Poem At Thirty-Nine Flashcards
Poem at Thirty-Nine (title)
Age is her current defining factor
How I miss my father
“How” - sounds like a sigh, emphasises longing
Simple monosyllabic words are used - like a child might
Writing deposit slips and checks…
This is the form,
He must have said
“Must” - suggests she can’t quite remember, so he may have died when she was young
She can’t fully remember the details, but financial independence was always taught/emphasised by him
I learned to see
Bits of paper
As a way
To escape
The life he knew
Financial independence was taught by her father as a way to escape poverty - this mindset he passed on shows his impact on her, he seems to have dictated her relationship with money
He taught me
That telling the truth
Did not always mean
A beating;
“Always mean a beating” - he did use corporal punishment, but wasn’t unnecessarily cruel
Shows how he valued honesty, taught her important moral lessons
Though many of my truths
Must have grieved him
Shows conflict in their relationship - but suggests they were able to move past it, or he didn’t let it show that she hurt him (again use of the word “must”)
How I miss my father!
Exclamatory sentence - shows strong emotion
Shift in tone from melancholy to joyous - perhaps signifies a shift in the way she thinks of him, from grief to acceptance or happiness that his mannerisms live on through her
(Her father) craved the voluptuous
Sharing
Of good food
Cooking (to him) was spiritual and an act of love
Now I look and cook just like him
Internal rhyme - emphasises their similarities
Cooking also involves her personal philosophy about love, as cooking, for her father, was a spiritual thing/act of love
Seasoning none of my life
The same way twice
Cooking metaphor - variation in her life, spontaneity
Happy to feed
Whoever strays my way
Metaphorical meaning - generosity, and how her writing has fed/nourished her readers
He would have grown
To admire
The woman I’ve become
Proud of herself, who she is - confident that he would approve of her, which is a good thing as she misses, loves, and admires him (as seen throughout the poem)
Cooking, writing, chopping wood,
Staring into the fire.
Collection of gerund verbs - domestic and academic, productive and reflective - shows the variation and balance in her life
“Staring into the fire” - has connotations of home, comfort, etc.
Structure
End-stopping - emphasises certain lines
Free verse - informal stream of consciousness
Enjambment (frequent) - makes it fast paced, emphasises the stream of thought idea
Tone - warm and loving, overall similar to a eulogy
