Analysis Of Practicing By Marie Halle

Experimentation and overcoming emotional boundaries go hand in hand when reading “Practicing” by Marie Howe. This poem offers the possible impression that people should never be ashamed of their emotions; they should instead express them with no remorse. Emotions are part of being considered human, so there is no reason to hide them. Besides, hiding emotions only occurs temporarily in human nature. Howe expresses buried feelings, saying: “I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade, a song for what we did on the floor in the basement”. In this part of the poem, the narrator announces that she wishes to finally proclaim the feelings and thoughts her and the girls from seventh grade hid during their experimental sleepovers. …show more content…
In the day and time of the analyzation of this poem, sexual curiosity is supported and never belittled by the majority of populations. Therefore, no reason exists to punish thoughts or actions associated with bi-curiosity. Condemning such thoughts to the unreachable part of the brain is unnecessary. This poem may be the symbol for such accepting times as the second line of the poem reads that the author wishes to write a “song” about what her and the girls from seventh grade did. Songs are sung, and normally sung loudly, thus for the narrator to express that she wishes her thoughts to come out in a song, along with a poem and hymn, boldly publicizes her thoughts and supports that she is comfortable allowing the world to know what she did growing …show more content…
In this sense, chronological would not refer to dates and times, but more the evolution of the practicing itself. The poem begins with the narrator expressing her interest in notifying the world of the unsaid thoughts her and the girls from seventh grade had about their sexual encounters with each other. The next part of the poem states what the narrator and the girls did, where they did it, and how they did it. This type of organization is very basic, suggesting that in the way the reader reads the poem--basic and straightforward--is how the narrator and the girls saw their situations. The girls saw their sleepovers as part of a routine, and they felt more than happy to participate. The girls saw their experimentations as innocent and playful until they were finished and decided that what they did should be kept in secrecy due to a small twinge of guilt they all formed; the bodies the heterosexual girls were practicing with were not male. The poem ends with the word “stop” after describing the feelings the girls had and how they refused to feel them. Here, the narrator is implying that there was a quick and sudden decision to end feeling the feelings the girls had after their sessions, just as there was a quick and sudden end to the