Power Revealed In Sheila Taylor's The Way Back

“Say cheese!” is often what everyone says, while attempting to perfectly capture a fleeting moment; in an attempt to preserve it. Modern people try, even though the moment might not be ideal, to feign perfection to the outside world. Looking back through the rose-colored lenses of nostalgia generally brings back fond memories of simpler times; even if at that time, they were not so simple. Nevertheless, people move forward with their lives and fall into new patterns, often not seeing how the little things of now, are actually the important ones. Yet within this “Christmas Snapshot,” a vain attempt to relive what is lost, sprouts a spirit of sadness and loss. In the poem “The Way Back” by Sheila Taylor, we see how modernity offers the power

“They stand in this Christmas snapshot poised like adagio dancers.” (Taylor, The Way Back, lines 1-2) These words were obviously carefully chosen to illustrate the feeling of the moment and the reflection upon it. The word adagio means “in a slow manner, or at a slow tempo(used chiefly as a direction in music).”[2] Illustrating that this contemplative moment was a slow sort of sway, to a leisurely rhythm between two people who were very close as twins; presenting the “growing need” by the narrator for

Even though he joined the Navy, and married a beautician who loved the holidays as much as he did, he still looked back to “the way back, a land more innocent than this.” (lines 82-83) The repetition of these words show how he is discontent with the present and by looking to the future he is really projecting the past onto his expectations of what his life should be like. This notion of what something should be, seems to be portrayed by the words not stated in this poem. How the poet focuses on stating wants, and this sense of creating the perfect picture, costume, present, decoration, in a seemingly materialistic way to attempt to fill the hole of emptiness. Family is an important theme, but it usually is with holidays. Family is mentioned many times and in a very interesting manner. “Their arms draped around their matching bones brother and sister” and “twin in spirit if not by birth holding each other in a light embrace”(Taylor, The Way Back, lines 75-77) The longing for caring relationships and the only connection to them seem to be the physical and material aspects of the holidays. This emptiness appears to be a desire for home in things even though home is found in the people that accept