My Father Calls Me Sunday Morning Summary

In “My Father Calls Me Every Sunday Morning” by Jan Heller Levi, Levi uses diction and imagery that are both positive and negative to evoke a resigned tone towards her relationship with her father. Firstly, Levi uses phrases to express diction throughout the poem. She shifts from tense to loving in order to display that she loves him despite his damaging effects on her. In the beginning Levi’s tone is tense as she can almost feel her father calling at any moment. Phrases such as “… Like a recalcitrant child”, and “Pulsing through 200 miles of tense wire…” describes her knowledge of her father’s actions and her feelings towards those actions. The author purposely includes “Recalcitrant” as she recollects with her father’s parenting skills. The word “Pulsing” is

Despite Levi’s tense attitude before even speaking to her father, she becomes loving while describing her father’s diverse laugh. She describes her father’s laugh as something different even though she has heard it plenty of times and realizes that is it much more than unique but it is unordinary. “My father laughs, His laugh is gorgeous.”(27-28) Levi describes her father’s laugh as although it is something wonderful in which she spends the rest of her poem comparing his laugh to a “long roar of delight” and “wintergreen air.” Although the poet uses diction to express her feelings towards her father, she also uses descriptive images to visualize and describe the frequent routine in which she goes from harsh to peaceful. Throughout the poem Levi describes her father’s arranged actions as she wait almost impatiently for her father to call. “I can feel it coming. He’s been awake for hours. He checks his watch, pulls the phone on his lap like a recalcitrant child…” (5-7) Levi describes