Genetics Flashcards
‘My father’s in my fingers’
‘My mother’s in my palms’
Repetition of ‘in’ : deep, profound connection between speaker and parents.
What does the motif of hands throughout the poem represent?
The love that her parents once shared is now in the form of their child (?)
‘look at them with pleasure’
The speaker feels a sense of awe and wonder for the ‘hands’ that represent the love her parents once shared.
‘I know..’
The speaker feels sense of certainty and security that she is a product of their love.
‘repelled to separate lands, to separate hemispheres’
Repetition conveys how the parents have been forcibly divided - a clear and definite separation lies between them.
‘quarry for their image by a river’
Metaphor : Her parents struggle to recognise the love once shared, as difficult as extracting stone.
‘I know their marriage by my hands’
Regardless of their separation, the speaker represents the love once shared - sense of permanence to this love through her.
‘shape a chapel where a steeple stands’
Reference to a childhood finger game, connecting her parents marriage to innocence, purity and joy.
‘My body is their marriage register’
Metaphor. She is confirmation of their love - a permanent, lasting, unambiguous record of the love once shared.
‘So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands’
Personification, and a shift to a second person as the speaker addresses her partner. Suggestion that, within each of us, there is an undeniable desire to find and share love.
‘I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms’
Suggesting that the ability to pass and share our human love is undeniably valuable.
Structure?
A villanelle poem which expresses the togetherness and yet separation that are themes throughout the poem. It is a circular form that might echo the imagery of marriage throughout the poem.
