outline
I. Background on Ritchie
A. "The poet does not demonstrate compulsive behavior: if laundry piles up, it just needs to be done; if poems pile up in the skull like planes over La Guardia on a Friday afternoon in a blizzard, they just need to be written." - Elisavietta Ritchie
II. Read the poem aloud - initial reaction?
III. Background of the poem
A. "Sorting Laundry" came into being in 1988
B. Accepted into Poetry magazine after many letters of rejection; Sound and Sense reprinted it
C. "Instead of thinking about folding the mountain of laundry before me, more likely I was staring out the window at a hummingbird in the wisteria, or the great blue heron who owns the riverfront, an oyster boat dredging off shore, or at ghosts of lost sailors. And I was musing on the unusual individual whose socks I was trying to pair. Not thinking forms of verse, or poetry at all."
IV. Verse form
A. Free verse - "the poem quickly fell into tercets"
B. "[after] all, laundry is a repetitive act."
C. "At that period everything was free verse, so even tercets were considered formal."
V. Literary analysis
A. "When I am writing a poem or a story, I don't think about trying to 'convey' anything, I am just 100% writing."
B. Stanzas 1-9
1. Apostrophe
2. Reflects on daily life using imagery
3. Melancholy/reflective tone
4. Whimsical language
5. Wrinkles symbolizing obstacles/issues in relationship (19-21); "or else ignored" - the reality of relationships
6. "And what's shrunk... even for Goodwill" - sentimentality; hold onto things better off discarded (25-7)
7. Use of cataloguing
C. Stanzas 10-14
1. Tone shift - realities of life, the clutter, the pressures placed upon the relationship
2. "the strangely tailored shirt/left by a former lover..." (41-2) - further complications; the culmination; not only all the financial, etc., burdens but must factor in who they are as people (their past lovers)
D. Stanzas 15-17
1. Final tone shift to contemplation of loss - most emotional stanza
2. Reality - clothes get dirty; sorting the laundry/working on a relationship is a tedious task, but the loss of such would create a deep emptiness/void
VI. Overall
A. Not excessively sentimental conceit/metaphor for relationship - day-to-day but represents something so much greater - with all the wanted and unwanted aspects
B. Universal truth about relationships
C. "If anything, 'Sorting Laundry' is simply a poem about laundry, love, the fear of loss, and that regardless of one's great pursuits of knowledge or wisdom or one’s emotional state, one must tend to the tasks of ordinary life. Such as laundry."
D. Autobiographical nature of the poem
VII. Questions?
