Untitled and Advice to My Son, by Peter Meinke

1107 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Role of father in child development essay

It is often common to have an author or the writer of a certain poem write about similar topics and also reflect the same stylistic characters among his or her poems. In Peter Meinke’s two poems, titled Untitled and Advice to my son, he created them both using a specific tone and the same subject to create different themes. Both of these poems also included some of the important elements of poetry.

Peter’s poem Untitled is about a father, possibly Peter’s, who is writing this poem to his 10 year old son. This father is apologizing for all the hurt he has caused his son. He’s caused this by not being there for him or being able to understand him. It also says in this poem that the son may have been both physically and emotionally hurt by his father. Finally, this poem ends with the father saying that he wishes that he could have told his son more often that he was beautiful and cares about him, because apparently he didn’t tell him enough.

His other poem, Advice to my son, Peter seems to be giving his son advice. He starts off by telling him to live life to the fullest and plan ahead for the future, because you never know when it will be taken from you. He then goes on to tell him to smell the flowers, or in other words to not forget the simple things in life. Marrying a pretty girl, being strong and making sure you work hard at what you is other advice that is given to his son. This poem ends with the father telling his son to always serve bread and wine, which can be taken as religiously or metaphorically.

The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...

... middle of paper ...

...y. This is seen in lines 11-13 when he writes, “To be specific, between the peony and the rose/ plant, squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; / beauty is nectar” (Meinke, Lines 11-13). After reading these lines the reader can visualize what these foods look like, including their shape, color, smell and texture.

In conclusion, both of these poems, Untitled and Advice to my son have similar ways of creating a specific tone as well as using different themes to portray the same type of subject or idea. These poems also included other characteristics of poetry including simile, metaphor, and the idea of living life to the fullest or carpe diem.

Works Cited

Meinke, Peter. “Advice to my son.” Venerable_Vermin. 29 Oct. 2006. Web. 17 Feb. 2011

Meinke, Peter. “Untitled” Poetry: An Introduction. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2010. 89. Print

Show More
Related

  • Comparing and Contrasting Theodore Roethke's My Papa's Waltz and Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    The events of our childhood and interactions with our parents is an outline of our views as parents ourselves. Although Robert Hayden’s relationship with his father differentiates from the relationship of Theodore Roethke and his father, they are both pondering back to their childhood and expressing the events in a poem. “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those winter Sundays” provide the reader with an image of a childhood event which states how fathers are being viewed by their children. These poems reflect upon the relationship of the father and child when the child was a youth. Both Roethke and Hayden both indicate that their fathers weren’t perfect although they look back admiringly at their fathers’ actions. To most individuals, a father is a man that spends time with and takes care of them which gains him love and respect. An episode of Roethke’s childhood is illustrated in “My Papa’s Waltz”. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, the father comes home showing signs of alcohol and then begins waltzing with his son. Roethke states that the father’s hands are “battered on one knuckle”. The mother was so upset about the dancing that she did nothing other than frown. At the end of the day, the father waltzed the son to bed. “Those Winter Sundays” is based on a regular Sunday morning. The father rises early to wake his family and warm the house. To warm the house, he goes out in the cold and splits wood to start a fire. This is a poem about an older boy looking back to his childhood and regretting that “No one ever thanked him.” In Those Winter Sundays'; by Robert Hayden, the poet also relinquishes on a regular occurrence in his childhood. On Sunday mornings, just as any other morning, his father rises early and puts on his clothes in the cold darkness. He ...

    Read More

  • Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz and Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays

    1713 Words  | 4 Pages

    My Papa’s Waltz and Those Winter Sundays are similar because they use tone, imagery, and sounds and rhythms to prove these two boys in fact love their abusive father. In both of these poems there is a movement from a cold and serious tone to a warm and happy one. The use of imagery successfully accentuates the good things the father does while marginalizing the bad. And the sounds and rhythms also add to the theme of love by manipulating how the poem is read. Roethke and Hayden are two skilled poets that have much control over the techniques they use. It is interesting that these poems are so alike and perhaps it is due to the time at which they were written. In any case, these two poets made a lasting impression on American poetry and will continue to appear in poetry anthologies for years to come.

    Read More

  • Essay About Love in My Papa's Waltz, Facts, Night Driving, Those Winter Sundays, Digging, and Daddy

    1774 Words  | 4 Pages

    I have elected to analyze seven poems spoken by a child to its parent. Despite a wide variety of sentiments, all share one theme: the deep and complicated love between child and parent.

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting Strongman by Tony Curtis and The Follower by Seamus Heaney

    1261 Words  | 3 Pages

    Both poems are set in the past, and both fathers are manual labourers, which the poets admired as a child. Both poems indicate intense change in their fathers lives, that affected the poet in a drastic way. Role reversal between father and son is evident, and a change of emotion is present. These are some of the re-occurring themes in both poems. Both poems in effect deal with the loss of a loved one; whether it be physically or mentally.

