Black Silk

₁    She was cleaning—there is always

     that to do—when she found,

     at the top of the closet, his old

     silk vest. She called me

₅    to look at it, unrolling it carefully

     like something live

     might fall out. Then we spread it

     on the kitchen table and smoothed

     the wrinkles down, making our hands

₁₀   heavy until its shape against Formica

     came back and the little tips

     that would have pointed to his pockets

     lay flat. The buttons were all there.

     I held my arms out and she

₁₅  looped the wide armholes over

     them. “That’s one thing I never

     wanted to be,” she said, “a man.”

     I went into the bathroom to see

     how I looked in the sheen and

₂₀  sadness. Wind chimes

     off-key in the alcove. Then her

     crying so I stood back in the sink-light

     where the porcelain had been staring. Time

     to go to her, I thought, with that

₂₅  other mind, and stood still.

Again, with Black Silk, the simplicity of Gallagher’s language makes it rather easy to read, but it also requires lots of analysis. I found that this poem addresses some similar aspects as I Stop Writing the Poem (in the previous post). However, instead of the speaker folding the laundry, she is that little girl mentioned at the end of I Stop Writing the Poem. She is the daughter who watches her mother go about her normal household chores. I thought that the idea behind the vacant vest, in this case, was inspired by her father and perhaps their loss of him (notice the mother crying, line 22).

Literary Devices –

Simile: a comparison using “like” or “as”

- Gallagher compares the manner in which the mother unrolls the vest, “like something live might fall out” – a careful and delicate action with such care so as not disturb anything inside (in lines 5-7).

Caesura: a strong pause within a line of verse

- In the first two lines, Gallagher uses a caesura as a break from her mother’s typical activity to subtly emphasize the unexpected discovery of the old vest.

Metonymy: a figure of speech which substitutes one term with another that is being associated with that term

- Perhaps the “sheen and sadness”, lines 19-20, could be a metonymy, in which it substitutes for the light during that moment. The sheen could be referring to the black silk of the vest, and the sadness to the old memories the vest provoked.