Name Kirsten Huscusson	Date 8/30/10	(right click on date to update)

Poem Reading Sheet: one is due each week. Pick a poem by a different author every time.  Make sure to pick a poem that is at least 14 lines. When you are done, save the reading sheet and send it to me as an attachment. 

List poem title, author, and year (if known). "Parsley", Rita Dove, 1983

List the speaker, audience, (if indicated) and situation of poem. In the first part of the poem the speaker/s seem to be a group of Haitian field workers in the cane fields, or one worker speaking for the group. The second part of the poem is in third voice, describing the thoughts of El General in the palace. 

Paraphrase the poem in prose lines (that is, translate it into your own words. Do not summarize it. Don’t use line breaks). If it is long, paraphrase the first fourteen lines.  There is a green parrot in the palace. Cane appears from the swamp and we harvest it. The General searches for a word. He is the whole world. We scream like parrots in the rain. The cane appears from the swamp and we harvest it, and we see the mountain we call Katalina. Children chew on the cane and wear down their teeth. The General selects the word perejil, and whomever can pronounce it will live. He smiles with shining teeth. We dream about the cane, rain, and wind. The cane seems to appear from the swamp. 

Discuss one thing the poem loses by being paraphrased into prose. When paraphrased, the dreamlike quality of the first fourteen lines is completely garbled. In verse form, one can understand that the worker/s are working so hard the cane seems to haunt them, appear out of nowhere, and fill their dreams. Paraphrasing kills the rhythm of the lines, which seem like a chant, and it turns the repetition of certain images (the screaming parrot, the cane) dull and simplistic. 

Discuss some of the poem’s sonic aspects (that is, rhythm, meter, repetition, alliteration, consonance, assonance). One outstanding sonic element for me is the use of alliteration in the repetition of "r" sounds in words like parrot, parejil, parsley, arrowhead, el General, mother. The General notes that his mother could roll an R like a queen -- even a parrot can. And of course, that very sound is the shibboleth by which the Haitians will be chosen for execution - if the field workers cannot pronounce parejil (parsley), they are considered Haitian and will be executed. 

Discuss some of the poem’s sensory aspects (that is, symbol, metaphor/simile, imagery, description) The most outstanding motif in the poem is the color green. It begins with the parsley-green parrot in the first lines and continues through the green of the fields and the green of parsley. I found it interesting because imagery around warfare is so often involved with red as the color of blood, but this poem takes the green of spring, the color of the sprigs men wear to celebrate the birth of their sons,  and makes it a harbinger of death and pain. Not only is  green associated with the parsley standard for execution, but with the sugar cane fields where people work endlessly.  

Discuss one thing you learned from the poem. (For example, look up any references or allusions and explain one of them here. Look up the history of a word in the American Heritage dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary, and see if it has changed. Describe an insight into the subject that surprised you. ) If you learned nothing from the poem, pick a different one. 
Dove's own note on the poem told me that  "On October 2, 1937, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley." The note was intriguing but not entirely accurate: the "Parsley Massacre" occurred over approximately 5 days from 10/2/37 to 10/7/37 and 20,000 to 30,000 Haitians were killed. 

It was not inspired by a devotion to herbs, but by alleged crimes of crop and cattle stealing committed by Haitians living on the borderlands of the Dominican Republic. To determine who was or was not Haitian, Trujillo had his soldiers hold up a sprig of parsley and ask, "What is this?" on the premise a Dominican Republic native would speak fluent Spanish and roll the R in parejil, whereas Haitians would pronounce it in the Creole way as "pèsi "