An Analysis Of Deborah Garrison's Sestina For The Working Mother

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Combining the influence of Philip Larkin’s style of utilizing “plainspoken English” (“Deborah Garrison”), and writing what she knows, Deborah Garrison incorporates deceptively simple language with aspects of her life in her poetry construction. As a working mother, the narrator of Garrison’s, “Sestina for the Working Mother” offers insight regarding inner thoughts and emotions she experiences in everyday life. While her poem exposes internal conflict, Garrison provides hope. Using concepts of attitude, emotion, imagery, and style, she demonstrates that performing the daily circus act of balancing work and motherhood, produces a natural inclination towards daydreaming about conceivable alternative realities, grappling with guilt, yet ultimately, realizing the selected path can function; balance is achievable. …show more content…

In the poem’s opening lines, she begins her day occupying the harried mother role, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle to balance priorities. After saying goodbye to her children, and rushing out the door, she transitions from one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day proceeds, when reflecting on her life choices, she wonders “what she might have been as a mother” (23), fantasizing about being around, experiencing more of her children's development and daily life. By deciding to pursue her current situation, she must entrust her children’s wellbeing to another, rather than herself, and as she “feels the quick stab […]” (36) she experiences flashes of guilt. However, knowing she has happy and well cared for children, in spite of it all, creates recognition of the situation’s

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