Olivia Uribe
Ms. Richardson
Speech – Period 5
19 December 2016
Thanks For Remembering Us
Suspicion, mistrust, and accusations were the first three words that came to mind when reading Dana Gioia’s “Thanks For Remembering Us”. This sarcastic poem brings darkness to an action that would otherwise be deemed as thoughtful and kind-hearted. The title of the poem is deceiving and taunting, the speaker’s fruitless relationship is heavily symbolized by the flowers, and the overall theme is “failing to let go of love”.
Dana Gioia was born on December 24, 1950 in Hawthorne, California. Although he is a poet he received an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) from Stanford University. In his late twenties he moved to New York and worked as a businessman. However, in 1992, after publishing his first poetry book, he decided to become a full-time writer. Throughout his writing career Gioia has made several accomplishments including: being the author of several poetry collections, writing an opera libretto, co-editing two anthologies and four of the nation’s best-selling college literature textbooks, co-founded two major literary conferences, served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and was appointed poet laureate of California. Gioia now lives in Sonoma County, California, with his wife and two
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children. When reading the title, “Thanks For Remembering Us”, it can interpreted that the poem will express gratitude or kind-hearted feelings.
However, by the middle of the poem, it is understood that the title is sarcastic. Whoever “remembered” to send the seemingly harmless flowers has actually caused the couple to silently think to themselves “Is one of us having an affair?” (7). Although the speaker states in line 6 that “We should thank someone for the blunder.” they undoubtedly won’t since the unexpected gift with the unknown sender has triggered suspicion and tension between the couple, further leading to a realization that their relationship is slowly falling
apart. A symbol of the speaker’s fading relationship is the flowers. Flowers in general are frequently associated as a gift of thanks. However, the flowers in the poem were sent by mistake and begin to cause tension between the speaker and their spouse. One example of how the flowers represent the speaker’s relationship with their spouse is evident in line 9, “The iris was the first to die,”. The iris is a flower that traditionally symbolizes faith; once the iris died, the couple begins to question if the other has lost faith in each other, causing the relationship to slowly die. The poet goes on to describe roses which are well associated with love and passion: “The roses / fell one petal at a time,” (11-12). This can be of an allusion to the tradition of a person picking off petals one by one saying “He/She loves me…he/she loves me not,” until all the petals have fallen off and the answer is given. Although the flowers tease and provoke negative feelings from the speaker and their spouse: “but there they sit, too much at home, / accusing us of some small crime, / like love forgotten,” (15-17), the couple has a hard time throwing them out because they are still trying to hold on to the love they still think they have. Even if the couple’s relationship is withering away like the flowers, they do not want to let go of what they think they had: “and we can’t / throw out a gift we’ve never owned” (17-18).
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