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Musée des Beaux Arts

Poetry Exhibits and Curatorial Poetics

This page was created by Minna Ratanapan. 

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ratanapan poem 6

Living Room
By Marie Ponsot

Marie Ponsot was born in 1921 and is still alive today. Ponsot resides in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and cites her seven children as her inspiration for writing, albeit that she has been known to stray away from writing about the topic of motherhood quite often. Although on the surface, this poem appears to be superficially describing a chaos-fighting living room of age, complete with “broken windows cut,” and “family picture, wrecked, soaked in cold,” I interpreted this poem differently; the situation is ironic - what the poem doesn’t tell is that the Living Room fights internally and incessantly to maintain peace within for the family that lives inside. The poem seems an anti-example at first sight, and it is. But the inferences associated with the complementary objects in the poem display a sacred space inside of this living room that is protecting the family mentioned in the poem.

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The window's old & paint-stuck in its frame.
If we force it open the glass may break.
Broken windows cut, and let in the cold

to sharpen house-warm air with outside cold
that aches to buckle every saving frame 
& let the wind drive ice in through the break

till chair cupboard walls storm hit all goods break.
The family picture, wrecked, soaked in cold,
would slip wet & dangling out of its frame.

Framed, it's a wind-break. It averts the worst cold.
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