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.

 

Alzheimer's by Kelly Cherry

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

4 November 2014

Alzheimer’s by Kelly Cherry

Biography on Kelly Cherry: Kelly Cherry was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and grew up in Ithaca, New York, and Chesterfield County, Virginia. She did graduate work in philosophy at the University of Virginia and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Cherry was the daughter of violinists, and her early exposure to music has had a profound effect on her work, which ranges in genre from poetry to novels to short fiction to memoir to criticism. Here we see a demonstration of her criticism of the mind numbing disease otherwise known as “Alzheimer’s”.

He stands at the door, a crazy old man

 Back from the hospital, his mind rattling

 like the suitcase, swinging from his hand,

 That contains shaving cream, a piggy bank,

 A book he sometimes pretends to read,

 His clothes. On the brick wall beside him

 Roses and columbine slug it out for space, claw the mortar.

 The sun is shining, as it does late in the afternoon

 in England, after rain.

 Sun hardens the house, reifies it,

 Strikes the iron grillwork like a smithy

 and sparks fly off, burning in the bushes--

 the rosebushes--

 While the white wood trim defines solidity in space.

 This is his house. He remembers it as his,

 Remembers the walkway he built between the front room

 and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in back,

 the car he used to drive. He remembers himself,

 A younger man, in a tweed hat, a man who loved

 Music. There is no time for that now. No time for music,

 The peculiar screeching of strings, the luxurious

 Fiddling with emotion.

 Other things have become more urgent.

 Other matters are now of greater import, have more

 Consequence, must be attended to. The first

 Thing he must do, now that he is home, is decide who

 This woman is, this old, white-haired woman

 Standing here in the doorway,

 Welcoming him in.

 

Analysis:

Poems express anger or outrage just effectively as love or sadness, and good poems can be written about a plethora of things. What a poem says involves its theme. How a poem makes that statement involves its tone (the poem’s attitude or being toward the theme). Interestingly enough, “tone” is a term borrowed from acoustic and music, which is one of the area’s Kelly draws inspiration form – and it refers to a speaker’s intended effect. Tone is closely related to style and diction is an effect of the speaker’s expressions as if showing a real person’s feelings, manner, and attitude or relationship to a listener and to the particular subject or situation.

There comes a time when we wall get old. The lucky ones are able to retain and cherish the memories of years gone by. However, sometimes when we get old our great minds begin to wither away and along with our minds becoming less sharp, we lose our memories of our youth. In this poem, “Alzheimer’s”, Kelly Cherry describes a memory from her experience with her experience with her elderly father who suffers with the disease. She gives us a glimpse into the frustration and pain felt by those affected by Alzheimer’s, not necessarily just the person who has it but also the people who love them.

As this poem goes on we see how Cherry’s attitude shifts from bitterness to sadness and sympathy. Phrases like “a crazy old man” and “a book he sometimes pretends to read” indicates a subtle bitterness towards her father and his illness. She has a somewhat satirical tone to start off the poem, and those phrases show us that. She continues to take us through his experience coming home from his latest trip to the hospital by telling us about how he walks into his house. She says “This is his house, and he remembers it as his…” she then goes into the various details of the house, “the walkway he built in the front room and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in back, the car he used to drive.” In the next few lines she tells about her father recalling the days of his youth and how he used to love music, but he doesn’t love it anymore not because he doesn’t want to, but because he physically can’t. She then changes to a sad and almost sympathetic tone when, she talks about the heart-breaking moment when he walks through the door and has to “decide who this woman is, this old, white-haired woman standing here in the doorway, welcoming him in.” That woman is his wife.

That one sentence was worth a thousand words. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease because it not only effects the person diagnosed with it, but the people who love them too. Cherry’s shift form a satirical tone to a sympathetic tone shows the turmoil that those affected by the disease go through every day. It’s kind of ironic to me how they say that as you age you gain wisdom, but here we see that that is not always the case. We must cherish all of our memories and live in every moment because you never know when you will lose them.