Untitled and Advice to My Son, by Peter Meinke

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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

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