Blood Dazzler

I really enjoyed reading Blood Dazzler. I think it was easier to understand what I was reading because it is something we have heard about over and over again. It was also something we already knew so much about and we have all had our own feelings and emotions over it. Whether we knew someone involved, helped clean up, or donated money, we were all connected to the victims somehow.

I really like the style of this book even though it is still poems all the way through. There are poems that are supposed to be by other hurricanes like "Siblings" and poems that were said about voodoo. Some of the topics of the poems were repeated like the dog Luther. Some of them had some improper language but I think it was important to have that language because that is how the people down south talk. The language really captured the victims and what they had been through.

The poems were mostly in normal stanzas with no special forms. The only forms that were a little different from the rest were Tankas and the poem about Katrina hitting landfall on page 5. Even though they were in strange formations, they were a lot easier to read and focus on than the poems in City Eclogue.

My favorite poem was the one called "Only Everything I Own". I went to New Orleans on a mission trip after the storm and we helped clean up what still needed fixing. We would pass the houses that had the spray paint on it with the number of deaths or evacuated. Just to think, in that house was everything that person possessed. All of their memories and belongings were washed away in the floods. My favorite part about the whole book though is how the poems were coming from certain people or things. Also, just the way I can read the book and really understand and envision what is going on.