To A Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

12 November 2014

To A Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Biography on Linda Pastan: Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle Poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to return to poetry. Since the early 1970s, Pastan has produced quiet lyrics that focus on themes like marriage, parenting, and grief. She is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life.

Context- situation and setting: In order to identify the situation of a poem you have to begin to ask yourself questions like, “Who is speaking? To whom is the speaker speaking? Is there an auditor in the poem, or simply an audience outside of it? Is anyone else present or referred to in the poem? What is happening? Why is this event or communication occurring, and why is it significant?” As soon as you zoom in on answers to such questions about persons and actions, you also encounter questions about the place and time. In other words, situation entails setting.

Not all poems have an identifiable situation or setting, just as not all poems have a speaker who is entirely distinct from the author. Poems that simply present a series of thoughts and feelings directly, in a reflective way, may not present anything resembling a scene with action and dialogue. But many poems depend crucially on a sense of place, a sense of time, and an understanding of human interaction in scenes that resemble those in plays or films. And questions about these matters will often lead you to define not only the “facts” but also the feelings central to the design a poem has on its readers. In this poem, “To a Daughter Leaving Home”, we see Linda Pastan demonstrating that technique:

When I taught you

 

at eight to ride

 

a bicycle, loping along

 

beside you

 

as you wobbled away

 

on two round wheels,

 

my own mouth rounding

 

in surprise when you pulled

 

ahead down the curved

 

path of the park,

 

I kept waiting

 

for the thud

 

of your crash as I

 

sprinted to catch up,

 

while you grew

 

smaller, more breakable

 

with distance,

 

pumping, pumping

 

for your life, screaming

 

with laughter,

 

the hair flapping

 

behind you like a

 

handkerchief waving

 

goodbye.

 Analysis: In connection with "To a daughter leaving home" we can discern that, perhaps, it's a metaphor to all daughters which suggests that it applies to all mothers that sense of nostalgia.

The poet cleverly takes the concept of a bike experience, as a whole life experience. The situation is the experience that all mothers go through when it is time to let go and let their children be independent. The setting in this poem is a metaphor for life. The bike serves as a method of transportation not only through the path in the park, but a path in life. It is a path we all know and follow. When we are young we are completely dependent upon our parents for our needs, as we grow up our parents teach us the necessary skills to be self-sufficient. That does not mean that they still do not want to give you a helping hand along the way as seen in the line “I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up”, but we become more adventurous and daring and we strive to make a name for ourselves in this world. Our parents are always there to pick us up when we fall down, that is the great thing about having a loving relationship with your parents, they are your biggest fans and will do anything they can to help you succeed. The speaker brings into context the span of a child and parent relationship from youth to young adulthood. She touches on how hard it is to let go of our children, but in the end how rewarding it is to see them excel and see their “hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye”. That goodbye is not only a goodbye to the mother, but a goodbye to childhood.