Rape Poems at WPI

I didn't know quite what to expect when I attended Frances Driscoll's Wednesday night, March 21, reading at WPI. The flyer advertising this reading read "The Rape Poems: A moving portrayal of one woman's experience with, and recovery from, rape." I didn't expect this to be a cheerful reading. Images of an angry woman, violently unleashing her rage in a microphone, floated through my mind. In actuality, although it was at times intense and disturbing, the reading wasn't as loud or abrasive as I imagined it would be.

The turnout for the reading yielded an audience of only a half dozen. I expected a larger showing. Perhaps the rain kept people away, or maybe people were wary of the intense subject matter. It definitely could not have been for lack of an excellent reading. Driscoll amazed me as she read quietly, but with intense emotion. Instead of a poetry reading, it was like she was acting out a scene in a play or reliving her trauma in a conversation with a friend or a therapist. After the reading, someone asked if she was a drama major, because she read so well. His thoughts echoed my own. Even more so than usual, the experience I got from this reading was far more potent then reading the poems out of the book.

All of the poems from the reading came from Driscoll's book "The Rape Poems." As implied by the book's title, all of the poems read by Driscoll shared rape as a common theme. Subject matter included the actual act of rape itself, the thoughts and feelings of both the victim and the perpetrator, and the long-term effects that follow the incident. Driscoll opens up a window into the life of a rape victim, and the results are intense. The Rape Poems is the poetry equivalent to a horror movie. I think Driscoll may have caught me squirming in my seat a few times in reaction to the vivid details she describes. These poems may not be for the squeamish but they are both powerful and moving.

The gruesome details are one of the reasons Driscoll's poems are so powerful. Driscoll notes that usually we describe events leading up to the event and the trauma and troubles a women experiences after a rape, but the actual act of rape itself is rarely discussed. A women will usually just say "and then he raped me," which doesn't fully express the horror of the experience.

One of the more chilling poems Driscoll read is "Vocabulary Words." This piece describes a rape in its entirety from begin to end in the third person. After describing the terror in searing detail, the poem ends with the following lines: "When he leaves he leaves her / alive. When he leaves he leaves her a five-dollar bill. / When he leaves he leaves her in such good condition / when people say did he hurt you, she can honestly say, / No. He did not hurt me." Driscoll commented that the first question always asked of a rape victim is: "Did he hurt you?" After Driscoll's reading, it seems strange to think that a rape victim could honestly answer no to that question.