Every single night, whether we realize it or not, we dream. Only a select few of our dreams are meaningful enough for us to remember the next morning. However, when we do recall what we had dreamt, we seem to always be able to describe exactly what happened in great detail. In the poem “You Were You” by Sandra Beasley, the narrator is doing exactly that. As the reader goes through the poem line by line, a more detailed and complete picture of the narrator’s dream is created. We are told that the whole dream is taking place at a bar. This bar is a favorite of an important man in the narrator’s life. The man’s attire is acknowledged in addition to the company he was with. His company was a new woman, not the narrator. The narrator is portrayed …show more content…
The personification of the jukebox being the narrator is key because music was an important part of their relationship in the past. The narrator tries to get his attention by playing all the songs that he likes, songs that are associated with love. Her being a jukebox also displays her helplessness and restricted ability to win the affection of her man back. The vivid imagery supplied by the author improves the reader’s understanding of the relationship that the narrator had with the man as a whole. We learn how close they once were, because the narrator notices the little things about the man’s emotions and his attire. The contrast between the narrator and the new woman is important because without it, we would have no idea as to why the man stopped caring for the narrator. We learn by their differences that the man is more in love with the more youthful, appearance oriented woman as opposed to his former, older, less beautiful lover. No matter what the narrator did she couldn’t stop the man from moving on, which is the primary message of this poem. No matter how hard we try, relationships will fade away, and people will move on to something
Anne Stevenson created a tragically beautiful scene by comparing a home to a relationship. Her use of metaphors and tone is striking to the sense of emotion, however that emotion fades easily when the poem is picked apart for what it really is. The reader is
The text begins with the speaker musing about how her lineage is related to that of an album cover with one solid identity. In an album, each song forms an idea that is encapsulated in a large pool of its sister tracks to form one singular unit containing an idea or focus. By referring to her family as an album, Harper has directly stated that her family is deeply connected. Above the poem is the subtitle “for my father,” which means that Harper’s message is connected to her father the most. This metaphor strikes even further into the
Memories of the past hold a high level of importance in shaping who we are as people. Whether it be the memories of your first time trying to swim or learning how to read, certain memories stick with us for life. The poem “The Heroes You Had as a Girl", by Bronwen Wallace, has the speaker recalling a fond memory that presents itself again later in life when a significant figure from her youth reappears. The short story “Snow", by Ann Beattie, features the writer reminiscing upon a specific memory of a winter with her past lover, despite her memory being different from her lovers. These texts both contribute to the idea that an individual's memories are significant in shaping one’s perspective because memories serve as a way to reflect on the
At the beginning of the poem, the audience is able to witness an event of a young boy asking his father for story. While the father was deemed a “sad” man, it is later shown that his sadness can be contributed to his fear of his son leaving him. The structure then correlated to the point of going into the future. The future was able to depict what would happen to the loving duo. The father's dreams would become a reality and the son's love and admiration would cease to exist as he is seen screaming at his father. Wanting nothing to do with him. The young, pure child can be seen trying to back lash at his father for acting like a “god” that he can “never disappoint.” The point of this structure was not really a means of clarification from the beginning point of view, but more as an intro to the end. The real relationship can be seen in line 20, where it is mentioned that the relationship between the father and son is “an emotional rather than logical equation.” The love between this father and son, and all its complexity has no real solution. But rather a means of love; the feelings a parent has for wanting to protect their child and the child itself wanting to be set free from their parents grasp. The structure alone is quite complex. Seeing the present time frame of the father and son
The poem begins with a young woman (the dancer), she craves attention and has big dreams of ultimately becoming famous. She is young, full of life, talented and gorgeous. However, the attention she craves is only fulfilled through performing on stage. This limits her, in all aspects of her life, because this uncontrollable desire could lead to her ultimately destruction. As a result, Barnes wrote, “Life had taken her and given her. One place to sing.” (Barnes). The dancer is trapped in this life not only by the opportunities life had given her but also for her own selfish desires. Yet, the thing she desires more than fame is love. Although her life is busy, with performing and partying she is in search for love. Barnes explained the dancers quest for love, “looked between the lights and wine. For one fine face…. found life only passion wide” was an unsuccessful one instead she only found lust. In other words, although she is looking for love she is looking for it in the wrong places, because she is trying looking in between the “lights” she letting her desire for fame interfere with her definition of love. She should look for someone who yearns to care for her spiritually, mentally and physically. Yet, what she aspires is for someone to love her that has status and wealth. To obtain what she wants she is
The metaphors are used in this poem to exemplify the somber tone of the family being portrayed. In past week, the father has laid “down to sleep,” (9) which indicates his death. On the outside, the father who died may of been like a “Snow-covered road,” (10) very put together and enjoyable, but it was hard to tell what was underneath. He had a “winding” lifestyle that makes him unpredictable and confusing to understand. The family has dealt with this for years, making his death even that much harder on them. He was “lonely” and lived “without any” people around him. He isolated himself.
