Analysis Of A Poem

Three New Poets

By: Sarah C. Harwell, Farah Marklevits and Courtney Queeny

The last section of Three New Poets was comprised of poems that powerfully told a story of a broad topic that would normally be hard to depict and express in such extreme detail had it not been for Courtney Queeny's command of language. "Twenty Four Poems" tells the story of women in the author's point of view and describes the idea of having trouble feeling comfortable in the female skin when so many things in the world appear to be out to "get you." Courtney herself appears to be the subject of these poems and she clearly illustrates to the reader how she believes women as a whole were dealt bad cards in the game of life. Her poems portray vivid and descriptive images of relationships in which the girl is left to wallow in self-pity after her boyfriend left because of her numerous flaws and faults. Subsequent to this, the girl is left feeling insecure and unsure of how to continue on. Ms. Queeny was able to masterfully articulate this message through her poetry using irony, symbolism, metaphors and what I took to be personal anecdotes as well. This is a common occurrence in a girl's life, and she masterfully captures what goes through a woman's head during such troubled times. However, the other prominent theme in this section I found to be even more beautifully, yet brutally expressed. It's readily apparent in Courtney Queeny's poetry that she has an utter dislike for her Mother and is uncomfortable in her skin as a woman because of the "genetics" that linger beneath. The intense and extreme language powerfully grasps the reader's attention, and emits a deep-seeded feeling of hatred and contempt. These are the feelings that Ms. Queeny apparently felt towards her mother, and it takes a talented author like herself to be able to write poetry that emits an essence of these exact feelings.

Many of the poems in general consisted of such extreme writing to illustrate this point that I had to re-read the lines to make sure I wasn't missing something important that maybe diluted the intensity and gravity of the message. I believe that several messages and lines in a few poems about her Mother powerfully depicted her feelings and opinions better than any one poem in general. For example, in Elegy for my Mother, she writes, "I just want you buried, silenced under the gravity of dirt. Stay away. Please." Essentially, she wants her mother dead and gone forever. In Conviction she doesn't just express the contentment she'd feel from her Mother's death, but just through this one line illustrates her lack of true remorse if she killed her mother herself: "If I murdered my mother but I confessed and did penance...I could still go to heaven, where I knew she'd never be." This line did so much for me as I read and re-read it and has so much depth to it. She's essentially stating that the ultimate sin, murder, would still bring her to heaven and her Mother wouldn't even be accepted there. This simply and beautifully portrays just how terrible her mother was, and