Life is a journey. It is filled with challenges, lessons learned, happiness, and celebrations. Everyone experiences the twists and turns that life can throw, but some do not experience it as Linda Pastan did during the women’s movement. She expresses her feeling of “life” in her poem “Marks” and “Baseball. Both of these poems portray the use of extended metaphors to set the theme of her poems and are similar in comparing two distinct things to life, but in different ways.
Linda Pastan was a great poet while also a wife and mother. She “suspended her writing for a decade while raising her three children” (Potvin 2). Pastan stated in an interview with Jeffery Brown that she stopped because she could not be the perfect wife and mother that were
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expected of her and also commit herself to her poetry (Brown, 3). Pastan is a poet that is big on the use of metaphors. Both “Marks” and “Baseball use metaphors to set the theme of the entire poem. “Marks” consists of a metaphor comparing a woman’s role in her family and an extended metaphor comparing women’s role in society. “Baseball” uses an extended metaphor comparing life to the game of baseball. Pastan uses many poetic devices such as structure, and figurative language. Pastan uses structure to make the metaphor stand out to the reader.
The structure of “Baseball” and “Marks” are very different, but their two distinct structures tend to prove the same meaning. “Marks” is a poem consisting of three stanzas with three lines in the first, five lines in the second and four lines in the third. This poem has three groups of four lines, in which each family member has their own group of lines. One unique thing is that the husband’s last line runs into the second stanza. Pastan does this to make it clear that her husband grades her on her intimate abilities and only gives her a B plus. “Baseball” on the other hand consists of seven short two lined stanzas and is also written in free verse. Again Pastan could have chosen to write this poem in seven short two lined stanzas because a little league baseball game is played in seven innings with each team hitting and playing the field once and each inning. This structure is unique in portraying the game baseball. Each poem has its own way of expressing the use of a metaphor, because one deals with a historical event and another is just Pastan’s thoughts about life. These poems are not only different in structure both include informal diction, alliteration, and distinct world choices to convey the meaning of the extended metaphor in each
poem. “Marks,” written in 1978, a time when women were fighting for their rights in the workforce, home and politics. This poem is unique in a sense that it was based on and written in a historical time period rather than just a normal setting. In an interview on “The PBS Newshour” with Jeffrey Brown, Pastan stated, “I think I've always been interested in the dangers that are under the surface, but seems like simple, ordinary domestic life. It may seem like smooth surfaces, but there are tensions and dangers right underneath, and those are what I'm trying to get at” (Brown 2). Pastan shows this same attitude in “Marks.” She is tired of the ordinary domestic life of a woman. According to Paul Jay’s Critical Survey of Poetry, Linda Pastan “has been appreciated as an artist of what she herself calls “dailiness”- contemporary domestic life.” This is significantly shown in Pastans’s poem “Marks.” Also in “Marks,” the speaker try’s to be the perfect mother and wife she can be. She considers herself “a product of the ‘50s – what [she calls] the perfectly polished floor syndrome. [She has] to have a homemade dessert on the table for [her] husband every night” (Brown 3). These types of experiences reflected Pastan’s poetry as well. Such chores were considered a woman’s “job” during the mid 1900’s. Pastan is tired of these “jobs” and just wants to break free from it all. She does not want the idea of femininity to run in her family any longer. Pastan shows this through the last line were she writes, “I’m dropping out,” which she choses to quit doing all of the chores that were considered her “job.” The title of the poem “Marks” plays a significant role in the meaning of the poem. This title is meant to be the marks that Pastan receives when her family members grade her based on her role as a mother and wife. Pastan’s family members think that the housework or chores that she is expected to do is actually her “job.” After Pastan tries to be the perfect wife and mother her husband, son, and daughter think they should grade her. Pastan uses three different grading systems throughout the poem. The husband uses the letter grading system, the son uses the ranking system and the daughter uses the pass/fail system. Pastan’s husband “gives [her] an A/for last night’s supper,/an incomplete for [her] ironing,/[and] a B plus in bed,” while her son says “[she is] average, an average mother, but if [she puts her] mind to it [she can] improve.” Her daughter “believes in Pass/Fail and tells [her she passes].” The husband and son grade harshly, while the daughter seems to have a little sympathy for her mother. The daughter seems to have a little sympathy because she knows that she will be a mother one day and will be graded on her woman abilities. Pastan’s use of informal diction creates the tone of the poem. Pastan makes it unique because the last lines of each group are the shortest and most powerful lines of the poem. These lines especially seem bare and dry, which