Analysis Of Calvin Forbes's 'Momma Said'

As Calvin Forbes declared, when faced with two challenging decisions, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Using exquisite rhythm, humor, and sophisticated word choices, Calvin Forbes depicts how a memory may not be regained no matter how much one dwells on it. The story behind “Momma Said” teaches us that you can’t have it all, no matter how hard you try.

Calvin Forbes uses rhythm in the sense that rhythm is giving the poem life. Most poets use rhyme to give the poem a sense of organization, and to make memorization easier. Calvin Forbes doesn’t use rhyme in “Momma Said”, instead he uses shorter lines that all relate to each other, giving it the same flowy sense as rhythm would give, just in a different arrangement.

Rhythm helps to move the poem along and keep the reader alert, which is exactly what Forbes is doing. Most poets use rhythm by having certain lines rhyme after each other; which gives the poem a wispy sensation, causing the reader to stay intrigued.

Lines 13 and 14 state, “Like a dream that makes you want to go back to sleep.” which uses imagery to help you imagine a

It was she who said to Calvin Forbes, the idiom of, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” She was merely teaching her son a lesson, or maybe she was scolding him, and using that as a life-lesson. Either way, she was the inspiration of the poem. I was unable to locate online the reason that the poem was initially written - however, I can only assume that he is remembering a time when his mother was right, and he’s wishing he had listened. Maybe he is now older, wiser, and faced with a decision where he wants two things equally, and needs to make a decision. He might be recalling the advice that his mother once gave him, wishing that he had only listened then, because it’s helpful