Strategy Response, Week 11

Jillian Weise's poem "Notes on the Body (1)" from her collection An Amputee's Guide to Sex exemplifies the technique of marrying form and function. The poem is made up of five couplets with a single-line stanza at the end, and each stanza is comprised of relatively short, clipped sentences. The interesting part of those sentences is that one does not necessarily read them that way the first time. In fact, she hides the short structure with a variety of enjabments and end-stop lines. The surface-level reading of the poem also speaks to the theme of the entire book: an amputee's romantic relationships and how those are accomplished despite social prejudices or physical inabilities.

The short sentences and stanzas of "Notes on the Body (1)" complement the subject matter of the poem in that she discusses her smaller leg by comparing her lover's "bend-step" to her "skip-step" and wishing that she could "climb a staircase, without / the clank of metal." Weise puts emphasis on those phrases like "the clank of metal" and "Perfection would be" to emphasize the difference between her persona's gait and the lover's, not merely marking their difference in terms of limbs but in entire body makeup. She spends her short sentences previous to the end talking about metal and rods and wondering why her lover is not inhibited by them. Her final line, however, gives the reader the answer in both its form and funtion: "I see the statue of David." This line is the most emphasized in the entire poem because it stands alone. Therefore, the reader puts heavy emphasis on it in a reading and determines that while she sees the statue of David in his form, he sees a similar statuesque woman despite her prosthetics.