WOODCHUCKS.
In "Woodchucks" Maxine Kumin leads us down a path most people choose to ignore. Maxine doesn't come right out and says what she means. She tells a story and puts an image, a picture in your head so you can understand her point or lesson in which we should learn from and pay attention to. Maxine usage of words not only helps paint a picture but also helps us understand what we do when we try to justify our actions. It also shows us that sometimes we try to take a different road but often that road leads us back to the road we started from.
"The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of .22, the bullets' neat noses". When Maxine wrote this you got a clear picture of her, what she was doing and how she felt. You can just picture her sitting on her rocking chair with it moving up and down, watching the woodchucks in her garden. You can see her with the gun in one hand and the bullets in the other. She rolling the bullets between her thumb and her point finger. One by one as she put the bullets in the black gun you started to see her face expressions. You start to feel what she is feeling; the feeling of power, excitement and the satisfaction that comes to you when you know it's almost over with.
When reading this poem the way she uses punctuation and adjetives she helps you to understand how she is feeling throughout the whole poem. Each time she uses a comma not only is she giving you time to think about what is happening but also makes a statement on exactly how she is feeling. In her beginning statement "The food from our mouths," she gives you an indication that she is really pissed-off with those woodchucks. Then when she uses the word righteously, not only is she justifying her position in the situation but she also uses this to justify her pending action. The position she puts the word righteously also applies to her next statement.