When reading a story or a poem, readers tend to analyze, and develop their own opinions. Any content an author or poet produces is up to the reader to question, and identify what the story is trying to say. The point that I am stating is that, stories are like maps that we readers need to figure out. We have to find the starting point, and get to the destination of our conclusion, and the thoughts we have about the story or poem. In the stories that we have read so for throughout the semester, they all have different messages of what they are trying to convey to the reader in a way that can be relatable. Among all the author’s and poet’s works we have read, I have enjoyed Theodore Roethke’s poems. Roethke has developed poems that explore emotions that readers can relate to. I would like to explain and interpret the themes that Theodore Roethke expresses in the poems “My Papa’s Waltz”, “The Waking”, and “I Knew a Woman”.
...ove once because I quit biting my cuticles and my hair is gray”. She reminisces of her happiness through photographs of her and her lover and she sees the happiness in both hers and his eyes. I wasn’t quite sure what happened to make her think she once loved, maybe he died or just never talked to her again but feels so strongly about those memories still. As the Chapter relates to love and hate through all of the works of writing, the poems aren’t all about the same themes. The first one was about marriage and sin of cheating and that a love that can be altered isn’t love, the second one is about Robert Frosts love life of a girl he was very fond of and loved her but she couldn’t be faithful to any man, and the last was about a girl that speaks of love she once had and is still attached to but in some case it never worked out and all she’s left with is a memory.
To focus deeper on imagery it paints a very dark thought at first about how a father physically abuses his kid in front of the mom. This shows how good the author is at writing and how he ties in the theme to the poem. A line that is so misinterpreted is, “At every step you missed, my right ear scraped a
...ience the same situation has her father. When she tries to commit suicide she reconnects with the “bag” again, relating to the “a bag full of God”. It is very difficult for her to move on from her deceased father based on the matrimonial mistake. The speaker of the poem could have has Electra complex, which means the daughter is actually in love with the father through childhood. That assumption could relate to the hatred/ love relationship with her father. This then contributes to her inferiority and childish qualities that are emphasized throughout the poem. The tone changed frequently during the poem in order to repress the love for her father. The story is no longer the daughter’s attempt to reunite with and to marry the dead father; it is now the daughter’s wish to overthrow his dominance over her imagination and to “kill” him and the man who takes his place.
It goes from admiring the father in the photo, to being hurt by her mother’s emotions in the family. In the beginning, it quotes, “He looks like Errol Flynn” (Stanza 1), which was a very famous man at that time. A lot of men wanted to be him and women wanting to be with him. Therefore, he was a player. This shows that she thought very highly of her father. Also foreshadowing, he is a player like Errol Flynn. But as the poem goes on, it starts to shift to talking about her mother. The first thing she said about her mother is that “She is not crying,” (Stanza 2), which shows that she significantly remembers her mother crying in her childhood, but has to explain that she is not at this moment. Since normally, people remember the good times when looking at an old photo, she remembered her mother was hurt, shows she is also hurting. It is not easy seeing mothers cry, therefore, it must have pained her knowing her mother always cries knowing her father is out cheating, then confronting him, but end up only forgetting about it and has to live with all that pain for the child. As the shift as the poem went from admiring to hurt, it leads up to the
When I read “Making the Jam Without You” by Maxine Kumin, my initial thought was that the poem was simply about the mom making jam and wishing her daughter was there with her. As it states, “I am putting a dream in your head.” After reading through the poem a couple more times it started to make more sense to me, and I realised that it wasn't just about the mom missing her daughter, but about the mom sending a memory to her daughter of her childhood. The mom just wanted to remind her daughter of a good time from the past, and wishing that she will have more good times in the future. The mom has a close connection with her daughter. I can see this close connection from this statement in the poem, “...good smells where we have bumped hips and cracked the cupboards with our talk while the stove top danced with pots…” In this line it becomes more clear to me of a deeper meaning than just her mother making jam. It shows the special bond she shares with her daughter, and it reveals a much deeper meaning than my first thoughts about the poem.
The theme of this poem is associated with sadness. The narrator is grieving the loss of his wife Lenore. Throughout the whole poem the narrator has been mourning and remembering
In conclusion, both poems depict the theme of jealousy and possessiveness by spouses who believe that their partners flirt with other people. Changing the speakers to opposite sex will maintain the themes depicted in the poem because both men and women can manifest jealousy in relationship.
She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.