“I put my hand on your thigh to comfort both of us, your hand came over mine, we stayed that way, suffering together in our bodies, as if all suffering were physical, we touched so in the presence of strangers who knew nothing and cared less vomiting their private pain as if all suffering physical” (Rich, 148).<\/p>\n
When I first read this, I noticed that pain and suffering was a\u00a0very dominant theme throughout it.\u00a0One phrase that immediately stood out to me was, “as if all suffering\u00a0were physical” and it was repeated several times throughout this particular stanza. I think Rich means that people are acting as if just touching each other will ease the pain, when in fact the suffering occurs internally. The phrase can\u00a0also mean that suffering has the ability to bring them together and that the presence of others can help heal. The word choice by Rich feels very distance, for example, she used phrases “strangers”, “cared less”, “private pain”. It is because usually when we suffer we have our loved ones around. But in these lines, strangers are suffering with one another. What I am trying to say here is that I think these lines are trying to represent that if one is suffering, people tend to hug them or touch them as if that is what will heal the pain. We need to understand that pain comes within and there are different types of suffering, which may not all be noticeable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“I put my hand on your thigh to comfort both of us, your hand came over mine, we stayed that way, suffering together in our bodies, as if all suffering were physical, we touched so in the presence of strangers who knew nothing and cared less vomiting their private pain as if all suffering physical” … Continue reading The Language of \u201cTwenty One Love Poems: XIV\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}