Themes: Parent/Child Relationship, Love, Loss
Type: Free Verse
Background
- Written by Alice Walker – awarded Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (The Colour Purple)
- The poet wrote this poem at an age where most people face a new phase in life
- This poem is partly about the sadness at the loss of a father and the regrets the daughter has but also an appreciation and celebration of what he has given her & she has inherited
- The poem is about parental love
Verses
- The first verse expresses how much she missed her father – simple, direct language, a combined sense of love and loss
- The second verse describes how writing cheques and deposit slips remind her of him
- There is a change in mood after the second announcement of “How I miss my father”
- It turns from her current prosperity to his advice to a more playful and joyous stream of recollections
- In the final third of the poem, she tells us the domestic chores and simple pleasures in life link her to that of her father.
Language
- She uses simple, direct language
- It is written in free (or blank) verse – suits the conversational, informal mood
- Enjambment gives the effect of free-flowing thought patterns
- Simile – cooking yoga
- Informal and familiar
Tone
- The first two-thirds of the poem has a tone of regretful longing
- The tone is conversational
