Week 13, Response 1

In Jillian Weise’s poetry collection, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, she typically refrains from formal structures. However, she seems to prefer certain stanza formats—usually two, three, or four lines. In several of these pieces (“Notes on the Body (1),” “Below Water,” “Notes on the Body (2),” “During the Reign of the Alter Ego,” “The Old Questions,” and “Ode to Agent Orange”), the majority of the poems fall under couplet forms, but the last line is single. This maneuver simultaneously salutes the poetic cannon of couplets, while also subverting and refuting those traditions. Weise alters the traditional, base form of couplets to support a non-regulated, imperfect (by traditional poetic stanzas) format in a contemporary fashion. This structure also forces the reader to place emphasis on the last, resounding line, a tactic Weise uses to further hone political importance. Her political avenues are multi-layered, but focus on altering contemporary society’s opinion of perfection. Though largely about the body, these directions may focus on the political perfection, as referenced before. Weise utilizes the single line in a couplet form to reflect the content of the collection that concerns the body. The couplets begin reflecting two people or partners (most often lovers), and then trail down to a more introspective, singular look into the narrator’s voice and physical representations. Furthermore, with several references to being half a body, or only having half the limbs necessary, Weise demonstrates her poetry masterfully with half-stanzas.