An Analysis of the Poem You Fit into Me by Margaret Atwood

Poetry test
Thursday October 3

You fit into me
By: Margaret Atwood
You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fishhook an open eye
What initially appears to be a silly love poem quickly becomes dark and harrowing. Atwood overturns the expected definition of “hook and eye” and replaces it with an image of brutality and violence. The power of this setup/letdown formula often hinges, as in this poem, on the multiple meanings of words. “You fit into me” captures Atwood’s interest in the mechanisms of language, the different kind of words, and the many layers of meanings. “A fish hook, an open eye” means there is a love hate relationship, but the more they are together the more it will hurt. The longer they are together the longer the hook will be in the eye and will hurt a lot more.
Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?
The speaker is a grown man but remembering himself when he was a kid and how those cold winters were with his old man. According to the speaker, his pops gets up super early every Sunday morning I think he wakes up very early and gets out of the house to get away from the chronic angers in the morning and continuing his “lonely offices” to light fires in the fireplaces to warm up their home. No one, including the speaker, thanks his father for doing this. The speaker then tells us that he’d get out of bed once the house was warm and when his father called for him. He was a little bit afraid of his father, and the house was filled with “chronic angers,” means every morning there will have to be a fight and he doesn’t want to wake up in the middle of the fights in the house. Then, once the speaker had hauled himself out of bed, he'd talk to his dad, but not with any kind of enthusiasm or affection. And this despite the fact that his dad had lit all the fires in his house, and even polished his kid's shoes for church to look good. Why’d he do that? Probably because he didn't know a ton about love back then, The speaker implies in the poem’s final lines that he didn’t understand that his father’s behavior (lighting the fires, shining the shoes) was an expression of fatherly love and lonely offices as in doing services for others (family in this case). But now he does. And concluded that even though his father didn’t show the fatherly love he still loved his kid and the kid really meant saying “what did I know?” he was a kid didn’t understand much.
My Father’s Song: Simon j. Ortiz (1941- )
(1976)
Wanting to say things,
I miss my father tonight.
His voice, the slight catch, the depth from his thin chest, the tremble of emotion in something he has just said to his son, his song:
We planted corn one spring at Acu- we planted several times but this one particular time
I remember the soft damp sand in my hand.
My father had stopped at one point to show me an overturned furrow; the plowshare had unearthed the burrow nest of a mouse in the soft moist sand.
Very gently, he scooped tiny pink animals into the palm of his hand and told me to touch them.
We took them to the edge of the field and put them in the shade of a sand moist clod.
I remember the very softness of cool and warm sand and tiny alive mice and my father saying things.

The son is the speaker (Simon); the setting is on a field. It’s a good memory because his father saved “tiny pink animals” mice. Most parents would till their little kids to not touch mice because they might be sick and cause a disease and whatnot but his dad asked him to touch those tiny pink animals and he was not too scared to show his son its ok to show off your soft side and be kind to animals. He was teaching his son to be friendly and he also trusted his son (it came with trust). The poem had an “s” sound as in smooth because the whole poem / memory was a happy one with his father. He really misses talking to his dad and listening to him not his wisdom talk but his voice. We assume his father is dead.

Sea fever
John Masefield
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking, I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield's poem "Sea-Fever" expresses a sailor's powerful longing to return to the sea. The poem's rhythm creates a sense of the sailor's experiences at sea. The imagery and sensory details (hyperbole) creates a mood of freedom and adventure. The poem also makes it clear that the sailor wants his return to the sea to be his final journey. The rhythm and meter of "Sea-Fever" simulates (simile) the movement of a ship through the sea, strong winds, and rough waters. Alliteration adds to this effect. The title of the poem, "Sea-Fever," and the poet's vivid imagery communicate the power of the sea" The "lonely sea and sky" shows the sailor's feelings of powers of nature. The speaker paints a picture of the "windy day with the white clouds flying." While most of the imagery creates a sense of the dangers of being a sailor, the speaker also describes the freedom associated with the sea. The poet describes the surface of the water as wrinkly. “When the long trick's over" describes the end of life. The speaker hopes for a "quiet sleep and a sweet dream," or a peaceful passing. The speaker is looking forward to the end of his journey on the sea, just as he looks forward to the end of his life. Through meter, imagery, and figurative language Masefield shows his love of the sea.

My papa’s waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

The little boy (Theodore) is the speaker; his poem is about his relationship with his dad. The meter in this poem in a trio meter which logically makes sense because of the waltz. In the title itself says how close he is with his father by calling his dad “my papa” which really suggests he was a little boy, a waltz is a dance where couples would dance to it formally and it’s a dance from the 17th hundreds that has 3 beats. His dad is drunk, though when he was little he didn’t quite know what that meant, yet when his dad came in he just went along with his dad dancing and having so much fun, but the pans in the kitchen slid off onto the ground, yet the son nor the dad cared they were having fun. His mother was sad she didn’t like seeing her alcoholic husband around her son. The little boy was happy but also scared that night. He generally feared his father, and we know that because there are words like “death”, ”battered”, ”scraped”, and “beat” in the poem which are negative words, yet can describe that his dad is better off drunk around his son because he liked being around his dad when he is happy. His dad might have hated his job or didn’t like his wife or even had a very bad day so he comes home drunk. At the last stanza he says “you beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt” its a very positive stanza that shows how much he loves his dad and wants to stay up all night dancing with him.