"Hazel Tells LaVerne" - Katharyn Howd Machan

"Hazel Tells LaVerne" was definitely my favorite poem, so I am a little excited to blog about this. Machan develops this narrator of her story that comes off as a very uneducated, blue collar worker. For some reason, I could not hold back this image in my mind that the narrator is a black woman. Machan uses a dialect that I just instantly associated with a black maid. However, I am going to be a little slow to assume this after seeing the movie The Campaign. In the movie, there is a maid whose voice sounds identical to the stereotypical southern black maid, but a comedic shock comes over the audience when she opens the door and we see that she is asian. This scene stands out in my mind because I think I laughed for a solid minute at that scene, but let's get back the poem. Similar to The Campaign, I thought this poem was hilarious. For me, the dialect contributes to the comedic value of the poem, mostly because I think of the asian maid. The dialect characterizes the narrator too with the way she speaks: "but sohelpmegod he starts talkin" (Machan). In addition to the dialect, the poem has no punctuation and the woman works as a maid, so the reader can assume that she did not have a very good education. I also could not help but laugh when she calls the frog a "little green pervert." This also shows that she was probably not educated because she is unaware of the fairy tale of the Princess and the Frog. Overall, I saw this poem as an entertaining, comedic poem.