[University of Michigan, 2007]
Sue Ellen Thompson, editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for her book of poetry The Leaving: New and Selected Poems. She was resident poet at the Frost Place in 1998, served on the faculty of the New England Young Writers Conference, and won the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod in 2003. She has twice won the individual artist’s grant from the State of Connecticut, and in 1999 was invited to read her work at the Aran Islands Poetry Festival in Galway, Ireland. According to Lawrence Raab, recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Bess Hokin Award for poetry, “Sue Ellen Thompson is wonderfully alert to what may be poetry’s most difficult subject: the happiness of ordinary life.” [1] Her works discuss domestic life, love, loss, and raising teenagers. The Golden Hour, published in 2006, explores the experience of losing a mother to cancer.
The
Leaving: New and Selected Poems was
published by Autumn House Press in 2001. Included in this book are two poems
titled “At Sixteen” and “The Visit,” both about her teenage daughter. “At Sixteen” describes Thompson’s
sixteen-year old daughter, with vivid details of her clothing accessories and
actions at the dinner table. At the
conclusion of the poem, Thompson affirms her unconditional love for her
daughter, despite her rebelliousness.
“The Visit” narrates a trip Thompson and her daughter make to a
potential college. Her daughter is given
money for a drink, doesn’t receive enough,
and storms off to
the car. As they drive home, Thompson regrets not having been harsher in
upbringing her daughter. But just like
“At Sixteen,” the last few lines of the poem affirm the unquestionable love
that she feels for her daughter. Both of
these works are brutally honest in describing the rudeness and disrespect that
Thompson’s daughter displays. Thompson
writes with a keen sense of reality and does not try to make her daughter seem
any kinder or more civilized than she actually is. She writes shamelessly, and by tuning into
the details of her daughter’s attire, attitudes, and word choices, the friction
between mother and daughter is obvious.
However, it is the failed attempts of Thompson’s daughter to push her
mother away that assures us that mothers have unconditional love for their
daughters.
“At Sixteen” is comprised of three stanzas, the first stanza 11
lines and the last two stanzas nine. The
entire poem is filled with enjambments, as Thompson uses long sentences filled
with extended descriptive language; the first stanza contains only three
sentences. The poem begins with a simile,
as Thompson points out the heaviness of her daughter’s accessories, weighty
enough to sink a diver. The tone of the
poem is informative and straightforward, but the diction has a negative
connotation: “rings the size of giant
wedding bands,” implies that they are far too large; wedding bands should never
be “giant,” and items this large should never be hanging from a person’s
belt. When describing her daughter’s
necklace, Thompson makes it seem as if she just has a bunch of gadgets around
her neck: safety pins, pop-tops, and
pennies that don’t even have Lincoln’s head on it. Her use of alliteration in “pins,”
“pop-tops,” “penny” and “pendant” gives the sentence a youthful bounce,
reflecting her daughter’s adolescence.
So far, the imagery of Thompson’s daughter is a rebellious teenager, wearing as heavy and unusual clothing as possible to “get where she is going,” –to frustrate her mother and drive her away. She even adds “delicate silver hoops,” to maker herself that much more heavy. She knows that it will take quite the heavy load to make her mother stop loving her, because as the opening line states, “it will take a long time to reach the bottom.” In lines 12 through 15, Thompson explains that her daughter’s teeth are bound together and prepared for “mangling.” This is contrasted in lines 16 though 21, as her daughter rebelliously refuses to put her teeth and her mother’s food to use by eating. In lines 16 and 17, alliteration with the “p” sound is once again present with “pushes,” “parcel” “pink,” and “plate’s.” Thompson’s daughter pushes the ribs around on her plate just as the “p” sound is pushed out of one’s mouth, and just as her daughter pushes away everything her mother tries to provide for her (such as food). Consonance is applied in lines 18 and 19, with “felled, “stalks,” “broccoli,” “lined,” “lying,” and “like.” This use of the “l” sound brings to mind all of the things that Thompson’s daughter refuses to embrace that her mother has given her, all lined up as in the shape of the letter “l” and “like the trees on Mount St. Helens” (another simile). Line 21 makes it clear that she does not want to join the family for dinner, as Thompson uses the word “writhes” to describe her position. Again, her daughter is doing everything she can to sink “to the bottom” by twisting painfully in her chair, tilting on its legs, and “exposing her throat to the chandelier.” It is clear that Thompson is not pleased with her daughter’s actions by the metaphor used in line 24: “the heavy links of my hopes for her.” Her daughter has succeeded in sinking Thompson a bit: her hopes are heavy, not high, and even the least of her fears are bright as rhinestones. Thus far in the poem, Thompson has made it clear that she and her daughter have very conflicting tastes; her daughter seems to go out of her way to displease her. But the last four lines of the poem make it clear that Thompson cannot , in fact, be sunk. Every attempt that Thompson’s daughter makes to distance herself from her mother simply causes Thompson love her more: “she’s taking me with her.” Where are they going? This remains a little unclear; perhaps Thompson is following her to the bottom of the ocean. One thing, however, is clear: Thompson’s love for her daughter is so strong that no matter how many unusual or heavy accessories she dons, Thompson will still love her undyingly. “Like the two black shirts she wears: One stays inside the other even as they are laundered.” Through everything, including the troubling years of adolescence when feelings and emotions are being tossed around like a load of laundry, Thompson will be right by her daughter’s side as if sewn to her.
