The Garden

The first time we read the poem “The Garden”, En robe de parade, it was a somewhat confusing, I honestly did not know what to think. During the lectio part of the lectio divina, certain words such as “emotional anemia” stood out to me, this stood out to me because I have never heard someone use anemia as an adjective to describe a person’s emotion and to think that a person is in that bad of shape emotionally really got me thinking. During the mediatio part of the lectio divina, many questions started to come to mind, my first question was, was this lady this poet describing suicidal? It appeared to me that this lady was going through some really hard times or some sort of depression stage, it appears that this lady was so disconnected from this world, the first line of the poem describe as “Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall,” this indicates to me that she is walking carelessly, that she don’t really care about anything at this point in her life. The poet also states that “she is a dying piecemeal of a sort of emotional anemia,” this says to me that he is able to see her emotions through her physical appearance. The poet then goes to say that “her boredom is exquisite and excessive,” this line of the poem is telling me that lady is basically fed up with life, that she is not enjoying life, that she is bored of life. Or maybe there is some kind of conflict that she is facing at home, maybe she is having problems with her husband and whatever the problem is, it has become so excessive to the point that she is tired of it. The poet also states that “she would like some one to speak to her,” so he can tell that she just wants a person to come up to her and say that everything will be ok, sometime we as people just need that, when we face certain dilemmas in our life we just need someone to tell us not to worry and that it all will be ok. Professor Corrigan had a good point, he says that maybe the poet is feeling the same way the women is feeling, possibly that is why he knows so much about her. However, I just think that he has been in that stage of life before and that he knows how she is feeling because he once felt like that too. In the oratio part of lectio divina, my prayer was basically me giving praises and thinking God for I know him and when life gets hard, I know that I can pray to him and he always let me know everything will be ok.