My Live Essay Defining Poetry of Witness

     Many of these Poetry of Witness poems are written by the person that may have witnessed the actual event up close and personal. My poem choice is The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window.

legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Witnesses -

I feel this poem is written by someone who observed the incident minute by minute as it unfolded. "She is the woman hanging from the 13th floor window" (lines 1-2).  This tells me that more than likely the writer was there and witnessed this event.  The writer may have even known the person that was hanging there, to have
had the perceptions and be able to perceive what the woman hanging was thinking.  The writer sets the scene at late afternoon to early evening time frame when the sun is going down and lights are just starting to come on.

www.flickr.com/photos/kenilio/5648529650 

"She sees the sun falling west over the gray plane of Chicago" (lines 61-62).  The speaker sounds like they are observing this from the ground and wondering about their own life. Kind of like, how would I feel if I were there instead of her?
     The image of the woman hanging from this 13th floor window is a divorced, single, Hispanic, mother of children.

www.singlespouse.com/financial.html 

The poem says, "she is a woman of children of the baby, Carlos, and of Margaret, and of Jimmy who is the oldest" (lines 10-11).  She is a strong willed woman pushed past her breaking point, who's circumstances have become so unbearable, that she felt herself forced to this dangerous extreme.  She had made this choice to hang from this 13th floor window.

     "She is her mother's daughter and her father's son" (line 12).

She is financially challenged and has been most all of her life.  It says, "when she was young she ate wild rice on scraped down plates in warm wood rooms" (lines 16-17).  This tells me that there may have been no running water to wash the plates with so they were just scraped off and at least she had a roof over her head and heat to keep warm, basically he bare necessities for her family.  This also tells me that there was little food since it was only rice and no mention of any other food with it.  I feel she grew up in a very poor family and they got by the best they could.www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000113324  The poem also says she lives in a tenement type apartment building, this is more evidence that she is in fact living somewhat financially challenged.www.tenement.org/Virtual_Tour/index_virtual.html 
     She has been married twice and is no longer with either husband as it says in the poem, "she is several pieces between the two husbands she has had" (lines 13-14).  The word "had" tells me she's no longer with either of them.  She compares herself with all the other women around her that she sees struggling with their children just to get by.  It says, "she is all the women of the apartment building who stand watching her, watching themselves" (lines 14-15).  She feels that her circumstances are not just in her life, but in the lives of many other women.  That this on going struggle of being a single mother with children is quite a burden mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially and this leaves her and the other women like her in a deep despair.  "She sees other women hanging from many floored windows counting their lives in the palms of their children s  hands" (lines 24-25).   She hangs there undecided of whether to let go or not.  She hears voices in her head, some telling her to jump and others telling her to get up.  She knows her time is limited as she is hanging by her own strength and losing her grip.  "She knows she is hanging by her own  fingers, her own skin, her own thread of indecision"(lines 47-48).  She contemplated many things children, parents, grandparents, old memories and as her life is slipping away, she pulls herself together and her racing thoughts come to a halt and she decides, NO, not this way, I am a fighter and my life is worth fighting for, as she "climbs back up to claim herself again" (line 66).  She feels grateful that she has made the right decision and even though she was dealt a hard poor life, she is still worth it!

Works Cited:
Harjo, Joy, The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window.
www.Poetryfoundation.org.Web.2/3/2011