Forche/Knox Comparison

I’m interested in a comparison of Knox and Forche.

Knox’s poetry seems to be consistently self-conscious. In several poems, she actually tells the reader “Hey! This is a poem,” although obviously not in those words. For instance, in “Rose Poem,” Knox writes “give the I-narrator your dominant/impression, oh platitude”(8). And then in “Tonka” she recalls “the young Mac met/back in stanza I.” Not all of the poems call attention to the “art” of poetry quite so conspicuously, but she still seems to be concerned with the idea. I think maybe her focus, at least for the majority of the poems in the first two sections, is the form of art, poetry being her concentration. This is most apparent to me in “Sofonisba Anguissola” in which we, as readers, are walked through the process of creation. In “A Beaker,” the title poem, we’re introduced to a technique that Knox employs with her use of the colon. “Question:/What did your godparents then for you at this time?/Answer: Silver cup, plate, and spoon.).” This is quite rigid on the page and unbending in the mouth: Question? Answer. In this way, Knox may be clinging to form, unwilling to abandon it completely.

I think Knox is also concerned with place in her poems. Instead of just painting the picture, she tells the reader “Hey, we’re in the picture.” At the end of Stanza 1 in “Famous Dog,” she writes “We are outside.” “Here” is an issue in most of Knox’s poems; she starts with the description of the “here” in “Chicago 1985.” Because of this description of “here,” the narrator, maybe even Knox in some instances, is always in the poem. She also accomplishes her inclusion with the use of “we” in her poems.

Now, as promised: the comparison. While Knox’s poetry is very meta-poetic, (I guess that’s the poetry version of meta-fictional), Forche’s concentrates on showing the picture without mentioning the process of painting it. In poem VII of “Part II” in The Angel of History, Forche writes “His grave is strewn with slipper flowers in a coppice of loss./ The girl whose uncle was a violin, Borovska./ Years taken from them: birch light, his breath in her mouth, what do we have to forget?” In this instance, the poet just presents the picture instead of telling the reader that it is a picture that has been created by human hands. In this poem there is the colon, but it’s very un-Knoxish; the question/answer combo in this colon is not so clear-cut.

Forche, like Knox, is obviously concerned with place. But, while Knox’s place was “here,” Forche’s place is “there.” The narrator in much of Forche’s poetry at least begins looking on from a distance. There may be inclusion at some points, but not to the extent that Knox uses it. At the start of poem V of “Part II” of The Angel of History, there is a description of the Nazi-like geese. The narrator/Forche is not in this picture at all. It/she is simply the lens through which we see the picture. However, the line in the middle of the poem is “I am not sure what the photograph has to do with what happened.” That “I” transforms the onlooker to an actor in the poem. Still, unlike Knox, Forche leaves her narrator and herself mostly behind the scenes.