\u201cis only the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a \/ blue dress \/ out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea.\u201d (3)<\/p>\n
As I gave The Blue Dress<\/em> more and more time during our in-class freewrite, I was surprised by the layers beneath the surface, and the fact that each one changed my fundamental emotional response to the characters mother. These lines represent my initial reading, but in order to complete that picture, I also have to pull from an earlier set of lines: \u201cis a good-bye in a flooded, antique room, is good-bye in a room of \/ crystal bowls\u2026\u201d \u2013 At first I fixated on the flooded, antique room as a dissolution of family-tied (assumed heteronormative) tradition(s), a metaphor that accompanied the dress. Then, in the final lines \u201cis only the moon\u2026 is my mother is a moon\u201d I connected the mother to the light of the moon, and gave primarily positive connotations to this mother daughter relationship. This createed the picture of a mother standing beside her daughter, who is wearing this new dress, and stepping out to sea as part of a new generation, a new identity. (lesbian\/queer.)<\/p>\n I wrote in my free-write that this \u201cdoes not give the impression of judgement.\u201d But I also admitted that something wasn\u2019t quite right, and the language surrounding her mother didn\u2019t quite give the impression of complete acceptance, either. As I sat with the poem longer, I was drawn to the repeated sentiments such as \u201cout to sea\u201d \u201cfloating through the streets\u201d and \u201ccrystal bowls.\u201d I would really appreciate someone\u2019s take on the repition of crystal bowls, but for me, the other two sentiments were enough to change my perspective on the poem. Being \u201cout to sea\u201d can go either way in terms of positive or negative connotations, but I think for most people it\u2019s closely related to being \u201clost at sea,\u201d and the poem has such a dreamlike quality that to me is also a red flag \u2013 you don\u2019t want to be falling asleep at the wheel of a boat. You also get the dreamlike quality from \u201cbed\u201d in line 13. \u201cFloating through the streets\u201d is very important, especially when compared with one of the primary drivers of the poem: being watched. I\u2019m not sure if all my build up was necessary or if it was just confusing, but it\u2019s important to note that the main character, while aware that they are floating through the streets, is only seen by the mother. What\u2019s more, the mother sees past the dress, sees the corporeal form of \u201cme\u201d, and the word \u201cfloating\u201d is attributed to the way the mother sees.<\/p>\n The more I think about this poem, the more jumbled my thoughts get, honestly, there\u2019s just so much going on and so many potential connections. There\u2019s so many words that stand out as well, like how the dress the character wears belongs (or belonged) to her mother. \u2013 Does her mother being in the moon mean that she has passed? There\u2019s so many things to point to this, the good-byes, the tears, the leaks. And now I\u2019m moving even beyond the train of thought that asks \u201cwas the mother supportive.\u201d Now I\u2019m back with the hurricane (that drowned house \u2013 line 11) with the death of a mother and the items the main character kept (are the crystal cups and bowls heirlooms she\u2019s leaving behind?) And what about the one very specific place mentioned, the Mississippi river? There\u2019s just so much more to this poem than I initially gave it credit for, and I liked it on the first read.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cis only the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a \/ blue dress \/ out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea.\u201d (3) As I gave The Blue Dress more and more time during our in-class freewrite, I was surprised by the layers beneath the surface, and … Continue reading Evolving Undercurrents in The Blue Dress<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367","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\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}