Memories can be beautiful or they can be difficult. Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Recuerdo," meaning "a recollection," seems to be a little bit of both. This recollection is hazy and romantic, like Millay and her unnamed partner must have felt as they "looked into a fire" (Kennedy) on the ferry they rode all night.
"Recollection" is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the action or power of recalling to one's mind. In the lives of people, the moments we recall are usually the ones that make an impression on us, or the moments that mean the most to us. Certainly this moment in the author's life holds meaning and made a lasting impression on her. She recalls being both tired and "very merry," an emotional state obviously effected or even brought on by her partner. Whether this unnamed person is a sibling, a lover, or merely a friend is unclear, but the way in which the author remembers the night suggests romance. "We were very tired, we were very merry- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry." These are the first two lines of the poem. The author wants the reader to know that while they were drained of energy, they were still in high spirits. We know this is important to the tone of the poem because the first two lines of each stanza are these same two lines, repeated a total of three times throughout the poem. It is a testament to human will that even without sleep and exhausted, the company of another person can keep the emotions positive.
Sparkman 2
In line three, she says the ferry "smelled like a stable." We know now that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory, so a certain smell can cause a memory to flood back to mind as if it were right there, happening right now, all over again. It is personal and ta...
... middle of paper ...
...m reads "and we gave her all our money but our subway fares." This is a profound statement. The old lady needs the money more than they do, and they gladly give it up because they have what they need- each other and a way home together.
The poem states not clearly, but profoundly that all this pair needs is each other, and that this trip or journey to give a little old lady some much needed food and money is more of a joyous occasion simply because of the company of each other. This memory, this recollection, though it includes the mother, is not about her, it is about the pair travelling together and using the time to enjoy the little things in life; a ride on a ferry, time spent laying together on a moonlit hillside, watching the sun rise after a long night of travelling. Whatever it is truly about, the one thing most important to the author is the memory itself.
Paula Gunn Allen’s poem Recuerdo is a poem of a woman’s memory when she was a little girl. The title Recuerdo is in Spanish meaning “I remember.” While visiting the Mesa Mountain with her mother either for a picnic or to gather up wood, she experienced an uninviting voice in the wind. In her memory, she wasn’t clear of what she heard or what it meant by the sound that she did hear. She couldn’t believe that something was in the wind that just didn’t sit well with her. The voice brought terror and tears to her eyes. Freighting her so bad that she couldn’t ask for her mother’s comfort to explain what she heard. She just stood there and let her mind wonder. What could be the reason for the terror in the wind? But instead of asking questions about her fearful thoughts she just stood there in the cold trying to warm up next to the campfire. “I wanted to cling to my mother so she could comfort me. explain the sound and my fear, but I simply sat, frozen, trying to feel as warm as the campfire (Allen).” She continues the poem with saying that she has never gotten over the memory that stuck with her from the terrified winds that spoke to her on that cold
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 for 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.
It gave the idea, and a clear understanding of what its discussing.It led me to imagine a dilapidated room,with elderly people eating, and using mismatched copper utensils. Their body physically there, but easily seen in their eyes , their minds are somewhere far away. I could see and feel the pearls when I read the line, “ Full of beads and receipts.” I could see them eating the beans,and imagine their back room filled with objects containing their memories. “ This old yellow pair,” and Rememberings with twinklings and tinges,” inspired the imagery of an old couple sitting together and reminiscing about their
The poem explains her hardships. Reading poetry is different from reading prose because you really have to dig deeper and study harder. A poem is not always straight forward like many other writings. You have to use context clues and understand imagery, tone, and sense. Summarizing a poem becomes difficult if you do not re-read several times. I learned that figurative language and lifestyle really tells a great story. Language especially helps you understand what is going on between the lines. Overall, family is always there at the end of the day. Sometimes situations get tough, but there is always a light at the end of the
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
Hence, the poem's tone contains elements of remorse as well as impassivity. The traveler's detached description of the mother, "...a doe, a recent killing; / she had stiffened already, almost cold" (6-7), and the wistful detail with which he depicts her unborn offspring, "...her fawn lay there waiting...
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 is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but
The first indication that this party is just as much for her, the mother of the birthday boy, as it is for her son comes in the opening line of the poem when she said, "...guests arrive at my son's party," rather then stating his name, she refers to him as, hers throughout the poem. This releases a very possessive tone over her presentation of how she is describing the play by play action of her son's birthday party. Another example to support the fact that she is celebrating her rite of passage also can be viewed in the first line when she calls the people arriving at the party as, "guests." Her son is six years old, and n...
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
The poem starts out with the daughter 's visit to her father and demand for money; an old memory is haunting the daughter. feeding off her anger. The daughter calls the father "a ghost [who] stood in [her] dreams," indicating that he is dead and she is now reliving an unpleasant childhood memory as she stands in front of his
Robert had invited Edna to go to the beach with him and at first she denied but compelled by the spell of defiance followed along allowing herself to indulge in deep self understanding. “A certain light was was beginning to dawn dimly within her,- the light which, which showing the way, forbids it.The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in it’s soft, close embrace” (Chopin 13), that night Edna had formed a fatal attraction to the sea and its seductivity for the presence of the river weighed heavy that night. Causing her to develop a great love for swimming for it gave her a reason to be wrapped up in the ocean’s smothering
The poem becomes personal on line 10 when she uses the first person and says “I lost my mother’s watch”. She is letting the reader know what she has lost in reality. Then she gets sidetracked to mention other things she has lost; she then mentions other things she has lost of much more importance such as houses, continents, realms, and cities, but then again mentions it was not so hard to lose those things. But in the end, mention the loss that really matters. She remembers the qualities of the lover she lost.
Edna St. Vincent Millay has created complex as well as emotionally and politically charged poetry in her career. Her poetry is often considered expressive yet also indifferent by some critics. Yet, her skill with metaphor and other evocative poetic features bring us poems that are reflective of her self, and also ourselves as readers. By developing skilled metaphors for interpreting and developing her own identity as an author and for us as a reader, we are given a construction of selfhood. In this essay, I will analyze Edna St. Vincent Millay’s two poems; If I should learn, in some quite casual way, and What lips my lips have kissed in order to explain the meaning and presence of selfhood in lyric poetry. Through interpreting Millay’s poems, I will explain the construction of selfhood or identity in each poem through formal structures. Understanding selfhood comes with understanding one’s surroundings and how we are able to relate or compare ourselves to these surroundings. Edna St. Vincent Millay does a very complete job of bringing metaphor, narrative, diction and imagery to h...
The main event is the death of the child, which has happened previously to the beginning of the poem. This event foreshadows the death of the marriage which will happen after the poem. The husband and wife go through the grief process in many different ways. The wife believes that her husband does not understand her or the grief in which she feels. Online 10, she shouts at him, “You couldn't care!...