Kelly Kelly is an instructor of creative writing at College of Lake County. In the following essay, he explores how the image of the blood orange and the poet Federico García Lorca are used to mean almost the same thing and questions whether this might unintentionally diminish García Lorca's stature.

The poem "Blood Oranges," from Lisel Mueller's book Second Language, focuses readers' attention on the differences between innocence and ignorance, knowledge and sorrow. The poem works by creating a web out of contradictory events that all converged at one particular moment in the poet's childhood. She lived in Germany, where Adolph Hitler ruled and enjoyed popular support in the 1930s, while his reign was young and people well remembered the economic turmoil that made them turn to Hitler's extreme policies. In 1936, Hitler supported the rise of the Fascist revolution that brought Francisco Franco...