Sydney Bushnell
Blog: Lennox Poems
Lenox Poems I: Longest
Sneezing Fit Day 977
Lenox
writes about day 977 of 978 consistent days of sneezing for the Guinness World
Record holder. In the beginning of the piece she says essentially: it’s not
that I don’t want to stop sneezing over and over, and then ends the poem with:
but if I didn’t sneeze constantly every day for three years, and if I stopped,
who would be counting each ordinary breath and who would bless me? Yes,
sneezing constantly for four years would be AWFUL, but in the other sense, she
gets to appreciate literally every breath that she takes and sneezes. And maybe
she doesn’t appreciate the sneezing, but she’s appreciating the breath that
keeps her living, that also keeps her sneezing. And the fact that she is
thinking about this on the second to last day before she stops sneezing. The poem
almost read like that was her last day of life. Like after she stopped sneezing
and stopped appreciating the breaths, and stopped being blessed, that there was
no life. Now, I doubt the woman who this happened to actually died after the three
years of sneezing, but it wouldn’t be impossible. I just like the imagery
behind appreciating each breath and being blessed for it.
Paper Topic:
Also, in
regards to my paper topic, I hadn’t written out what I wanted to write about
because I wasn’t sure if I’d want to write about The Robber Bride, but I decided that I do want to write about The Robber Bride and I want to write
about the significance of villains and women in it. That’s not necessarily a
thesis. But it would be something like analyzing how Margaret Atwood addresses
the ideas of women being the villains and why they aren’t generally but the
importance of equality in men and women both in the bad and the good.
