2/6 blogpost

"Parsley" by Rita Dove is a poem written about the persecution of Haitians by "El General", Trujillo. He had Haitians pronounce the word "parsley" or "perejil"; those who could not pronounce it would die. It is no secret that sound is especially important in a poem that speaks of lives and deaths determined by pronunciation. In the first three stanzas, as well as the whole poem, the consonants S and R are emphasized through phonemic relation for the words parrot, spring, palace, appears, parsley, searches, screaming, and swamp. The consonants S and R are key when pronouncing the word parsley, since it is in the middle of the word and is stressed. In line 57, pronunciation and sound is emphasized by switching the r's in spanish to l's in order to emphasize the wrong pronunciation of the Haitian people. There is syntactic relation in lines 26-30 by saying "the one" and "as he", and quickly switches the view from 3rd person to 1st as the General moves throughout his room, indicating that the reader is to be put into his shoes and feel his isolation and grief that his mother has died.

In all, the poem entitled "Parsley" is generalizing the horrors of the Haitian people to a dictator that chooses to execute genocides upon lesser people purely to distract him from the pain he feels. The sounds, syllables, and pronunciation of words is a complex play on words since we see much phonemic relations. The sentence structure is odd to say the least. We find Dove ending stanzas in the middle of the sentence to indicate the erratic thoughts of the general and how one word can send him reeling back to a memory and feelings. For instance in line 41, "...brought up for the bird; they arrive", then continued in the next stanza starting with "dusted with sugar on a bed of lace" in which El General proceeds to tell a new story not connected with the previous in the stanza before, but the emotion he feels correlates the two.