Victoria Santagato Discussion 13

The poem “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey made me fall into the first and second assumptions Edward Hirsch discusses in his article “How to Read a Poem.” From the title, I expected the poem to be about one subject, lies that were not too grandiose. But it is not solely about lying, and each detail does not correspond to only one thing, like I originally thought. It took me three times to read it to understand it is more so about the experience of a young girl of African and European descent than about small fibs. The use of color in the first stanza of the poem is very powerful.

“The lies I could tell,

when I was growing up

light-bright, near-white,

high-yellow, red-boned

in a black place,

were just white lies.” (Trethewey, lines 1-6)

I did not immediately understand the perspective of the narrator and it took me multiple times to read to fully digest the true nature of the poem, and the use of color in the first stanza. These exercises are definitely teaching me to read poetry with a more open mind, without expectations, to completely understand the message the author is conveying.

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