ABSTRACT
The American poet Ellen Bryant Voigt said it succinctly when she wrote in her poem "The Last Class" that "A poem depends on its details". The details of a poem are witnesses to the truth of whatever experience the poem relates. If they feel genuine, if they have the ring and bite and flavor of reality, one can believe the poem. Gjertrud Schnackenberg's poem is at once history that is a shared historical reality, each year Americans celebrate this holiday on the last Thursday of November-and personal history, something each person in America experiences as he or she celebrates the day. The degree to which oneself are defined by physical, geographical, and spiritual identities is haunting. Every motion seems to proclaim the individuality, and yet each one of is easily subsumed into a few large facts about gender, race, nationality, and economic position.
