Waking

on the train, I thought

we were attacked

 

by light:

chrome-winged birds

hatching from the lagoon.

 

That first day

the buoys were all

that made the harbor

 

bearable:

pennies sewn into a hemline.

Later I learned to live in it,

 

to walk

through the alien city—

a beekeeper’s habit—

 

with fierce light

clinging to my head and hands.

Treated as gently as every

 

other guest—

each house’s barbed antennae

trawling for any kind

 

of weather—

still I sobbed in a glass box

on an unswept street

 

with the last

few lire ticking like fleas

off my phonecard I’m sorry

 

I can’t

stand this, which

one of us do you love?

—

Upon the first reading of Venice, Unaccompanied by Monica Youn, I was most perplexed about the imagery she was using throughout the poem to tell her narrative. The poem began with “Walking on the train, I thought we were attacked by light: chrome-winged birds hatching from the lagoon”, which was difficult to interpret due to her use of a colon. Initially, I thought she was sleeping on a train that was traveling through a tunnel, and she was woken up by light. However the use of a colon after“light” followed by a description of “chrome-winged birds hatching from the lagoon” indicates that the birds are a restatement of her description of the light. This made the reality of the description difficult to comprehend. She could be talking about pigeons, as they are a chrome color. However, since these birds are hatching from a lagoon, so there is a higher probability that they are seagulls or shorebirds. Due to this, it is more probable that she woke up naturally and a swarm of light-colored birds was the first thing she saw, rather than being woken up by sunlight after traveling through a tunnel. She also has a break in the imagery which makes the first stanza appear to be violent, ending in “we were attacked”. “Light” appears after the break and only then can the imagery be fully read as “we were attacked by light”. By breaking the imagery off between the words “attack” and “light”, it brings a sense of paranoia onto the reader before they realize that the speaker was simply just personifying light. The speaker may have done this to bring the reader into the setting with her, and convey the sense of fear she felt at that moment while she entered a new stage of her life. Throughout the entire poem, it was difficult to discern certain imagery due to her ambiguity and punctuation; it made me read and reread backward to understand what was truly going on.

The general plot of the poem was not too difficult to interpret. It appears that a young woman (who could be the speaker) moved alone to Venice, a new city, after being cheated on by her significant other. The poem is a narrative of her journey, her lost sense of self, ultimately ending with her breaking down and calling her significant other from a phone booth to ask… “Which one of us do you love?”. The poem explores a sense of loneliness, transition, and feeling like an outsider. It presents a conflict about loyalty and independence. Even though the speaker moves to a new city to escape her past, she still feels tied to her old life. It can also speak to the difficulty of migration andhow it is hard to adjust to a new identity in a new location. Setting is more tied to one’s identity than many believe. However, finding a rhyme scheme was difficult. It appears that Youn used the free-verse writing style, which is popular amongst modern poets. Upon research, I learned that the free verse style allows for a greater sense of freedom of expression for the poet, since they are not bound by rules and constraints. This allows for the reader to focus more on the content of the poem rather than the form of writing. Youn’s usage of a free verse writing style caused difficulty as I was trying to discern why she made each stanza a tercet (three lines per stanza). Could it allude to the three people in the relationship that the poem is centered on? Was it to make the reader read the poem in a short, choppy manner that can make them feel disoriented and surreal, which is how the speaker feels in this new city? Despite not being able to understand its purpose, the free verse style allows the poem to be read as a stream of consciousness which lets me be there in Venice and experience the speaker’s thoughts and feelings in a more vivid and real manner.

Another point of difficulty was the intended audience. After my first read, I believed that the intended audience was the person who cheated on her, since the poem ends with a phone call of her saying “I can’t stand this, which one of us do you love?”. The usage of the word “you” suggests that the poem was intended to be read by her significant other, and the entirety of the poem was a narrative of how their betrayal affected her life, how it caused her to be lost and alone. However, at the beginning of the poem she narrates “we were attacked” even though her significant other is not with her, and one of the main points of the poem is that she is unaccompanied. Perhaps the purpose of “we” is to place the reader in the setting with the speaker, but that would mean the reader is the intended audience, not her significant other. The change in intended audience is difficult to navigate because I cannot pinpoint when the shift happens. Was the purpose of the poem for the reader to experience her emotions and journey and relate it to their life and personal experiences? Was the purpose of the poem for her ex-lover to understand the consequences of their betrayal and stir up feelings of guilt? Intended audience is the basis of understanding the poem’s purpose, which is unclear in this poem.

I truly loved this poem. However, I still cannot find answers to many of my questions such as the literal meaning of her complex imagery, why she chose to write in a tercet/free verse writing style, and the intended audience. The answers to these questions would have allowed me to fully understand the meaning of the poem and what Youn wanted the readers to walk away with. Nevertheless, it was beautifully written and allowed me to experience the universal feelings of pain and betrayal and took me on the difficult journey of moving on.