More obsessing over "AB Negative"...

So a bit more nerding out about AB Negative from class.  First, I think I should note that I’m pretty into things that can be read from a variety of different perspectives, which is part of the reason I like this poem so much!  I suppose another reason would be that it is a piece that links the living and the dead, something I’ve also drawn to, but Brian Turner does it in a way that’s extremely beautiful.  As discussed in class, we see a lot of vivid imagery throughout this poem, the colorful skies that Thalia sees as she passes on into the next life, and even the gory representation of Thalia’s physical state as we read in the first 8 lines.  And while I know that we may have discussed all there is to know about this, poem I think I can cover a bit more ground though this blog post.

                I guess I’m more drawn to the imagery other than the whole second meaning to the poem.  Don’t get me wrong!  I see the representation of things like the plain and Thalia’s passing being represented as the two sides of mortality to be extremely awesome actually!  But I feel like that’s an easy thing to appreciate so I feel like lingering on the visual representation is a lot more of a difficult goal to appreciate.  Specifically, things like the Nurse dabbing the doctor’s forehead and the doctor running and crying on the nurse’s shoulder give imagery of sadness and a really gloomy upsetting atmosphere that plays like an actual film in our heads…  or at least mine.

P.S.  I also really liked the lines:

…with the droning engines humming on

in a dragonfly’s wings, island palms

painting the sky an impossible hue

with their thick brushes dripping green…

For their ability to describe the setting in such an unusual way…