genetics - sinead morrissey Flashcards
villanelle
child obsessed with parents
love
half rhyme
half of each parent make up the child
tercets
her, mum and dad
enjambment
trying to force them back together and this idea of them always being connected
caesura
the parents are clearly broken
shows disantce
title
dna - characteristics
biology - calculated way
‘my father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my hands’
equal parts of parents
who we are
half rhyme
similar but different - caused their divorce
possessive pronouns - closeness with parents
product of their love
‘i lift them up and look at them with pleasure’
happy tone
sees her parents in her
looks up to her parents - on a pedestal
‘i know my parents made me by my hands’
no doubt
connection
conclusive
‘they may have been repelled to separate lands’
divorce - physically/emotionally
incompatible
she seems to find emotional satisfaction in the idea of their physical union remaining still within her
allowing
‘but in me they touch where fingers link to palms’
disjunction - reassurance
reminder of their togetherness
they live on inside her - feels their connection
‘quarry for their image by a river’
searching - friends can’t remember
friends feel awkward picking sides
river’s reflection suggests an illusion and also passing time
‘at least i know their marriage by my hands’
solidity
proof they were together
their history is inside her
’ i shape a chapel where a steeple stands’
regressing back to childhood
she reserves her hands to show the interlocking fingers she sees the characteristics that represent her parents
emphasizes that at matter what age there will still be some impact due to this separation.
allows for a sense of sympathy to be created, we are made to acknowledge the impact which its had
trying to reconcile her with her hands
‘demure before a priest reciting psalms’
prayers
polite and respectful
‘my body is their marriage register’
metaphor
evidence that they were together
marriage having traditional connotations of starting a family and the passing on of genetics to the next generation
he’s the embodied unification of them
’ i re-enact their wedding with my hands’
repetition
can’t move on from the past
‘take up the skin’s demands’
have sex
reproduction
‘mirroring in bodies in the future’
mirrors are inverted - not exact copy
children aren’t the same as their parents
‘i’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms’
passing on traits
wishes to perpetuate their genetic codes by having children of their own
a promise to continue cycle (solidity of structure)
foreshadows how the analogy of the ‘hands’ will be completed in destination
‘we know our parents make us by our hands’
genetic closeness
intimate
part of us
completes villanelle
additional line, which could connote the addition and expansions to her family she plans to have
looking to the future
anaphoric - genetics as a cycle
headlines
parents are a part of our identity
obsession with changing our past
our bodies are a record of the past
each generation that passes is a reflection of our past
the importance of anatomy
defiance of separation
childhood alters our perception of love
we are proof of our parents’ past
