Patricia Smith - Blood Dazzler

Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler is an interesting piece of art. It's the type of poetry that keeps me reading, but disturbs me all the same. I didn't really like reading it because it left me with a sick feeling that I couldn't escape. The horrors that the victims of Katrina felt (feel) are not something that I want to feel. In these poems, I almost feel like I was there. The minute details that Smith describes are what sicken me the most. Some of the most memorable poems in this collection are about the evilest concepts of mankind.

One of the main themes of Blood Dazzler is the concept of abandonment. I think this resonates with me greatly for some reason, as the most memorable poems for me involve it. The first poem that kept me wondering is "Ethel's Sestina." It's about a son who had to leave his dead mother in her wheel chair after telling her to wait for help. I couldn't imagine having to do that, and it tears me up inside thinking that somebody had to. I'm not sure why humans grow attached to a body once the person has died, but it is just as traumatic as leaving a living person in my opinion. In that moment, Herbert is forced to let go of his mother without the proper closure, and I think that's what scares me most. I like Smith's ending to the poem, almost as if Ethel is telling her son that she ended up okay: "Wish you coulda come on this journey, son, seen that ol' sweet sun lift me out of sleep" (page 46).

The poem that freaks me out the most is "34." It's about a retirement home left to fend for itself, and the 34 victims inside that weren't evacuated. Thinking about what is going on in a person's head right before or during their death is incomprehensible. It's a concept that can shut down one's mind. The most chilling line, appearing multiple times in the poem is "Leave them." If it was an active choice to leave the remaining elderly, it's obvious they had to know something about it. Whether they are old or unaware, people can always sense those sort of things. It's upsetting to think of the people who abandoned these elderly people; why do they have less worth than that of the people who left them? The poem not only describes their deaths, but their lives, and it's awful to think that any life was lost due to human carelessness.