creates the tone of the poem. This tone of ordinariness is unique because Pastan seems tired of her “marks,” but shows no emotion. In the husbands last line Pastan uses alliteration “a B plus in bed.” This line is flat and shows the reader Pastan’s view of what her husband thinks of her. This poem uses line breaks and commas to interrupt the sentences throughout the poem. The interruptions throughout the poem create an emphasis on key parts or certain words such as average. Pastan uses this word twice to show how much of an insult it can have on someone or a mother who is trying her best to be perfect for her family. This poem overall is a great poem that express the feelings women had during the 1900’s or women’s movement. “The quality of Pastan’s poetry most frequently noted is its emphasis on ordinary subjects” (Johnson par. 16). An example of this is her poem “Baseball.” “Baseball,” published in 1995, also uses many poetic devices to express the use of an extended metaphor. A Baseball is a game “played by two teams who alternate between offense and defense. There are nine players on each side. The goal is to score more runs than the opponent, which is achieved by one circuit of four bases that are placed on the diamond.” This game is not always easy as Pastan uses this as a metaphor for life. Some poetic devices that Pastan uses are the title, alliteration, capitalization, consonance, imagery, symbolism, understatement and the use of informal diction to portray the tone. The title of this poem gives away the metaphor and it is also written out for the reader in the first stanza, which is comparing the game of baseball to life. Alliteration is used through out the poem as well like “for life the long” (line 3), and “tired to tell” (1). In line six, Pastan capitalizes the word sacrifice for a reason. Sacrifice is terminology from baseball meaning, when a batter bunts the ball he sacrifices himself to score one of his teammates. Pastan may have chosen to capitalize this word on the basis of being a theme for life. There are times in life when we have to make sacrifices and sometimes they turnout for the good and sometimes they don’t. Also in line six, Pastan writes “for which you win approval but not applause,” which is an example of consonance. This is also in reference to baseball because in games there are times when a player has to sacrifice themselves for the team such as a sacrifice bunt as I mentioned earlier. The player who is butting or scoring the run is receiving approval, but not applause. In line three Pastan uses imagery, because one can picture a baseball player running around the long dusty bases and the struggle it can be to reach home. This is a representation to life as well because life is long and it has its challenges. In line five Pastan uses symbolism in the word home because it is not only terminology for baseball, but it is where someone feels happy and knows they belong. Everyone wants to feel that happiness and joy in scoring a run or being home again where he or she feels safe. In an interview between Jeremy Brisiel and Rob Reiner, Reiner states “Baseball is a game in which heroes are simply trying to go home” (Footer). This statement is similar to that of Pastan’s because Pastan also uses the word home as being symbolic not only in life but also baseball. There are two speakers in this poem. At the beginning of the poem Pastan seems to be talking to someone who is considered “you” (line 1). She leaves this anonymous “you” for the reader to be able to relate this poem to anyone. Pastan seems to not agree with the other speaker of the poem at the beginning but towards the end of the poem she changes her mind. Pastan writes, “It’s just a way of passing time, I said” (lines 11-12). This is an understatement because life is much more than passing time. Lines eight and nine, “the way the light closes down in the last days of the season” can be interpreted in two ways. One is that it proposes a sense of nature because it can mean when the time changes in the shift of seasons it gets darker earlier. The second one is that this line could suggest death like a person would slowly die away toward the day of their death. In Reiner’s interview he also stated “in baseball, you’re part of a team, but when you’re at-bat, nobody can help you. You’re all by your self. It’s like life in that we are alone, yet we are still apart of a team.” This statement by Reiner sums up Pastan’s view of baseball being similar to life. Linda Pastan was a woman who experienced all that life could toss her way, especially the role of women in her early life. She could relate the poem ‘Baseball” to the long travail of the women’s movement. The use of extended metaphors in both poems allowed Pastan set the theme of her poems and to connect with readers on more of a personal level.
In “Football Dreams” by Jacqueline Woodson, the message that any dream can come true if you put the work in is supported by the structure of the poem. The structural elements that are most impactful are repetition and the title. While she talks about her father’s dreams at the beginning. Later towards the end of the poem, she starts to explain how they came true. “My father dreamed football dreams, and woke up to a scholarship at Ohio State University” (10-12). The repetition is “dreams” and “football” which tells the audience that her father dreamed of playing football and he put in the effort and got a “scholarship at Ohio State University.” The title “Football Dreams” is the repetition
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