The narrator then goes on to describe how she views the daughter as being the second great arrival within the household. Even though the daughter was the second “great arrival” in her household (the husband was the first), the narrator goes into great depth of how she slept, nursed, and grew up all in a blur, thus leading the reader to believe that even though she was second, she was always first to the narrator. At the end of the poem, the narrator compares the coming and eventual going of her daughter with bees that she caught when she was young. The bee will fly freely until caught, while in captivity it will sing its song, but when released will continue to fly away (Olds poetry foundation.org). This verse is a reference to her daughter coming home and eventually leaving. The theme behind Old’s poem is that of the narrator’s intense love for her daughter, and probably relates to the old adage “if you love something set it free, and it will come back again.” Linda Pastan’s poem “I am Learning to Abandon the World” has a similar setting of being in the home, but the themes are different. The reader could interpret the overall theme of the poem is Pastan’s inability to sleep well. Why is the author not sleeping well? “[T]he world has taken my father, my friends” would lead the reader to believe that the author is coping with the death of
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