Ana Castillo "seduced by Natssja Kinski" Critique

A quick read of Ana Castillo’s poetry will provide a reader with much knowledge of the style she uses. The style used in “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” and “El Chicle” is conveyed vividly. A key ingredient to Castillo’s style is imagery. Castillo uses imagery to portray the environment, object movements, emotions, and everything else that is of utmost importance. Also important to Castillo’s style is her choice of words. Castillo refers to all words in poems as gold. Every word must be picked and placed with all the care in the world. Along with her imagery and choice of words, metaphors, poetry form, and flow are essential to creating the two featured poems.

After many reads of both “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” and “El Chicle” I have been able to visually interpret the worlds created in both poems. “El Chicle” is all about imagery, however, “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” also contains valuable imagery. In “El Chicle”, Castillo portrays a piece of bubble gum falling out of Mi’jo’s mouth into her hair; she cuts her hair; the piece of gum falls onto the back of a dragonfly which flys to its death as a turtle eats it whole. Now, I haven’t been able to really determine what this is exactly referring to, but the imagery created here is as vivid, or more vivid than if I were to witness this in real life. This imagery is as intriguing as the following quote from “Seduced by Natassja Kinski”: “And we dance, I am a strawberry, ripened and bursting, devoured, and she has won.” With deep visions I have been able to recreate this scene of Kinski devouring the world’s most orgasmic strawberry. An orgasmic strawberry is what I came up with if I were to describe the scene in few words.

In few words I said “orgasmic strawberry” which defines the previous quote. Now, the technique I have just done is what Castillo has done throughout her life’s work with poetry. In “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” and “El Chicle” I have found many words that are more suiting than the rest of the entire deck of English words. For example, Castillo uses the adjective “fleshy” to describe a strawberry. This word creates a picture of the strawberry while relating the strawberry to a beautiful girl. Also, when Castillo relates herself to an atom; she lives in the town, but the girls are taking her out for a night and showing her a good time. Such a great choice of words; the atom; almost as bare as one can get and this is just how