At first
when I was reading the poems, I wasn’t understanding how they all connected to
one another. When I read about the author, Marilou Awiakta, I realized she is
using her past and her experiences to bind together a bunch of poems. She has a
Cherokee and Appalachian heritage that she talks about in a good amount of the
poems she writes. Also, she grew up on the atomic frontier in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee and uses knowledge from that to write some of her poems.
I noticed that a few of her poems
connected to Full Body Burden and Parable of the Sower. The poem called “The
Fence” can be compared to Parable of the
sower. It talks about being confined behind a fence because it was not safe
to leave because of the enemies living on the other side. Awiakta writes, “We
are in and they are out- the enemy” (pg. 30). It’s exactly how Lauren’s family
lived being confined within a gated community because of the enemies living on
the other side. The poem called “Test Cow” reminded me of Full Body Burden. “But she’s
radioactive now and locked behind a fence…radiation’s just not friendly”
(Awiakta 33). The cow was being used as
a test animal for radiation and was hot with contamination. The animals and
people living near Rocky Flats had to deal with radiation all of their lives
and the contamination from Rocky Flats.
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