In class essay #3

In Denise Duhamel’s Ka-Ching, she uses various forms of poetry throughout the book. She hides codes in some of her poems, she uses the form villanelle, and she uses the form sestina. The villanelle form is has 19 lines, 5 stanzas of three lines and 1 stanza of four lines with two rhymes and two refrains, with the first and third lines alternating until the final stanza where they end as a couplet. The sestina form consists of 39 lines, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each. The words at the end of the first stanza are rotated and used at the end of each stanza. The form I noticed and liked the most was the sestina form. I think this form is noticeable and effective because it catches the readers’ attention. She uses the form in “Delta Flight 656”, “Anagram America”, and “Please Don’t Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen”.

         In “Delta Flight 656”, Duhamel is riding on a plane and writes a poem dedicated to Sean Penn. In doing so of dedicating the poem to Mr. Penn, she ends each line with a word containing “pen”. The sestina form is very noticeable in this poem (also because she points it out) and it amazes me how creative she is just sitting on this plane coming up with all these words containing “pen”. However, in this poem the flow of “pen” words started to have more of an unnatural flow towards the end, like the line “..poets who waddle toward your icy peninsula of glamour like so many menacing penguins”. It’s creative she included penguins but the reference is random. She’s speaking to Sean Penn in the poem, she tells him how she wanted to be his pen pal and how she loved the poem he had written in 1987. The tone of this poem is somewhat silly, at times it seems serious but I think because of the sestina form it comes off as silly when she has to use unusual words to include her “pen”.

              When I first read “Anagram America”, I could not for the life of me figure out what the bold words at the end of each line meant. This is such a creative way to write a sestina, she uses only one word and mixes the letters up. At first this poem seemed a bit unnatural to me, but after reading it a few times I think it becomes not as unnatural seeming. When she cuts off words such as ‘Madonna’, ‘Ramadan’, and ‘about’ that’s where it becomes unnatural because those aren’t words that tend to be split up but because of her sestina she had to. The tone of this poem compared to “Photo Op” is very different. “Photo Op” has a very serious tone and she goes into too much detail describing her mother’s wound, it’s disturbing, while “America Anagram” is not as sad or depressing, but she still throws in some sarcastic seriousness.

         “Please Don’t Sit Like a Frog, Sit Like a Queen” was something Duhamel saw graffitied in a ladies’ bathroom. The tone of this poem is not really serious nor humorous, it’s advice; the poem is about how to be lady. When I read this poem, I can hear as if the speaker is saying it but I picture it being said by an English woman at a Cotillion rather than graffiti being read off of a bathroom wall. Unlike the other two poems, “Anagram America” and “Delta Flight 656”, the poem does not come off as unnatural sounding though. I actually really enjoy this poem the more I read it.