Linda McCarriston’s shocking use of language “speaks back to a culture” (Moyers 271) she believes created and sustained the dogma that led to the violence in her household. In her poems, A Castle In Lynn and To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons the reader becomes acquainted with this poet’s experiences of her father as he

The premise of a culture that permits violence of this nature to exist is again presented in the poem To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons. In this poem Ms. McCarriston unites dramatic narrative from a painful and angry perspective to connect the events of her life and of the status quo of the social structure that denigrated her family. The poem is very structured having four stanzas made up of twelve lines; similar to the 12 people of a jury in a court of law. In the poem the narrator is prosecutor, judge and jury.

Mary Olivers informs us in her poetry handbook that sounds in a poem are not random but chosen (Oliver p.17). She also believes words that have a consonant that cannot be sounded at all without a vowel, which at the end of a syllable cause the breath to suddenly stop “not only have a definition but have a connotation and a felt quality” (Oliver p. 22). The words quiet, tonight, and “a man strokes” in the first stanza have such characteristics and aid in shaping the poem’s powerful tone with assertive declarative sentences.

Some topics in this essay:
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