Onions..Nasty!

As I walked into class on Friday, I couldn't believe the bitter sweet aroma of onion filling my nose while I found my seat. Little did I know we would be reading a poem about onions in just a few minutes!

I liked the procedure we went through in order to read the poem. Reading it several times definitely helped to spark my interest, because to be honest if I had just read that poem only one time I would have put it down and never given it a second thought. About half way through the class we began to discuss what this poem was talking about. Some of us thought it was simply about an onion, while others thought it may be talking about something more.

The more I read it, the more I was convinced it had to be about more than onions, because of the fact that some of the lines didn't seem to make sense if she was merely talking about onions. As much as I believe this poem is about something else, I couldn't tell you what she was talking about haha. Of course, I don't think our class ever reached a sure conclusion as to the meaning of this poem either. Maybe it's one of those poems that aren't meant to have a definate meaning, but are to be left up to the interpretation of the reader. Then again, the paper we read about poem reading says that it is a fallacy of readers, to believe a poem is left to interpretation.

The more I read the poem, I could picture it talking about slavery. The way she was referring to the onion as something that is unoticed but contributes so much to the big picture. Another student thought she was talking about the author herself, and how she felt people thought of her. I guess we will never know!