Anna Akhmatova & Wislawa Szymborska on “Lot’s Wife”

1.Sadness, loss.
2. Good memories. There she “loved her husband and her babes were born” though I’m not sure it is Lot’s wife’s memories, she’s the one that became salt.
3. Famine, epidemic, poverty and war.
4. Sadness I guess, I know she wouldn’t want her family to become salt, but she’d have wanted them to “hesitate”.
5. She looked back out of greed, out of sadness for being a coward, she looked back to see what befell the people who were laughing. I think she understands exactly why she looked back.
6. The poem is not religious. It has more to do with logic that religion because she explains why.
7. I find Wislawas poem more interesting. I never thought deeply about Lots wife, she gave me a reason to.
8. Wilslawas poem has a more sympathetic view, she explains how Lots wife ran after she looked back, how her salt statue predicament consumed her.
9. Wislawas poem is relevant to my experience. I have looked back for one of those reasons.
10. Akhmatova’s poem, to me is just regular and straight. I can decipher the rhythm, the imagery are really not so descriptive. Wislawas poem makes me imagine how Lot’s wife would have been crawling when probably her legs start turning, how the vultures, ants and other insects would come to her and all.

LARDO