointed out to me recently that I am doing just this--using this calculated nakedness as a shield for what lies beneath.