Father To Daughter Poem Analysis

A number of poems revealing the tensions of childhood or child parent relationships, placed after the “Sequence in Hospital,” fall like a shadow from some giant distress, grown over the years, which has finally over-whelmed her as she struggles with that “ache for certainty that never ends.” “Father to Son,” “Domestic Dramas,” “Warning to Parents,” an ironic “Happy Families,” “Mah Jong,” all validate this, as do five poems entitled “Exodus I- V.” Her departure is from the promised land, a force emigration of childhood to the doubts of adulthood. These six pages are the repository of much of the material used in her poems; their sequence of short paragraphs from two to four lines at length present a stream of consciousness flow of thoughts,

. . are arrogant” and “beg for pity out of hopelessness.”The introduction of “you” in the fourth paragraph makes her presence clear; she was the child, she remembers that “you could feel the world turning,” she looks back at the contrast of young and old. But in the next phase of her going forth her safe dreams break, they turn to “places of blood and slaughter”, innocence has gone “there was no place for witness, no room for it. Even the dead lacked lilies.”(170) Yet she still recalls “the call corridors of childhood, the open delighted gardens, the body bare to the sun,” for the body now brings adolescent awareness and fears. “Love was something else, nothing to do with this , no part in the stretching body, the blood leaping. Over the wall I could I could hear the whisper of lovers, a child crying across their voices. And hearing them - - I was

“Can you relinquish the mood of childhood?” and “I crave for causes now and lasting things.” What has been implied in her Italian poems, love poems, response to Camus, comes out directly here: “I am English - - and on the surface made of gentle moods. Yet long for south and sun, seek for the white cities, vines on walls, sea left where the sands mould it, flesh sun- burnt and surrendered.” Her comments “Order is found, not imposed…..Our darkness is a promise of survival” seem almost wistful efforts to gain reassurance. She recalls: “I am the child that gathered broken grasses, that dreampt and screamed across the night. Yet every gentle thing has stalwart roots. The sensitive survive and tell their story.” And conclude this portion of her journey: “Clumsy the climbers now, and bold explorers. We have more seasons than we care to