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All This and More by: Mary Karr. Beth Watkins. About Mary Karr. Born: January 16, 1955~ Hometown: Groves, Texas Three major works of poetry: Abacus, The Devil’s Tour, and Viper Rum
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All This and More by: Mary Karr Beth Watkins
About Mary Karr • Born: January 16, 1955~ • Hometown: Groves, Texas • Three major works of poetry: Abacus, The Devil’s Tour, and Viper Rum • She has won awards such as: Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, PEN, Bunting Fellowship, The whiting Writer’s Award, and National Endowment for the Arts grant • She’s traveled to many different states such as California, Minnesota,etc.
All This and More by: Mary Karr The Devil’s tour of hell did not include a factory line where molten lead spilled into mouths held wide, No electric drill spiraling screws into hands and feet, nor giant pliers to lower you into simmering vats. Instead, a circle of light opened on you stuffed armchair, whose chintz orchids did not boil and change, And the devil adjusted your new spiked antennae almost delicately, with claws curled And lacquered black, before he spread his leather wings to leap into the acid-green sky. So your head became a tv hull, a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger sloppy at the mouth And swollen at the jointsenacted your days in sinuous slow motion, your lines delivered With a mocking sneer. Sometimes the frame froze, reversed, began again: the red eyes of a friend You cursed, your girl child cowered behind the drapes, parents alive again and puzzled by this new form. That’s why you crawled your way back into this life.
Literary & poetic Elements • This poem has 10 stanzas • It has 28 lines • It is a free-verse poem • It can be interpreted in multiple ways (figuratively) • Poetic terms: • Stanzas • Metaphor
Figurative Meaning • The Devil’s tour of hell did not include a factory line where molten lead spilled into mouths held wide, • No electric drill spiraling screws into hands and feet, nor giant pliers to lower you into simmering vats. • The narrator is saying at first it looked good to go down the path they were going down. The “Devil” didn’t show the bad parts of going down the wrong path, they could only see good • The “side effects,” so to speak, weren’t visible when they started the wrong path, they couldn’t see the bad side or how it could hurt anyone or themselves. I relate this to sin. There are many things it could relate to, but I think of sin and bad decisions.