I Lost My Talk

In Line 9, Joe describes the result of her bilingualism as a “scrambled ballad” (Line 9). The use of this word suggests a mix-up and may conjure the image of a scrambled egg, which has two parts, the yolk and the whites, and mixes them together, so the parts are no longer distinct. In a way, that is what happens with the speaker’s—and the poet’s—language when she grows up speaking Mi’kmaq but then is suddenly forced to learn English and forbidden to use her first language. The resulting poetry comes out “scrambled,” implying that the confusion of both languages causes the speaker’s message to be unclear to her listeners. While learning and speaking more than one language can be a useful and powerful ability, the speaker views it less favorably, mostly because the languages she speaks are not equal in the eyes of society; one overshadows the other.

Although the speaker laments the loss of language and confused “scramble” that results from her forced bilingualism, she nevertheless retains her sense of herself as a poet, describing what she is trying to produce as a “ballad” (Line 9)—a poem or song that resonates emotionally using a set structure. The speaker thus insists on the fact that she is an artist dedicated to a complex and storied