Poem Commentaries: MY PARENTS by Stephen Spender

The poem My Parents by Stephen Spender gives us an insight to society in the 30’s and 40’s, even though it’s from the perspective of a child.  Spender, being one of the “left wing” poets of that time, was very aware of class distinctions. In this poem he writes as an upper middle class child, who envies the street kids’ freedom, while still considering their behaviour detestable.

The poem opens with, “My parents kept me from children who were rough” which immediately shows that the boy was raised in a sheltered environment. In the first stanza you can see his disgust and jealousy for the street kids. He insults their rouge-ish behaviour, and their lack of proper clothing. It was clear that their manner of speaking was less than proper (threw words like stones), and they often said hurtful things to him. In the lines “they ran in the street/ climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams” you can see that he envies their freedom, as being an upper middle class child, his parents wouldn’t let him run around and swim down the river like a hooligan. The second stanza shows that he was also scared of those boys, because of their physical advantage over him, their bullying, and their teasing. The word “lisp” also shows that he was a pampered child, a child who didn’t have to deal with poverty, and a child who was treasured by his family members. As said before, the street boys were strong and agile, and waited for him and attacked him, yelling out abuses to his world. He refers to them as dogs, which, all over the world, is considered an insult, and it shows how lowly he thinks of them. The last few lines, “… They threw mud/ While I looked the other way, pretending to smile. / I longed to forgive them but they never smiled” shows that the boy, thought highly of himself and thought that the street kids’ behaviour was something for which they should ask for forgiveness, but they obviously didn’t seem to think of it the same way.

Though the title, “My Parents” doesn’t seem apt, and seems as if the poet just titled it because they were the first two words of the poem, but if you look into it, it does make sense—the parents influence their views onto their children. In the case of the main voice, if it weren’t for his parents, he probably would have gotten along with the boys, and run freely like them; and the street kids’ probably bullied him because their parents probably worked beneath the “rich” and their children probably thought they should harm the boy as much as they can, before he “owns” them.

Poem Commentaries: ONE ART by Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” revolves around the art of ‘loss’. In the beginning, the poem seems to have a light and informal air to it, but as we progress through it, it becomes more serious, but the poet still tries to maintain the light air.

The poem opens with the statement “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” The first stanza is slightly comical, as according to the poet, “things” have been personified. She thinks that she has only lost them because they had the desire to not be found. Thus, she concludes that it’s no disaster. I also think that the poet is referring to childhood, because at that time, when things are lost, one does not put much value to it.

The second stanza progresses into adulthood, where the poet makes daily life sound monotonous and repetitive, to an extent that when something is lost, one looks at it as a problem or time badly spent. In this stanza she wants one to accept the loss, and calm down.

The third stanza opens with the poet telling us to practice “losing farther, losing faster,” like how once a person reaches old age, they begin losing their memories. Maybe in this stanza, the poet is trying to make a reference to Alzheimer’s [a condition where in one’s memory is lost]. And even in the fourth stanza, the poet’s thoughts seem addled and jumbled, and she doesn’t seem too sure of anything. Again, this resembles old age. Since the third stanza may have an Alzheimer’s reference, I think that the poet is referring to someone else in that stanza, and that that person was someone she loved and how that person may have Alzheimer’s and has forgotten her.

In the fifth stanza, she talks about all that she has lost in terms of land—[“I lost two cities… two rivers and a continent.”] She may be talking only in terms of the places she lived, but she may also be referring to all the relationships and societal bonds she had when she lived in those areas.

The last stanza, the poet makes it evident that she has lost someone she loved dearly. Because of the Alzheimer’s reference, I think that she doesn’t literally mean that the person has passed away, but the memories they shared have been erased from her loved one’s memory. The closing lines of the poem—“the art of losing isn’t hard to master/though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” The last line of this stanza is opposite to that of all the other stanzas, which end in her saying that it’s ‘not a disaster’.  The “(Write it!)” also seems as if she’s forcing herself to admit that this, ‘losing’ her beloved, is a disaster, even though she’s lost so much, and that she didn’t expect that this would be harder than any of those.

The title, “One Art” seems as if the poet was accepting loss as an art, but not too enthusiastically. It seems as if she wants to accept all that she lost and move on. 

Poem Commentaries: BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s poems deal with death again and again, and it is never quite the same in any poem. In “Because I could not stop for Death—,” we see death personified. He is not frightening, or even intimidating reaper, but rather a courteous and gentle guide, leading her to eternity. The speaker feels no fear when Death picks her up in his carriage; she just sees it as an act of kindness, as she was too busy to find time for him.

It is this kindness, this individual attention to her—it is emphasized in the first stanza that the carriage holds just the two of them, doubly so because of the internal rhyme in “held” and “ourselves”—that leads the speaker to so easily give up on her life and what it contained. This is explicitly stated, as it is “For His Civility” that she puts away her “labour” and her “leisure,” which is Dickinson using metonymy to represent another alliterative word—her life.

Indeed, the next stanza shows the life is not so great, as this quiet, slow carriage ride is contrasted with what she sees as they go. A school scene of children playing, which could be emotional, is instead only an example of the difficulty of life—although the children are playing “At Recess,” the verb she uses is “strove,” emphasizing the labours of existence. The use of anaphora with “We passed” also emphasizes the tiring repetitiveness of mundane routine.

The next stanza moves to present a more conventional vision of death—things become cold and more sinister, the speaker’s dress is not thick enough to warm or protect her. Yet it quickly becomes clear that though this part of death—the coldness, and the next stanza’s image of the grave as home—may not be ideal, it is worth it, for it leads to the final stanza, which ends with immortality. Additionally, the use of alliteration in this stanza that emphasizes the material trappings—“gossamer” “gown” and “tippet” “tulle”—makes the stanza as a whole less sinister.

That immorality is the goal is hinted at in the first stanza, where “Immortality” is the only other occupant of the carriage, yet it is only in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has obtained it. Time suddenly loses its meaning; hundreds of years feel no different than a day. Because time is gone, the speaker can still feel with relish that moment of realization, that death was not just death, but immortality, for she “surmised the Horses’ Heads/Were toward Eternity –.” By ending with  “Eternity –,” the poem itself enacts this eternity, trailing out into the infinite.

Poem Commentaries: CHILDHOOD by Frances Cornford.

The poem “Childhood” by Frances Cornford is a simple poem through the perspective of a child, and how he grows up in an instant of realisation.

The poem is short and simple and it shows exactly how a child’s mind works.

In the first four lines, the child thinking that adults “chose” to age, to have stiff backs and, their veins sticking out for the purpose of seeming grand. It’s easy to see why a child would think that, because all around the world, the old are respected. In a child’s point of view parents are the most powerful, but seeing them acting so respectful to the old creates a fear in the mind of a child. The sense of respect and fear shows when the poet uses the simile “veins like small fat snakes—,”as to a child snakes are animals that are to be feared, but are also a sign of something grand.

From lines 5 to 10 contain the reason for the speaker's sudden changed opinion about aging grown-ups. She had told us that she used to believe that the grown-ups "chose" those aging qualities until she observed her great-aunt's friend groping helplessly for her beads. The speaker realizes that it is not likely a person would choose to have such difficulty just retrieving some loose beads, so she then realizes that they probably don't choose those visible physical defects either. This observation led the speaker to change her perspective: the adults were just helpless as they acquired those old-age characteristics, and their helplessness paralleled her own, the helplessness of being young.

The aptness of the title truly shows in the last two lines, “And then I knew that she was helplessly old, / As I was helplessly young” which shows that old age is like a second childhood, and that both—children and old people face similar problems.