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. …show more content…
The poem is about the mom wanting to give her daughter a memory of when she was little, and they would make jam together.
The speaker wants the daughter to keep the tradition alive and to keep on making their family's jam. The mom is wishing that her daughter will use the memories they have shared, as she goes out into the big world ahead of her, and also hopes she will grow this same deep relationship with her own children. The mom really just wants to know that her daughter is happy in life, and she wanted to share a good time they had together in hopes she will have the same type of memories with her kids. You can see this in the poem where it states, “I see you cutting fresh bread to spread it with the bright royal fur.” Here the mother is dreaming of her daughter in the future carrying on the happy and special tradition she once had with her
daughter. Reading this poem the first time around I was confused and asked myself questions to try and come up with the true meaning. Taking the time to read through each line I found myself clearly putting together lines that I didn’t quite understand before. Such as the first line of the poem, “Old daughter, small traveler asleep in a German featherbed…” This line was confusing and complex to me. After reading over the line multiple times I was able to understand what the author was trying to get across to the reader. The mother is simply telling how her daughter was once small, such as a “traveler” roaming through a large and difficult world, and now she is grown up, such as an “old daughter's.” After reading the poem multiple times i finally understand the true meaning of this poem, and it brought much more pleasure and understanding to the reading of this poem.
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
n the college essay, “ Chunky Peanut Butter” Jam Gregory describes himself as “ the chunky peanut butter”. Meaning that he feels that he is like the heart of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His article was certainly the most compelling out of the other two. A few reasons are, he uses good word choices and figurative language, shows he does different activities, and how he likes to help people.
Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother’s love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.
Then she goes on to say how the grandfather is always sitting by the fireplace, silently. The relationship between father and son seems stale, bitter, and distant. This offers a feeling of neglect Olds implies that, the speaker's father was neglected constantly by the grandfather. The poem starts off strong and reads as if the speaker is sad thinking about her father and the relationship he had with the grandfather. Olds states, “You moved through the heavy air/in your physical beauty, a boy of seven,/helpless,smart, there were things the man/did near you, and he was your father.” Olds suggest, that her father had potential to live a different life than he actually lived. Also, the poem presents uncertainty as to what actions the father did “near” his son. Further on in the poem, it becomes clear that she is talking about alcohol. She goes on to say, “the mold by which you were made. Down in the/cellar, the barrels of sweet apples,/picked at their peak from the tree, rotted and/rotted, and past the cellar door”. The grandfather molded him to become the same way that he was, an old guy who doesn’t seem to care for much and is an alcoholic. Olds use of enjambment when she says “Down in the/” causes the
“Still Memory” by Mary Karr is a poem that depicts the distant, childhood memory that the author fondly recalls. Karr’s nostalgic diction and word choice is evident when she says, “…till it found my old notch in the house I grew up in…” In this section, Karr is dreaming, hoping to find a happier time in her life, her childhood. Throughout the poem, Karr is recalling a time when she was only ten years old, and shows how each of her family members’ mannerisms influenced her and her future in writing. What may only appear to be the family performing their daily routine, is much more beneath the surface. According to the lines, “My ten-year-old hand reaches for a pen to record it all as would become long habit,” these actions are what influenced her writing. For writers, inspiration can come from the simplest of elements, and for Karr, this happened to be her family.
In “First Thanksgiving” Olds opens up to the readers about her excitement when her daughter returns home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday. She describes how she will hug her daughter, and smell her hair, and relish in the feel of her in her arms. It is through these moments that readers are also allowed the joy of having their child in their arms again-savoring their warm skin, the scent of their hair as they hug, the moment between mother and daughter as they reconnect. The imagery is so strong, strong enough in fact that readers can share in that joy, the feel, and the emotion with the writer. Olds continues to create a nostalgic feeling of times long ago, rocking and feeding a baby by moonlight. The bittersweet feeling a mother has knowing that her child has grown and those days are gone. Olds reflects even more by stating “As a child, I caught bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds, looked into their wild faces, listened to them sing, then tossed them back into the air- I remember the moment the arc of my toss swerved, and they entered the corrected curve of their departure”. It is in those lines readers can see Olds catching bees which represent her children, and while she only held onto them for a little time while they were growing- she loved every minute of their youth, reveling in their songs and their wildness as children. In true motherly fashion she releases
"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.
Analysis of Jack Johnson's Cookie Jar Jack Johnson’s song, “Cookie Jar” is a powerful influence to
... overall themes, and the use of flashbacks. Both of the boys in these two poems reminisce on a past experience that they remember with their fathers. With both poems possessing strong sentimental tones, readers are shown how much of an impact a father can have on a child’s life. Clearly the two main characters experience very different past relationships with their fathers, but in the end they both come to realize the importance of having a father figure in their lives and how their experiences have impacted their futures.
The poem “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker is about a speaker and her grandmother. The girl is adjusting to college life, but she is having problems and cannot tell her grandmother; instead, she tells her, “School is fine”. She revels her inner thoughts in order for the reader to determine she is depressed and heart wrenched. It is hard for her to tell her religious grandmother about her friends writing about “sex, about alcoholism, about Buddha”. At the end Parker writes, “It’s funny how things blow loose like that.” This is a comparison to a college student and how they have to go away from their family and learn how to live on their own. Moreover, the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is about a father and a son relationship. His father wakes up every Sunday morning to light fireplaces to warm up their home and nobody thanks him for doing this. “Sundays” in the title evocate more feelings than the other days of the week do. Sundays may be pleasant family days at home or dull and depres...
