To My Nine Year-Old Self- Poery Flashcards
“You must forgive me.”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self
- Colloquial language
- Younger self won’t recognise as much if formal, someone knows well.
“Don’t look so surprised, perplexed and eager to be gone,”
- To My Nine-Year-Old self
- Tricolon of adjectives.
- Younger is always doing something, telling to be still so can get message across.
“Balancing on you hands or on the tightrope”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- “Tightrope” balancing, something could go wrong and be damaged.
- suggests playfulness that comes with youth and damage that hasn’t been done yet.
“You would rather run than walk, rather climb than run
Rather leap from a height than anything”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Tricolon.
- There is a comparison with adjectives.
- Saying that the child is careless and reckless, compared to the usual actions done by boring adults.
“I have spoiled the body we once shared.”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Imagery of bodies.
- Uses the body to show the aging in the personality and physically.
“Look at the Scars”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Imagery of bodies.
- The scars that have been collected from age, could be from their childhood as well as adolescence and adulthood.
- Shows the damage that age does to emotions and physically.
“Into the summer morning?”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Connotations of brightness.
- Suggests hope in the haze of childhood.
- They were completely happy as a child.
“The white paper to write it on,
We made a start but something else came up”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- “White paper”
- Connotations of innocence in childhood.
- Children seem like they have a lot of possibility and have opportunity in the future. Children are seen as a blank slate.
- “But something else came up”
- Connotations of disappointment, contrasts idea of innocence.
- As a child, one is easily distracted and can’t keep their attention on one thing for too long. As this goes on, it can result in disappointment when life goes on and they can’t see past it.
“Created an ice-lolly factory, a wasp trap
and a den by the cesspit”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self
- Juxtaposition.
- Happiness, goodness and pleasure is contrasted by the negative connotations of the negative things that mean harm, risk and danger.
"”The truth is that we have nothing in common
Beyond a few shared years. I won’t keep you then.”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Shortest sentence in the poem, the structural turning point. Mainly mono-syllabic.
- Wondering what’s the point in trying to communicate with her past self, won’t pay too much attention.
- She won’t hold on to the vague memory that she has.
“Time to pick rosehips for tuppence a pound,
Time to hide down scared lanes
From men in cars after girl-children.”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Tricolon, contrast.
- Childhood games enjoyed by the young, but contrasted by adult threat turning it into a negative
“To lunge out over the water
On a rope that swings from that tree”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self
- Imagery.
- Using it to visually represent the things she used to do.
“Long buried in housing”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self
- Physically showing that her past is well behind her and has been left.
- Psychologically rejecting her past and that it was gone.
“I leave you in an ectasy of concentration
Slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee
To taste it on your tongue.”
- To My Nine-Year-Old Self.
- Adjective, “Ripe”
- Showing that she is at a high point in her life.
- Imagery
- Showing curiosity, about to lose it as she gets older.
- Repetition of “T” sound.
- Harsh ending of the sound could show that the poem is almost at the end.
