I Lost My Talk

In this autobiographical, first-person, four-stanza poem, Joe uses mostly literal, direct, though sometimes unexpected, diction to get across her message. The speaker, also the poet, immediately starts with the problem of losing her “talk” in the first line (Line 1). She uses the word “talk” rather than speech, which suggests a more everyday, conversational style of engaging with others. In the second line, the speaker addresses a general “you,” stating that a group of people different from her has taken away her “talk” (Line 2). In the third line, the speaker clarifies that this all happened when she was young, and even mentions the specific name of the reservation school in Nova Scotia that Joe actually attended in the fourth line. The speaker is an adult reflecting back on childhood experiences that changed her way of being.

In the second stanza, the tone of the poem becomes even more assertive, as the speaker uses the word “snatched” (Line 5), recharacterizing the milder “took away” (Line 2) into a forceful and criminal act—the word “snatch” connotes theft and underhanded opportunism. The next three lines in this stanza use epistrophe, or