Caitlynn Mendelssohn

English 123

Professor Orta

Reader Response #1

The title of this poem is ​DOA​, which usually stands for dead on arrival in the medical
world. This poem was written by Gil Cuadros, a LGBTQ author who wrote this series during the
AIDS crisis only later to die from the disease itself. This is the final poem in a series written by
Cuadros, it is about a man whose partner gets aids and eventually dies, in ​DOA​, so this title
would be fitting considering the context of the series and it also gives us some foreshadowing to
John’s death. If one had already read all the other previous poems in the series they would
probably be able to understand the context of the title and how it corresponds to the context of
the actual poem itself.

DOA​ is the sixth and final poem in the series, this poem's placement is important to the
narrative organization because it plays the role of closing up the story by representing the falling
action and denouement. While the falling action is the the part of the story after the climax and
before the very end, the denouement is the final falling action of a narrative, typically the ending
of a story where all the aspects of the plot come together. This poem acts as the falling action and
denouement of the series because John finally dies and then Cuadros goes on to his grieving
process. Also, I interpreted this title as foreshadowing because it is the final poem, and the title is
just very clear-cut, ​DOA​, dead on arrival, and the only person who has had health battle
throughout the whole series was John. So the reader can only assume that John, who had been
struggling with aids has finally died. During this time the government didn’t know what AIDs
was, everyone was afraid of it, no one really knew how it was spread. Movements to help aid the
crisis began such as music festivals, walks and even the making of the quilt in San Francisco.
AIDs was super prevalent in large cities that were occuppied by people including gay man and
drug users, which helps it spread way more quickly.

For the two sentences of the poem, I’ve chosen two of the final lines, ​“That night, I
turned off the floor heater, the blue flames vanished, the whole house was cold. I shivered in our
bed, his pillow between my legs, his gold ring post at the bottom of the drawer.​” (Cuadros) In the
first sentence I’ve copied down, I decided that the floor heater, heat itself more specifically
symbolizes life throughout the whole series. A symbol is ​one object or idea that comes to stand
for another through some part, quality, or aspect that the two share, with the symbol carrying the
emotional concepts vested in the initial object or idea. ​Cuadros has the floor heater turned the
whole series, especially when John is at home still, to keep the house warm for him. And then
when Cuadros turns the floor heater off once John has finally lost his battle with AIDS, it
represents John’s death to us a loss of life and now the house is cold with no light or warmth to
revive it.

The second poetic device I discovered was in the second sentence I chose, I saw it as
personification when Gil talks about John’s ring being in the house still, “his gold ring pulse”.
Personification is the representation of an abstract quality in human form. This is important to
the poem itself because we already know John is dead so when Gil talks about his ring having a
pulse at the bottom of the drawer it’s like John is almost still alive, which could be helpful for
someone who’s in grieving, but we know that John is actually dead. Another thing that came to
mind about the gold ring, was that it was at the bottom of the drawer. This could be that they
were embarrassed to show their love for one another considering that during the AIDS crisis
gays were frowned upon and bullied and even killed for being themselves. They could have also
been scared to wear their love in public because of the consequences that were possible. Though
Cuadros doesn’t give us specific reasoning for the rings placement, it’s up to the reader to
decode the placement of the gold, pulsing, ring.

I chose these two sentences because they contain literary devices that I felt confident in
explaining to the reader of my reader response. Symbolism and personification come up
frequently in any kind of literature, these were obvious choices to me as they play such an
important role in helping the author fully communicate with their reader. I chose this poem
because I enjoyed it the most out of all of them, there are a lot of descriptive words that helped
me form an image in my mind and I’m usually a fan of the denouement of stories and this was it
for the series. John had finally died and now it was describing how Cuadros, the author, went
about his life after John had passed and how he is dealing with his grieving. I thought the series
was really emotional but also important because lots of people are unaware of how in depth and
personal the AIDS crisis was to people. I think it’s also especially hard for people who are born
in my generation to grasp that because we weren’t alive for the national crisis and now there are
treatments for AIDS and also preventional pills. Overall this series and discussion post made me
improve my own writing, while I was able to learn more about the AIDS crisis and reflect on the
personal series written by Cuadros. After reading this series is made me question how authority
figures treated gay people in that time, how AIDS affected more people than those who were
infected and how many more untold stories there are of those who had to suffer in silence.