"Trenches and Moats and Mounds of Dirt"

The second piece of work I chose from Nye’s 19 Varieties of Gazelle was a poem named “Trenches and Moats and Mounds of Dirt” and this was chosen because I caught a glimpse of the very first line in her writing. I am a history major and happen to love ancient studies so I was excited to see her writing about the ancient world, until I continued to read her work.

After reading this poem over a few times, I took her words on the paper to be describing a way of life. This way of life that I saw was that of man and women coinciding together since the beginning of man.

The first stanza, I felt, is Nye describing that since ancient times men and women have been living together to survive. And then as she writes on, she writes, “Where is her nesting place, the safe slot between branches?” and this I interpreted as the woman’s personal quiet space, which is quite literal but shows truth in it. In every relationship between a man and woman, there are times in which both either one of them needs their space to think and to be alone and sometimes this is for good reasons and other time it is for bad reasons.

The very next stanza she writes, “There is a language between two languages called Mean but who will admit they are speaking it?” and this is the defining point for my evaluation. This language called Mean is words that are spoken far too often, in nearly all cases hurting the person being spoken to and she writes the last stanza of the poem hoping that seeing the world through the other’s eyes will help both of them to better understand each other, ultimately resulting in a more peaceful coexistence.