Watching Your Child Grow

As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.

In “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet is inundated in indecision and internal struggles over the virtues and shortfalls of her abilities and the book that she produced. As human beings we associate and sympathize with each other through similar experiences. It is difficult to sympathize with someone when you don’t know where they are coming from and don’t know what they are dealing with. Similar experiences and common bonds are what allow us to extend our sincere appreciation and understanding for another human being’s situation. In this poem an elaborate struggle between pride and shame manifests itself through an extended metaphor in which she equates her book to her own child.

Everyone has a father. No matter if the father is present in a child’s life or not, he still exists and takes that role. A father has a major impact on his child whether he knows it or not, and that impact and example shapes the child’s perspective on life, and on love. The authors, Robert Hayden and Lucille Clifton, share the impact of their fathers through poetry, each with their own take on how their fathers treated them. The poems “Forgiving My Father” and “Those Winter Sundays” have significant differences in the speaker’s childhood experiences, the tone of the works, and the imagery presented, which all relate to the different themes of each poem.

Charlotte rejects her mother’s ideology from a young age, and has the perspective to see past the illusions of perfection her mother creates, and Miss. Hancock gives her the weapons to fight her mother. In seventh grade, Miss. Hancock teaches Charlotte about the metaphor, sparking the creativity within Charlotte her mother shunned. The metaphor becomes a symbol throughout the short story, but it also develops into something deeper. The metaphor becomes an allegory of Charlotte 's rebellion against her mother’s influence, and her future. Writing is an outlet, an opportunity for Charlotte to express and understand herself. The form of expression was a gift from Miss. Hancock, who arms her with the power of creativity. “‘My home,’ I said aloud, ‘is a box It is cool and quiet and empty and uninteresting. Nobody lives in the box,” Charlotte says in seventh grade. She has a complex understanding of herself, and is able to articulate her frustrations through metaphors. After graduating out of Miss. Hancock’s seventh grade class, the story picks up introducing the reader to Charlotte as a

After reading the poem an issue I recognize was that this poem relates to my father.

Eudora Welty’s sheltered, adolescent life, coupled with her parent’s emphasis on education and reading, helped to shape her as the writer she was by making her stylistic approaches daring and intelligent while keeping a southern tone and state of mind.

Children are often too juvenile and ignorant to comprehend all that is done for them. The narrator of this poem is now a grown man and is looking back on his childhood. He says that he would “[speak] indifferently to [his father], who had driven out the cold, and polished my good shoes as well.” (Hayden) After working hard all week to provide for his family, the narrator's father would wake early Sunday mornings to tend to his family. As a grown man, he sees how much effort his father put in to keep him content. Sometimes it was difficult to see this because he was overcome by fear: “...slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic anger of that house.” (Hayden). Though the narrator was intimidated by his father, he still loved and appreciated him. This father- son relationship is unique because the bond grows and develops as a strong connection throughout time, with the help of maturity. The narrator of this poem recognises the unappreciated family sacrifices that are made which only improves the bond between a boy and his

In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.

The poem "To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan captivates readers by having a significant metaphorical, and relatable theme. Linda Pastan writes about an eight year old girl learning how to ride her bike, "When I taught you/ at eight to ride/ a bicycle, loping along/ beside you" (1-4). The bicycle ride is a symbol of the journey of a child growing up, taking risks, and leaving home. The author uses an compelling amount of action verbs throughout the entirety of the poem, "pumping, pumping/ for your life, screaming/ with laughter" (18-20). The verbs help to create an emotional reaction from the reader.  The voice of this poem is the most powerful technique that the author has used to portray the theme; by speaking from a parental standpoint,

The author Linda Pastan, imagines a parent running breathlessly to regain her strength from the ending connection she once shared with her daughter in her poem, “To a Daughter Leaving Home.” It’s a mother’s biggest fear when it comes to their child or children leaving home while going their own ways when the time is right. This poem is based on childhood, fatherhood, and even motherhood.

Another useful tool in analyzing a poem is to identify poetic devices, meter, and a rhyme scheme. Through her deft use of extended metaphor, Bradstreet weaves an intricate web of parallels between parent and author and between child and book--both relationships of creator to creation. This use of metaphor allows the reader to relate emotionally to Bradstreet’s situation. In line seven, we see the uses of litotes, “At thy return my blushing was not small,” to express the depth of her embarrassment. She also uses metonymy in line eight to express her pain more clearly, “My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.” The simile used in line nine stresses her objection to the published work, “I cast thee by as one unfit for light.” Then in line 19, the poetic device of consonance is used which provides emphasis on her warning, “In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.” In this poem, through the use of personification and apostrophe Bradstreet conveys her feelings and emotions. Anne Bradstreet ensures her poem’s success by linking the triumph and tragedy of authorship with the pain and pleasure of creating and nurturing human life. The meter used is

Nature is all Richard Wilbur knew growing up. For that reason, he wrote heavily about nature, however, he also wrote about his loved ones while incorporating nature into them. “The Writer,” by Richard Wilbur, is about the love he has for his daughter and how he does not want her to struggle because all of the hardships she had faced were already enough. He expresses this through symbolism, imagery, and metaphors in order to show how he wants to provide protection for his loved ones, while still loving them.

Sharon Olds is one of the most famous poets in out nation, including the Pulitzer Prize for her works. She is one of the most dominant and well known poets amongst the poet society. Olds’s was born on November 19 1942 in San Francisco, California , her father was an abusive drunk , while her mom was very submissive to her husband and was controlled by him. Olds’s is well known for her poems such as “The Unborn”, “The End”, “The Victims” and “Sex Without Love”. “Olds’s attended Stanford University and graduated, which then she moved to the east coast to get her Ph.D from Columbia University. Olds’s is extremely controversial from her political views and the fact she is so open about her childhood and growing up. Throughout Olds’s poem there is a very common theme that stick out to the reader in how personal she is to her readers, spiritual, emotional and straight bluntness.

The students who have written the poems and stories in this booklet are: Jessica Groen, Hayley Morris, Kevin Shelton, Kayla Greenwell, Amedeo Madrid, Tristan Bell, Donnie Lopez, Rose Pilch, Connor Lindsey, Christopher Spedus, Julio Casares, Julio Casares, Jonathan Moran,

Notably, this poem is not told from Blake’s point of view, but rather the perspective of a young child. This choice gives the poem a different context that impacts the way the audience interprets the poem. The poem is structured almost as a plea to one’s parents to save this schoolboy from the confines of education. When the child exclaims “o father and mother” (l. 21), a bleak and desperate tone is established that emphasizes the idea that formal education is something dark and pitiful, which supports Blake's message. Additionally, this information coming from the perspective of the child has a different context than if it were an adult. The narrative voice tugs at the heart strings of the reader, and effectively communicates the idea that formal education is suppressing the boy’s growth rather than encouraging it.