What is this Poem?
Immigrant Picnic by Gregory Djanikian is a Poem depicting the fourth of July picnic held by his family of Egyptian Immigrants to the United States. He is continuing to get irritated with his family throughout the poem as they nonchalantly speak to him, without the knowledge they are getting the English phrases or words incorrect as they talk to him.
My Experience
I related this poem to the feeling of Frustration though I don’t actually share the narrator’s frustration, I felt myself more wishing he’d just drop it and let his family speak the way they wanted to or knew how. I felt myself getting irritated at the idea that he wanted them to get the phrases right so badly that he was getting mad at people who were there to spend time with him on a holiday.
I ask my father what’s his pleasure
and he says, “Hot dog, medium rare,”
and then, “Hamburger, sure,
what’s the big difference,”
as if he’s really asking.I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,
slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,
uncap the condiments. The paper napkins
are fluttering away like lost messages.
This I related too as I’ve talk to older members of my family before and they don’t really seem to care what the words they are saying end up being anymore. They usually just appreciate that they’re at the function with us. His father in this scene reminded me of my own grandfather just in the way he answered. It helped me make a mental image of my Fourth of July picnics though I didn’t understand what made him so upset about this.
This next part is an exchange with his mother, and after this I understood that it wasn’t his irritation at the fact they were old and fumbling words. He was irritated at the fact they didn’t already know the English phrases and culture to the degree that he did.
“You’re running around,” my mother says,
“like a chicken with its head loose.”“Ma,” I say, “you mean cut off,
loose and cut off being as far apart
as, say, son and daughter.”She gives me a quizzical look as though
I’ve been caught in some impropriety.
“I love you and your sister just the same,” she says,
“Sure,” my grandmother pipes in,
“you’re both our children, so why worry?”
They couldn’t understand his issue and at this point even though I did, I just wanted him to understand that it really isn’t important like he seems to think it is. THEN having that thought made me think about this scene coming from my perspective where I never had to deal with the idea of learning to adjust to the culture of the United States. He was frustrated likely because of all of the stigmatisms against immigrants here with the thoughts people just wanting them to assimilate and being upset if they don’t walk around sounding like perfect Pennsylvania born Americans.
This made me wonder why people care in the first place. I understand the communication barrier and the issues that people would have not being able to speak the language but at what point does it become too much to ask? Certainly, it doesn’t matter if the chickens head is loose or cut off.
Classifying My Experience
I will keep Frustration as my main experience. I seem to have this experience a lot when reading things but this time it was to a much lesser degree than others before it. I also would like to add maybe a small Ready to Grow moment during my realizations that there was a lot more behind his anger than just the simple fumbling of words. I realized that it’s not all just how my perspective works through the issue. I may have viewed him as an asshole, but the frustration he felt likely came from a place of care for his family.
Determining the Narrative Technology
I would like to think mostly this falls under the technology I Voice as the poetry is well written but it’s more like a screenshot of a moment the narrator had in their real life that though does have poetic language, I believe the dialogue is more important to the understanding of the poem itself. We get his thoughts, his perspective, and the way he’s thinking or doing things. This gives us as readers the information of his mental and physical state when all of these things are happening and I think that gave me the tools needed to understand this the way that I did.
Poem Link
Immigrant Picnic | The Poetry Foundation
Featured Image
Kate Magee’s “Patriot Project” from Readers Digest. All Rights Reserved.
