Poem at Thirty-Nine, Alice Walker

Question 1

Meaning

Answer 1

• Explores feelings of loss and nostalgia as she reflects on her relationship with her dead father
• Explains wonderful things he taught her
  
  • Money isn’t everything
  • Don’t take time with father for granted

Question 2

Context

Answer 2

• Alice Walker youngest of 8 children in poor family
• Was black

Question 3

Imagery #1

Answer 3

“He cooked like a person / dancing / in a yoga mediation”

• Funny - oxymoronic
  
  • Movement VS stillness
    
    • = He did it all - respects him
• Defies stereotypical gender roles
  
  • Task = chore or feminine
• “yoga”
  
  • Cooks with concentration and almost religious calm

Question 4

Imagery #2

Answer 4

“bits of paper”

• First think = its beginning of her writing
  
  • “To escape” poverty
• But means money
  
  • Belittle importance of money
  • Having money wasn’t important

Question 5

Tone #1

Answer 5

Nostalgic, melancholic

“How I miss my father!”

• Only lines in poem to appear as full sentences
  
  • Highlighting sadness she continues to feel at his loss
• Quite colloquial
  
  • Giving poem chatty feel
    
    • Allows reader to relate to voice of poet = makes it personal
    • “my” = deeply personal expression of grief
• “How”
  
  • Implies missing her father is great and multifaceted emotion
• Exclamation mark
  
  • Poet becoming increasingly emotional and upset as poem progresses
• Repeated euphemism for death serves to comfort her
  
  • Pain of bereavement is still deeply felt

Question 6

Tone #2

Answer 6

Hopeful, determined

“cooking, writing, chopping wood,”

• “cooking” = Stereotypical female role
• “writing” = Intellect
  
  • Unusual for black women
• “chopping wood” = Masculine Job
  
  • Physically strong
• Has all tools necessary to become independent woman
  
  • Ready to conquer future
  • Father gave so much more than money could have

Question 7

Structure #1

Answer 7

Enjambment

• Appears more in some verses than others
  
  1. At times her thoughts are more spontaneous
  2. Whilst at others she uses punctuation consciously to pause and reflect on her father
     
     • ‘I think of him.’
• Emulates her train of thought

Question 8

Structure #2

Answer 8

Short lines

• Create staccato effect
  
  • = Poet is both emotional and determined to deal with difficult subject in a precise way
  • Cannot contain her grief
• Laying herself bare

Question 9

Comparison 5x

Answer 9

• “If-“
• “Search for my Tongue”
• “Piano”
• “Do not go gentle into that good night”
• “Remember”

Question 10

“If-“

Answer 10

• Reverse of Walker’s verse
  
  • Father gives advice to child

Question 11

“Search for my Tongue”

Answer 11

Both poems about how identity is formed by earliest experiences

Question 12

“Piano”

Answer 12

Both poems about remembering dead parent

Question 13

“Do not go gentle into that good night”

Answer 13

About also conflicting emotions felt at loss of a parent

Question 14

“Remember”

Answer 14

Also about how to remember loved ones who have died