Group Work, Lucie Brock-Broido

Our group decided to attempt to deconstruct "Periodic Table of Etherial Elements" by Brock-Broido. At first it seemed obtuse, but the more we talked about it we seemed to approach a meaning. We concluded that the poem is exactly what the title implies; it is a scientific, practically medical consideration of something which is utterly out of body and only fleetingly tangible. The alliteration accentuates a seemingly oxymoronical juxtaposition. It deals in the themes of the fragmented self, and almost resigned loss of something or someone. Brock-Broido (and we can assign the author as the speaker due to her own instruction) identifies her fractured self in the loss of girlhood, and/or the relation with something formless. While she once lived in a 'glassed castle' (indicative of something transparent, something easily breakable, something from a fairy tale) she now lives in just a 'house'. While she was once a girl, that time has passed and because she likens that girlhood to a useless penicillin we can assume it's departure has left something diseased, something fractured. The presence of multiple occasions of anaphora based in the conditional ('I was not ready for' occurs twice, and 'If you' three times) reinforce that the formless something could have come to different conclusion, had things been different. Closure does occur but it is subject to question because though that thing she is lamenting is gone, it has left an impression and will forever effect her (just like that childhood toy Trish referred to in class to explain Freudian theory).

Of Charles Bernstien's 'poem profiler' literary devices, in the poem exists:

gender markers ('If you were a man') which could perhaps lead us to consider the speaker as accusing her editor Harry Ford to whom the poem is dedicated. 

sampling from Bukowski ('A little jump of flame')

and more but thats all we got to.

group members, please tell me if I missed anything.

Megan Camerson, Sydney Neuman, Jess Pietryszyn, Hayley Brehl, Kristal Kordich, Candice Fridman, and Hannah Jocelyn