By Benny Freedman
I found that the medium-fast cadence really highlighted the mental pictures, the one that really stood out to me was “make me feel childish and ashamed of my green flowered suit” because it explained a lot about self-consciousness and embarrassment. I can relate to that because I know how its like to be judged on what you were, and I know it doesn’t feel good.
What I noticed in the poem is that there was a pattern in the numbers of lines in each stanza, the pattern went 6, 9, 8, 9, 6, 2, and 1. Up until the last 6 there was a pattern, but it wasn’t the pattern that caught my attention, it was why the pattern was there. In my opinion the higher the number of lines the harsher and more detailed it got for example the last 6 lined stanza said “But you must remember, after our separation, the only words you said to me the whole year were I like your shirt.” Compared to the first nine-lined stanza, which said, “Now, when you see me, you won’t even glance my way. You and your friends with your tiny, stylish bikinis make me feel ashamed of my green flowered sit. I stay under water so you wont laugh at me.” I think that the nine-lined stanza was much more layered, powerful and deep.
I think that Herz wrote this poem in such a way that I can almost picture the characters in real life. I also think that the way she specified some things gave us an idea of how strong the connection was and how hard the break up is on the speaker, which really made it easier to understand the poem. A key sensory image in the poem which shows the creativity in Herz’ work was “a long and painful surgery” which added to the strong friendship because if she said “a surgery” it wouldn’t show how great friends they were, and would make it seem like the separation wasn’t as hard for them.
In my opinion there must have been something else than popularity that split up the three “triplets” because if they had such a strong relationship than I don’t think that popularity can split them up, but for some reason Herz didn’t want to say what.
I think that this poem is extremely accurate (to a real friendship split ups) but a bit exaggerated, and the way the story was told with such accuracy I thought that Herz probably has experienced this before or just had a really good idea of what it would be like.