In the opening verse of the song, the speaker discusses the need to see her childhood home at least once more before moving on with her life. She shares with the current homeowner some of her experiences while growing up in the house. For instance, she says, “I know they say you can’t go home again, but I just had to come back one last time.” This shows that the speaker realizes that returning “home” is going to be a different experience than it was when she lived there, but she cannot resist the temptation of a final visit to the “house”. The speaker says that “Up those stairs in that little back bedroom, is where I did my homework and learned to play guitar. And I bet you didn’t know, under that live oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard.” This indicates some of the significant memories the speaker has of her time in the house, such as honing her...
The grandchild “proudly” shows the grandmother the picture hoping to change the negative aura surrounding them. “With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway.” (924) As already stated, “house” represents the grandmother. The winding pathway shows a new path opening up in her life. A look into who may be behind this emotional roller coaster is now featured. “Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears…” (924) Tears to the child have an entirely different meaning than to the grandmother. The grandchild sees happiness in tears, showing that you can find something positive in anything that seems to be upsetting. The man symbolizes the loss the grandmother is feeling. The grandchild drew this picture to cheer up the grandmother. It is at the end of the pome do we find out what tears mean to the grandmother. The grandmother does not acknowledge the drawing and tries to hide her true feelings. While she is doing this, “secretly…the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child carefully placed in the front of the house.” (924) The grandmother is coming to the realization that dwelling on the past brings will not make her loss return. Regardless of how much of an impact this loss had on her, pain is part of the grieving process. Only though pain
“I can’t take my eyes off of you.” is repeated many times in the song “The Blower’s daughter”, which means quite a bit. With the poem and to the painting, the song expresses the feeling in both of the eyes of a handicap person and in the eyes of another person who loves them. Handicapped people require all the attention in the world, and even when they aren’t being attended to, someone is thinking about them. In the painting, the artist depicts a young girl, who seems to be crawling toward a home on a hill quite the distance away. She seems to be quite thin and weak, which hints at the point there may be a physical problem with her. In the poem, the farmer and his family give birth to a handicapped child and while watching her sleep, can see the desire and peacefulness in her. “His thoughts while they are resting. She’s only imagining, stalks of yellow flowers flush and frilled and rippling, and a song of hours. On this and all the world’s resources, she lingers, lit up like a votive.” which means that she is only thinking about the most peaceful things in the world, and no matter what happens while she is awake, those thoughts inside of her will not be changed. These examples express the thought of someone being different or struggling to live. With the picture of a weak girl crawling to a home-looking building and the constant attention both shown in the song and the poem, these three things all connect in a certain way. They connect in the way of love and caring. They connect in a way that shows the desire and the determination anyone can see in a handicapped person’s eyes. In the song by Damien Rice, it seems, that quite possibly someone has fallen in love with someone. It does not have to be what everyone thinks. Love is not just something between two people, this could also be something felt by a father to a daughter, or a mother to a son, in a completely non sexual and non physical way. The father, who is a farmer in the poem “Bringing Desire to The Fields”, seems to be in love with his handicapped daughter. He thinks about her constantly, even when he is about to sleep.
The speaker’s personal emotions emphasizes the poem’s theme since although his father is no longer with him in this world, the memory of his father will always live in his heart. Throughout the poem, Lee uses the sky, underground, and the heart to symbolize imagination, reality, and memory—emphasizing the poem’s theme of the remembrance of a loved one. Lee also uses repetition to convey the meaning of Little Father. The speaker repeatedly mentions “I buried my father…Since then…” This repetition displays the similarity in concepts, however the contrast in ideas. The first stanza focuses on the spiritual location of the speaker’s father, the second stanza focuses on the physical location of the father, and the third stanza focuses on the mental location of the speaker’s father. This allows the reader to understand and identify the shift in ideas between each stanza, and to connect these different ideas together—leading to the message of despite where the loved one is (spiritually or physically), they’ll always be in your heart. The usage of word choice also enables the reader to read in first person—the voice of the speaker. Reading in the voice of the speaker allows the reader to see in the perspective of the speaker and to connect with the speaker—understand
I have read her chapbook The Branches, the Axe, the Missing” several times and her words stirred in me the need to tap into my own emotions when I write my poetry. The amount of time she ponders regarding her relationship with her father appeals to my artistic inclination to explore further in my own poetry some of the relationships that have come and gone in my own life. Specifically, her work speaks to a long dormant relationship I had with my own father, a conflict that became an empty hole upon his death years ago. Her poems such as pages “Eighteen and “Twenty-six” were my favorite poems in her book. I have read poem twenty-six several times and have read it aloud to myself in the mirror. Charlotte Pence pens a concrete image of life with her father, intertwining in specific diction an event that has impacted her adulthood. This prose technique allows me to understand that the remembrance of one specific event in a relationship can affirm the infinite effect a relationship between a father and daughter has on the future. The lesson I learned from her work is that a good poet must avoid corny language in the process of writing a poem. I took this lesson to heart when I revised my poem “Stolen Trust” and my attempt to remember how one specific life event impacts how I view the world. Many of her words have a resonating ring of familiarity with me yet I am clear that my relationship with my father was much different that she has with her father. Thus, when I revise my poem I want to stick with the truth. I use the language I know and stick with the facts of the event. Even though I identify with Charlotte Pence and her words, my poetry is in my own