Childhood
To My Nine-Year-Old Self
Childhood being presented as innocent and pure
"That dream we had, no doubt it's as fresh in your mind / as the white paper to write on"
"White paper" symbolises purity
Present self fearful for the child self
"time to hide down scared lanes / from men in cars after girl-children"
Present self being different to past self
"I'd like to say we could be friends / but the truth is we have nothing in common."
present self expressed with caesura
past self expressed with enjambment
"Look at the scars. and watch the way I move"
present self experiencing reality, child still in fantasy
"but no, I shan't cloud your morning. God knows / I have fears enough for us both -"
simile for purity
Genetics
children being the physical product of a marriage
"My father's in my fingers, but my mother's in my palms"
"My body is their marriage register"
use of language associated with hands, being built by parent's hands, genetics, fingerprints
poem written as a villanelle
ring representing genetics
Written from a child's perspective about the parents
use of childhood rhyme
cannot lose identity
"I shape a chapel where a steeple stands"
childish hand gestures, playground game
History
contrast between parents and child
parents being worried about global news
child being free
“the rose or petrol blue / of jellyfish and sea anemone / combining with a child’s / first nakedness”
“his parents on the dune slacks with a kite / plugged into the sky / all nerve and line / patient;afraid;”
also sense of entrapment
"our lines raised in the wind / our bodies fixed and anchored to the shore"
Out of the Bag
Child viewing Doctor Kerlin as a God
"All of us came in Doctor Kerlin's bag"
contrast in beliefs as one gets older
poem separated into four parts
lack of rhyme scheme
allows imagination and ideas to flow freely
childish
not seeing childbirth, only the doctor leaving
extent of child's imagination
"the trap-sprung mouth / Unsnibbed and gaping wide"
Material
child looking up to mother
"My mother was a hanky queen"
persona experiencing nostalgia
"Nostalgia only makes me old"
use of enjambment represents flow of memory
end-stopping lines
pushes memories back to focus on the present
poem written as an ode to the mother
merging of past and present
use of simile
"She bought her own; I never did"
persona drifting away from mother
"There's never a hanky up my sleeve. I raised neglected-looking kids"
constrained rhyme scheme evokes tight in memory
An Easy Passage
Poem being a transition from childhood to adulthood
written in one stanza
every person goes through the same, gradual change
written in free verse
telling of a story, begins focusing on a child
comparisons between girl and secretary
“far too, most far, from the
flush-faced secretary”
journey to adulthood being far away
from a child's perspective
Children viewed as vulnerable
"crouched in her bikini"
use of rhetoric question
"What can she know / of the way the world admits us less and less / the more we grow?"
life question that is never fully answered
“a square of petrified beach”
how the girl feels about transitioning
metaphor for fear