    Read More

  • A Father's Unfailing Prescence

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.

    Read More

  • A Literary Analysis Of 'A Story' By Li-Young Lee

    1200 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and

    Read More

  • Comparing There Is No Word For Goodbye And Casey At The Bat

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    Poetry is very different. We see this throughout the history of literature. But whether you’re reading Ballads or Concrete poems they all have one thing in common, they’re all poetry. The two poems ‘There Is No Word For Goodbye’ and ‘Casey At The Bat’ are examples of only two out of the five styles of poetry. Analyzing and comparing the two styles is difficult as it’s almost too different to compare. ‘There Is No Word For Goodbye’ is a poem by Mary Tall Mountain –for the purpose of this paper I’ll call her M&M for short- Her writing is an example of a concrete poem. A concrete poem has a shape that suggests its subject and the poet will arrange the letters, words, punctuation, and lines to create an image in the reader’s mind.

    Read More

  • Comparing For My Daughter 'And Her Kind'

    496 Words  | 1 Pages

    These two poems, For My Daughter, and Her Kind are greatly different but in a few ways the same. The few ways they are the same are very important and have great meaning behind it. The female in both of their poems, the use of nature, the sadness in the narrators voice and the darkness of the two poems both have in

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast My Sonnys Blues And My Papa's Blues

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is no greater bond then a boy and his father, the significant importance of having a father through your young life can help mold you to who you want to become without having emotional distraught or the fear of being neglected. This poem shows the importance in between the lines of how much love is deeply rooted between these two. In a boys life he must look up to his father as a mentor and his best friend, the father teaches the son as much as he can throughout his experience in life and build a strong relationship along the way. As the boy grows up after learning everything his father has taught him, he can provide help for his father at his old-age if problems were to come up in each others

    Read More

  • Parent and Son Relationship in one of Nye, Naomi Shihab´s Poems

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.

    Read More

  • The Author To Her Book

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    Writing poetry can be a deeply personal (and sometimes painful) process. If talent and luck prevails, the poet will actually produce a something that reflects the inner workings that first motivated their pen to meet paper. Through struggle and sweat a poem is born, and for better or for worse the creator is responsible for the subsequent journey that it will take throughout it’s poetic life. In it’s infancy, it might seem a miracle of creation, but like most parents the writer will work at maturing the verse and rhyme so that it can defend itself when it eventually leaves home. The world that it will one day enter is a cold and critical one, and few will understand the true meaning and depth of the poem’s soul like it’s parent does.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Mother to Son and Harlem, Both by Langston Hughes

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    Form and meaning are what readers need to analyze to understand the poem that they are evaluating. In “Mother to Son”, his form of writing that is used frequently, is free verse. There is no set “form”, but he gets his point across in a very dramatic way. The poem is told by a mother who is trying to let her son know that in her life, she too has gone through many frustrations just like what her son is going through. The tone of this poem is very dramatic and tense because she illustrates the hardships that she had to go through in order to get where she is today. She explains that the hardships that she has gone through in her life have helped her become the person that she has come to be. Instead of Hughes being ironic, like he does in some of his poems, he is giving the reader true background on the mother’s life. By introducing the background, this helps get his point across to the reader in a very effective way. In this poem there are many key words which help portray the struggles that the mother is trying to express to her son. The poem is conveyed in a very “down to earth” manner. An example of this is, “Life for me ain’t been a crystal stair (462).” This quote shows the reader that the mom is trying to teach the son a lesson with out sugar coating it. She wants her son to know that throughout her life has had many obstacles to overcome, and that he too is going to have to get through his own obstacles no matter how frustrating it is. Her tone throughout the poem is stern telling the boy, “So boy, don’t turn your back (462).” The poems tone almost makes the reader believe that the mother is talking to them, almost as if I am being taught a valuable lesson.

    Read More

  • Poetry Closed Reading Assignment:Billy Collins

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    Billy Collins has used a specific metaphor, simile, rhyme and personification in his poem ‘Introduction to poetry’ in order to show how one should better understand a poem. This poem focused on what the poem actually mean and how a poem should be clearly understood. Throughout the poem, Billy Collins has presented a clear way of understanding the poem by using a very interesting imagery, symbolism, metaphor and a very sensitive sound. The words used in this poem are so powerful that the readers are convinced to think about the issue presented in the poem.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Ironing, Ironing Their Clothes, By Julia Alvarez

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    These poems are not as complex when compared to other poems, and with that being said they do not take an abundance of inference to determine the theme of the poem. Because they are not as complex as others all 3 of these poems are capable of being paraphrased to better understand the main idea of the poem. When putting the poem into different words, one can

    Read More

  • The Virgins Poem

    691 Words  | 2 Pages

    In poems, one way or other way, they both are encouraging youth to be strong and to be courageous. They both are giving advice to youth but in different ways. Both the speakers have very strong tone of voice and both are very encouraging to the youth.

    Read More

More about Untitled and Advice to My Son, by Peter Meinke

Open Document