PA 10 Poem at Thrity-Nine

Summary

The poem describes how much Walker misses her dad and how she reflects on his influence on her identity now as an adult, at the age of Thrity-Nine. She explains all the wonderful things he taught her in life, and although he might not have agreed with all her opinions, he would be proud of her.

Themes

• Parent-Child relationships, Love for her father

• Memory, loss and grief

• Identity

Parent-Child relationships, Love for her father

1. Relationship/ love rooted in everyday ordinary interactions/intimacy, not idealisation.

2. Relationship based/love expressed through guidance by the father.

3. Relationship based/love expressed through admiration and respect for the father by the daughter.

4. Relationship/love’s influence on life/way of living, shaping identity.

5. Relationship/love’s lasting influence beyond death.

Memory, loss and grief

1. Memory preserves emotional connection, even beyond death

2. Memory is a reflective force rather than overwhelming, positively influencing her life.

3. Memory about his father continues to shape her identity.

Form & rhyme scheme & meter

• Free verse with no fixed meter or rhyme scheme

→ creates a conversational feel= reader can relate, as it the speaker is confiding to the reader about her grief , giving the poem a narrative quality, suggesting the subject matter is deeply personal to the narrator

→ casual, ordinary nature of the relationship between speaker and her father → intimate & ordinary & familiar & close bond rather than distant&unfamiliar

→ could also reflect how forgiving/tolerant/indulgent her father with her is as he did not punish her with “a beating” when she was “saying the truth”

→ mirrors how memories are unstructured, ongoing and fluid, relentlessly flowing through the speaker’s mind

• enjambement =almost throughout =continuous, flowing thoughts. Alternatively, it could also reflect her urge to continue talking about her father

• end-stopped lines = the way it’s done. = creates authority to his father’s words, presenting him like a didactic figure, guiding her in her life

• short line length create staccato effect: build emotional intensity/reflect the ways how the pieces of memories appear in the speaker’s mind as fragmented thoughts

Structure

• Shift from past to present tense

→ begins with the speaker’s memories of her father’s guidance - he taught her valuable skills, both practical, such as “writing slips” and intellectual, telling her to be honest and “tell the truth”.

→ the past tense creates a sense of distance and loss, reinforcing her longing and nostalgia for her father.

→ nostalgic & reflective tone

→ In the penultimate stanza = present tense, with the adverb “now” pulling the reader from immersed memory, the focus shifts to her father’s current influence on her, continuing to shape her identity and daily life. This idea is reinforced by the internal rhyme “look and cook”, mirroring her resemblance to her father emphasising the importance of his influence: Father’s impact = beyond death

→ optimistic & self-assured tone

• Hypothetical/conditional tense “he would have” = possibility of what would have happened if he lived, highlighting his absence and loss while adding poignancy as he would have felt proud of her. Although her father cannot “grow” in life, his teachings will continue to “grow” in her

Repetition of “How I miss my father”

→ outpouring the emotions of bereavement and loss

→ quite colloquial, gives poem conversational feel, enable the reader to relate profoundly to her feelings of grief about a deceded family member

→’how’- emphasises to what extent she misses her father and that this feeling is multi-faceted, adding poignancy

→ one of the few instances of an end-stopped line: forces the reader to pause and adds emotional weight

→ second time it is repeated = has an additional exclamation mark → her grief becomes increasingly intense as poem progresses

list/Asyndeton “cooking, writing, chopping wood, staring into the fire”

• Absence of conjunctions

  • builds excitement by speeding up the list

  • creates a confident and self-assured tone

    • → her belief of her father would ‘admire’ and be proud of the woman she has become, at the age of ‘thrity-nine’

  • could also subtly hint that the list has not really an end, but these are the most important things→her father influenced her in many aspects of life

  • Additionally, each of these skills are symbolic: cooking = spiritual generousity, writing = escape the life he knew, chopping wood = strength and independence, staring in to fire = absorbed father’s teachings able to contemplate

→ father played a pivotal role in shaping the speaker's multi-faceted personality, allowing her to become a complex, nuanced, and well-rounded individual.

Simile “he cooked like a person dancing/in a yoga meditation”

→ illustrates how his father has done ‘cooking’, which could be seen as a tiring chore by others, both joyfully and gracefully.

• creates a cheerful, whimsical tone

• father had a positive, uplifting approach to life which has deeply influenced her

This is shown through another simile : Now i look and cook just like him, highlighting the resemblance between father & daughter, which is further emphasised by the internal rhyme “look and cook” could also hint that she learnt the ability to face life with “lightness” and a positive, optimistic attitude.

Extended metaphor of ‘cooking’

Cooking represents her father’s general approach to life.

Due to her father’s influence, she describes how she avoids ‘seasoning’ her “life the same way twice”.

→ suggests that she always embraces new experiences and makes use of her creativity and energy in life

This metaphor is extended : ‘happy to feed whoever strays my way’

verb ‘stray’ → homeless people, can be literally interpreted/ reflect her approach to personal relationship = open-minded and welcomes people into her life = generosity and goodwill towards others

Metaphor “"learned to see / bits of paper / as a way / to escape / the life he knew."

• ‘bits of paper’ is compared to a means to “escape the life he knew”. The verb “escape” evokes freedom after entrapment, as if her family’s life is captured by poverty.

• The ‘bits of paper’ refers to her writing, which can be implemented in 2 ways: either practical writing such as “writing deposit or checks”, or creative and intellectual writing, which reflects her career now as a writer.

• → his father taught her how not to give in to the challenges in life but face them with her own skills.

Contrast between technical diction “deposit slips and checks’ and sensory, emotive language “craving the voluptuous sharing of good food”

→ presents his father as both carrying the responsibility to do the practical, financial work of the famility as well as providing emotional support and acting as a source of comfort and joy to the speaker. Furthermore, the adjective “voluptous” depicts his opulent pleasure of sharing food, which provides a stark contrast to his previous image of being burdened and worried about money, portraying him as morally generous, which has deeply affected the speaker’s way of living.