The Underdream- Warnings and Prompts for TBR

Description

This document contains spoilers

Written by Aiyana Masala while recovering from tuberculosis, The Underdream talks about health, beauty, pain, and survival. It is a brilliantly poignant collection of poems, at once a soft, touching reminder and a demand: I am alive, alive, alive.  

Section I: Night

Content Warnings

Hospitals

Needles

Death

Disease

Blood

Trouble breathing

Descriptions of a sick body

Themes

Little moments

Sickness

TB symptoms, TB treatments

Hospital treatments/ setting

Highlighted Poems

Clinic - Dichotomy. Compare to Henry Riders’s poem about the window?

Inside -

A letter from my left arm - hospital workers

Savored

Pain, my Body

Discussion questions

• In “Clinic”, Masla gives us a sensory description of her experience in medical offices. What thoughts or feelings are evoked by the experience of being in her shoes?
• Why do you think “Inside” has so few words, so spread out?

• For me it’s meant to reflect that it’s very difficult to have thoughts when your body is so exhausted and uncomfortable

• “This Bed” invites us to smile at people even when “the romance [is] washed out” of their bodies. How can we practice this in our daily lives?
• “Want” describes the isolation and boredom of prolonged illness, and the patient’s desire to be integrated into the fabric of life. How can we improve our inclusion of ill people in daily conversations and events?

Section II: Between Rooms

Content Warnings

Dying

Needles

Hospitals

Descriptions of medical treatments

Themes

Sickness

Hospital treatments

Illness

Feeling helpless/hopeless

TB symptoms and treatments

Reverance

Survival

Highlighted Poems

I Am Not Ready, Yet

Greywater

Walking edges

&After - (Read this one w/ ‘Before’ from Section I)

Nowadays

Thankyou  

Discussion questions

• Many of these poems, including “Letter From My Lung To My Legs”, describe a shift in the patient’s relationship to their own body. The narrators of these poems variously express appreciation, apology, anger, frustration, and/or tenderness towards their physical forms. How does illness change one’s relationship with one’s body?
• “From a Still Place” and “Greywater” both describe difficult parts of illness, but end with a sense of gratitude. How do you try to nurture gratitude without denying difficult emotions?

Section III: Thaw

Content Warnings

Death

Dying

Recovery from a severe illness

Themes

Growth

Renewal

Recovery

Spring

Rediscovery

Reverance

Slowing down

Highlighted Poems

Dew And Dirt

Hidden

& Suddenly

Spell for a Slower Life

Surviving

Closer

Discussion questions

General questions/topics related to style:

•  Colors.

• Primary and others. Selection and usage
• The author’s visual arts background–have you looked at the other art?
• Relationship to TB–not just the effects of the illness but also the side effects of the medications.

• Birds. Where, how they appear.
• Conjunctions, what’s there, what isn’t and what is replaced with symbols.
• The spacing within lines, between lines–how does it affect your reading, both silently and aloud, and the poems’ meanings?
• If you were performing selections from this volume, build a set list.

• Bonus round: poets often end readings with a work from another poet–who/what might you read?
  

• For those who’ve read her previous chapbook, Stone Fruit,  what are your impressions of what is similar, different?