Response to Di Brandt

I think one of my favorite poems that we read by Di Brandt this week was "but what do you think my father says this verse means if it's not." I think in this poem especially, the lack of punctuation and capitalization adds to the argument that's happening; the speaker's retorts follow her father's, unimpeded by periods, quotation marks, etc. The father's use of the word "verse" and the fact that he mentions the Bible later makes me think the root of this argument is with the wording of a particular Biblical passage.

I sympathize strongly with the speaker of this poem because from what I can tell, her father is very old-fashioned, and perhaps a bit sexist or rigid in his conception of gender roles. The biggest reason I sympathize with the speaker as opposed to the father is because of this exchange:

"Anybody can see that you can't just take some old crackpot idea & say you found it in these words even the Bible has to make some sense the Bible my father says the veins in his neck turning a slow purple is revealed to those gathered together in His name..."

The father seems to be implying that the Bible was revealed in a grammatically perfect little package to the people who authored the stories, as opposed to the authors writing down their material themselves. I think the father's perspective is stupid and the way he's addressing his daughter in the poem is rude. I'm assuming this poem is kind of autobiographical, and if this is true, I sympathize with Ms. Brandt.