Lauren Bailey Blog Post

    I really enjoyed reading McDonough's poem, "Accident, Mass. Ave" because I think it portrays human responses and interactions very literally. We are so quick to point out the stick in someone else's eye before we even take out the log in our own. More often than not, our first reaction when something happens apart from our "plan"  we react poorly. My mom, when I was growing up, always used to ask me, "What pours our when your cup gets bumped? Sweet water, or bitter lemon?" How we interact with people who can do nothing for us, or hurt us says a lot about our character. In the two works by McDonough and Poe, there is a depiction of negative human emotion and how it blinds us and prevents us from seeing the truth in the world and in each other. The first thing we notice is the wrong committed against us. But what if our first response was to care for the person instead of the apparent wrong they committed against us?

    I recently read a quote by Benjamin Franklin that said, "What is begun in anger, ends in shame" and I think we can see that in McDonough's poem. After the two parties realized that there was no damage done in the accident, there was a sullenness that filled the poem. Revenge and anger was immediately replaced by regret and remorse for the sharp words thrown out before. So instead of bitter lemon being the first thing to spill out of our cups, what if sweet water was the immediate response? The world would be a lot better place to live in.