Hazel Tells Laverne

"Hazel Tells Laverne"
Katharyn Howd Machan

This was probably the most entertaining poem we've read so far just because of the way she dictated her thoughts.  Her point of view and manner of telling the story were really funny as I imagined the scene really playing out.  I originally noticed that she used absolutely no punctuation or capitalization in the poem, so the breaks stand for breaks and alter the flow of her words.  They imply commas and periods, but they surprisingly don't detract from the meaning--they enhance it.  From the details included in the poem, working at Howard Johnsons and her not-so-elegant diction, we can determine that she is uneducated and probably has a dead-end job.  The words like "hitsm," and "ta" and the invented "sohelpmegod" (Machan) all display her lack of formal education and her mood while she tells Laverne the story.  I think that by repeating the lines "me       a princess" (Machan), she displays her thoughts about being a princess--she could never be one because she lives such a non-fancy life.  When Hazel sees the frog, she is in disbelief and calls him a pervert, which adds to the idea that she doesn't think she deserves or expects a prince to come to her rescue.  Obviously, this is a pretty loose interpretation of the original Frog Prince story, and the ending is very different.  However, the poem does explain a completely different side to life because not everyone, actually hardly anyone, gets to go through life as a princess would.