In “The Visit,” Thompson uses a
similar format to show her undying love for her daughter: she relentlessly portrays her daughter as a
rude, ungrateful teenager by narrating a visit to a college, yet in the last
few lines affirms her happiness to have her.
This poem has only two stanzas, the first 17 lines and the second
15. Like the first poem, “The Visit” is
filled with enjambments and long, descriptive sentences in order to precisely
portray the image and attitudes of her daughter. Again, the tone is informative and exact;
Thompson does not hold back in depicting and quoting her daughter accurately. The first lines of the poem, “I gave her some
change, everything I could dredge from the bottom of my purse,” show that
Thompson is willing to give her daughter everything she has, even if she has to
dig to the bottom of her purse to get it. This phrase is
split with a line break after “everything,” an enjambment that brings emphasis
to the fact that Thompson will sacrifice everything for her daughter. When her daughter takes the change without
touching the palm of her hand, it is evident that the daughter acts coldly
toward Thompson, who has given her everything.
Again, the diction has a negative connotation as the daughter’s clothes
are described: “her loose pants scooping the dust from the floor, her
sneakers scuffed almost bald of their
suede.” Thompson clearly does not
approve of her daughter’s clothing. Like
the first poem, her hopes for her daughter are heavy, as she imagines her
daughter leaving for a college in the same state that she sees before her, and
herself mourning to her husband. The
daughter returns, slams the money down on the table, and asks, “What the hell
can I get for sixty-five cents?”
Thompson’s diction here is important:
the money is “slammed” on the table in anger, and she ungratefully
implies that everything her mother gives her is simply not enough. She curses at her mother in disrespect, but
Thompson does not refrain from quoting it.
The caesura in line 18 may represent a silence following the rude
outburst—and Thompson’s refusal to deal with the problem as it happens; she
then walks off toward the car having given up on the college visit. Thompson reminisces that the way her daughter
turns her baseball cap backwards is just the way she used to do it as a child,
her stubbornness refusing to allow “so much as a shadow” to fall between her
and her goals. Just as in “At Sixteen,”
it is clear that her daughter is willing to do whatever it takes to widen the
gap between her and her mother, to sink herself to the bottom of the ocean or
be as rude and ungrateful as possible.
Thompson wishes that she had “rubbed soap into the carpet of her tongue”
like her mother had, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she drives her
daughter a vast distance without saying a word about her poor behavior at the
college. Once again, the last few lines
of the poem sum up a mother’s feelings for her teenage daughter: “so furious and blessed was I to have her in
my sight.” No matter what her daughter
does or says to her, and no matter how hard she tries to distance herself, as a
mother she will always love her daughter.
Thompson once said of her life:
“My habit has always been to let experiences settle for a while, rather
than trying to capture them as they are unfolding.” [2] It is clear in these two poems that Thompson
does just that when dealing with her daughter.
In these works, she narrates events realistically and accurately, as if
she is watching from an outside perspective.
She never reacts to the situation at hand; she doesn’t tell her daughter
to sit up straight at the dinner table or snap at her for cursing and storming
off for not getting enough money.
Instead, she relates experiences exactly as they happen, with a sharp
sense of reality and detail. By first accentuating the ways in which her
daughter attempts to drive them apart, and then assuring us that the attempts
will not be successful on her, Thompson shows us that a mother’s love for her
daughter is absolutely unconditional.
No comments:
Post a Comment