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First Poem For You Addonizio

Decent Essays

In “First Poem for You” (1994), a poem by Kim Addonizio (b. 1954), we see a person who is in love with, yet terrified by, the representation of the tattoos on his or her lover’s skin. There is not very much criticism to be found on “First Poem for You”; therefore, I believe my interpretation of the poem is critical to be expressed. It is unclear if the speaker of this poem is male or female, but I perceive the poem being told by a woman because most men I know do not memorize the details or express the thoughtfulness that is being articulated throughout this poem. “First Poem for You” is a very dense poem; therefore, it is best understood when interpreted sentence by sentence.
In the first sentence, I feel the speaker is more comfortable in …show more content…

She has studied his tattoos to understand the meaning of them, to understand the meaning of him. I view the third sentence as an interpretation of the speaker and the man making love, and after they make love the speaker enjoys expressing her love even further to him by kissing the permanent markings that represent the man, himself. To me, the speaker is telling us in the fourth sentence that she adores the tattoos so much because no matter what happens (good of bad) between her and her lover, the tattoos will forever be there until “seared to ashes” (11). In the next line the speaker tells us, “Such permanence is terrifying” (13), because she knows the tattoos will always be with him; however, he may lose his love for her because he cannot promise to be permanently connected to her as he can with his tattoos. Therefore, she “touch[es] them in the dark” (14) so he will never see her fears when she is comparing his tattoos to their relationship, but she touches them
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“trying” (14) to make their relationship just as permanent as the tattoos. This is why …show more content…

The poem only has one stanza and there is no pattern in the number of syllables within the lines. When first reading the poem, a regular rhyme scheme is not noticed. The poem seems to be free verse, but after a close reading the reader will notice a pattern of ABAB, CDCD, and so on in this pattern, rhyming every other line. The poem continues in this pattern until the last two lines of the poem, which the rhyme is GG. Also, the lines in the poem are not complete thoughts alone; the reader must read the poem as sentences rather than line by line in order for the poem to sound correct. Addonizio applies this literary way of writing, called enjambment, throughout the entire poem to exclaim the deeper meaning that we must search to find.
I believe the structure of this poem is very significant to the interpretation of the poem. The way the poem reads as sentences but there is a hidden rhyme scheme shows that the poem comes across as plain and simply but contains sweet poetry within. This symbolizes that the relationship between the speaker and the tattooed man is

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