"Occupation"

"Occupation"
Eliza Griswold

Questions about the text: Is Kabul in the Middle East? What is the author referring to when he says "two years ago the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone"? Also, what exactly does "a woman was worth her weight in stone." referring to?

Personal Response: This poem made me think of the occupation of Iraq near the beginning of the war. I thought about that because during that time there were many bad things going on in the Middle East. Another thing that made me think that this was about the occupation of Iraq because it was talking about a woman's flesh was now worth more than it had ever been and this had never been the case before, but now there are soldiers that want nothing more than a woman to hold. This poem also caused me to think about the effects that this occupation had on the people of Iraq, because mostly we just think about impact it had on America but it also affected those people in Iraq as well.

Overall Thoughts: I really felt like this poem was held at its face value. There were not really any words that I felt were meant to have a deeper meaning because the poem was very straightforward. While this poem is straightforward there are also many things that are extremely emotionally tolling in this poem. The sentence where they talk about, "two years ago, the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone"(line 8), it just really hit my heart hard. Mostly because I was thinking of "why would people ever do this to innocent people".