Genetics - Sinead Morrissey Flashcards
Title
the makeup of our DNA, about family relationship, an emotional look on families
‘My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.’
- repetition - finding a connection to where she came from and her parents
‘I know my parents made me by my hands.’
the recognition of identity hangs in her hands
‘They may have been repelled to separate lands,’
- backing away
- extreme distances, the breakdown of the relationship
‘in me they touch where fingers link to palms.’
speaker is aware of the distance of her parents, there is a nostalgia for closeness
‘who quarry for their image by a river,’
- water - shifting and changing all the time.
- ‘their image’ - searching for something that was once present
‘I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.’
- a reference to the nursery rhyme. childlike behaviour, separation has an everlasting impact
‘demure before a priest reciting psalms. My body is their marriage register.’
- religious imagery
- promises that marriage is associated with - tone of disappointment and distance that speaker and parents have
‘So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands for mirroring in bodies of the future. I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms. We know our parents make us by our hands.’
- demands that we must reproduce to keep the genes going - unemotional way of starting a family
- the need to reproduce surpasses the love for a partner and wanting to start a family
Overall messages
- nostalgia for a past time and childhood
- reminiscent of youth and belonging
- finding your own identity away from your past
Structure
- Villanelle structure - 19-line poem, repetition, six stanzas
- repetition - speaker’s obsession with her parents
- half-rhyme throughout - people are bound by genetics, but not identical
- ABA - tercets, ABAB - quatrain
- end-stopped lines - the idea of separation and breaks within a relationship
