poems

Unlike all other genres of literature, poems use deception in a more creative way. Instead of with holding the truth until the end, poets tend to hid meaning in there words. Its often hard to tell if a poem is meant to deceive a reader into thinking that author is talking about when thing when he/she is really talking about another. In the poem The Word Plum by: Helen Chasin, the reader is often left wondering what Chasin is really talking about. Is she simply writing about enjoy a delicious plum? Or is “plum” code for a lover or some forbidden thing? Chasin begins the poem by saying “The word plum is delicious”(Chasin). One can’t help but wonder, is the word delicious, or is this forbidden love delicious? Right off the bath Chasin has the reader wondering what this poem **//__REALLY__//** is about. If the first line doesn’t get the wheels in a readers mind going, surely lines 6 – 8 will catch ones attention. Chasin writes “taut skin/ pierced, bitten, provoked into/ juice, and tart flesh”(Chasin). Although these are all words that can be used to describe the events that take place while eating a plum, most do not thinking of eating a plum in this way. Chasin uses such passion in this poem. If those lines don’t seem to convince the reader enough that they are being deceived, the final stanza surely does. “question/ and reply, lip and tongue/ of pleasure.”(Chasin). The words she picks to describe this “plum” hold a slight sexual air to them. The reader is now left wondering, is this simply a poem written by a women who really feels immense passion every time she bites into a plum? Or is this woman hiding her intense and passionate feelings for a lover in the word plum? After feeling that the author has deceived the reader with this passage, one might even start to believe that it’s possible that the plum was used to describe something forbidden solely because of the way it looks. In the picture below, the plum is plump, glissading, and curved in all the right places. These are also words that one might use when describing a lover.





__Citation__

Chasin, Helen. "The Word Plum." __The Norton Introduction of Literature__. Ed. Alison Booth, J. P. Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 729.

The image of the first plum can be found at: http://www.bctree.com/images/photos/summer-plum.jpg

The image of the second plum can be found at: http://eslprograms.vcc.ca/ESLWEB/Plum.gif