In the article “How to Read a Poem” written by William Carlos Williams, he acknowledges the challenges of reading poetry. The readers must “complete” what the poet has begun. This week the poem that I am choosing to speak about is “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey. This poem is about all the “white lies” the speaker told during her childhood, as the poem progresses the story becomes less innocent. The speaker uses spondee in the third line of the poem “light-bright, near-white” which first introduces us to the racial theme of the poem. The speaker goes on to talk about her “white lies” as she is identified as white by one of her classmates “‘…the time a white girl said (squeezing my hand), Now we have three of us in this class. But I paid for it every time Mama found out.” The speaker was happy to be seen as white but in doing that she was denying her black mother. Her “white lies” symbolize the innocence of the lies she told but also symbolize the thing she is literally lying about which is that she is not 100% white. I did some research on the poet and she was half black and half white and this gives a little insight to the identity issues she faced growing up being mixed. I feel that the poet did a great job at displaying those emotions in the poem.
2 thoughts on “Jasmine Thompson Week 12 Discussion”
What a vivid way to look at this poem Jasmine. I didn’t even catch the racial tone of the line (now we have three of us in the class) When I initially read it, I thought she was referring to the poet as black. These actual compliments the “white lies” as a double entendre (white lies as in minor lies and as in lying about being white), that’s pretty poetic. Upon re-reading the poem it feels like the author feels ashamed of her black roots, as if she’s trying to hide them deep behind her skin complexion.
Dear Jasmine,
Thank you for sharing your post. It was interesting and well-organized. The article definitely demonstrates the challenges of reading poetry. The author, William Carlos does speak in his articles about the difficulty of Understanding poetry. In my original post, I also mentioned his direct quotation about it. The poem you mentioned is really interesting and deep because deals with issues of self-hatred, self-acceptance, and the overall way we view ourselves. It does this by bringing attention to how something we may think is relatively harmless, such as telling a small white lie, can actually be destructive. Recognizing the play on the phrase “white lie” and the way language is used is major to understanding this poem.