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Lorna Crozier Being Alive Twice Summary

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“Being Alive Twice” Analysis
“Lorna Crozier is a poet to be grateful for,” as is said by Margaret Lauren. Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet that was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. During her years as an english teacher, Crozier published her first poem, and since then has gone on to publish several books, a memoir, and two children’s books. In Being Alive, Twice, Crozier explains how poetry strives to say what can’t be said, brings people closer to others and themselves, and changes the way things are seen. Through allusion and references, Crozier states that poetry is more similar to prayer than it is to a piece of writing. She says that poetry addressed the absent as if present. In comparison, prayer gives one the ability to speak …show more content…

Evidence to this statement is shown when she describes an event in her life in which she read the words “they might have been small/ fine-boned angels/ shuffling toward/ the bright waters of heaven”. Those words were written by Patricia Young, where she is describing two eleven-year-old boys dressed in extremely large clothing. After she read those lines, the Canadian poet describes how she then looked at her neighbours sons with a more respectful eye than she had previous to reading the poem. She also explains how a single image in a poem can change the way one looks at something they were once unable to see or understand. For instance, one may not understand the seriousness of child abuse until they read the poem, The Child Who Walks Backwards, which is a poem that describes the abuse of a young boy through the eyes of a neighbour. The mother of the boy claims that the boy runs into things, trips down the stairs, and walks backwards into the fireplace in their home. But later in the poem one is able to infer that the bruises and burn marks described are actually proof that the child is being abused when they read the lines “This child who climbed my maple/ with the sureness of a cat/ trips in his room…” Poems like this one, which is written by Crozier herself, are able to paint a picture in the mind of the reader that give clear images of the scenes, events, and thoughts that the author has displayed. Lorna …show more content…

The poet mentions how when people read poetry, they think about the things that they would not have otherwise thought about. She uses the example by Patrick Lane, “what do we do with the pieces of ourself we lose?” when he is talking about a man who loses his hand in a sawmill accident. After reading those words, she herself thought about the things she has lost in her own life: her father, an old friend, and her youth. Crozier also brings forth the fact that poetry draws her into herself as she connects to a poem. She reads a poem about sorrow, which results in her feeling her own sorrow. She reads a joyful poem, and is filled with her own kind of joy. Another example would be when she talks about how the novelist E.M. Foster says, “Only connect.” He is referring to the belief that poetry connects people, and Crozier supports this belief wholeheartedly. Crozier indicates that poetry both connects us to the poem, and unites men and woman in a way that is different from any other kind of

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