Acceptance Speech commentary

The poem Acceptance Speech by Lynn Powell is about a housewife who feels undervalued by her family and by society. The title of the poem suggests that the character has received an award for achieving something brilliant, but in fact she is being sarcastic and conducting an imaginary award ceremony for herself in her kitchen, since no one else is willing to appreciate her hard work. The poet uses irony and personification of kitchen utensils and ingredients to add humour to the play. She uses the In this poem, the character deals with her desire to be appreciated by propelling herself into an imaginary scenario in her kitchen where she is in the spotlight and humorously personifies ingredients in food who are just as under appreciated as her.

The character can be clearly identified as a housewife in the second stanza, where it is revealed that she has a “husband” and “children”. It is common that housewives are taken for granted, despite the enormous amount of work they put in to keep the household running efficiently. This housewife, in particular, is fed up of being underappreciated. She refers to her role as housewife as a “starring role”, which is clearly sarcastic After hearing “last night’s” award ceremony on the radio, the housewife decided to parody the acceptance speeches and gives thanks to “everybody for making everything so possible” in her difficult life. Since no one else is willing to applaud her, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She metaphorically places herself atop the “cluttered podium of the sink” and commences her acceptance speech. As all other acceptance speeches, she gives thanks to her family first and foremost in the second stanza, but this is brief but this is revealed to be sarcastic in the third stanza, as they clearly did not help her make “this soup.” The real ‘co-stars’ are revealed to be the ingredients and kitchen utensils, such as the “tomatoes”, “oregano” and last but not least, “the salt.” The personification