To A Daughter Leaving Home

Poets typically write about their own emotional experiences close to themselves. Whether it be a family member dying or about their wedding day or their child leaving, poets often reflect about their own memories. The poets purpose to get the reader to feels the emotions they feel while writing the poem, and allow the reader to connect with their poem. In this poem, Pastan explores the feelings of a parent’s passion and happiness but also sadness of one's child growing up.
The poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home”, by Linda Pastan is a very emotional poem, you can assume that the poem is about their child leaving home. You can assume that the voice in this poem is a parent that is seeking to share their special time with their child, and how easily it can be lost. In
The parent is helping the daughter learn how to ride a bike by standing beside her as she rides her bicycle, and the daughter “wobbled away”. This example of imagery, showing an image of the daughter that is not fully in control of how she is controlling the bicycle. As she goes on her own the parent is surprised to see that the daughter has gone down a “curved path of the park”. The poet has used “curved path” as a symbol to represent life. Linda Pastan has used a “curved path” as a symbol to show how life as a fun, dangerous and unpredictable path, that doesn’t go in one straight line . “I kept waiting for a thud of crash” this line tells us that the parent is panicked about the daughter getting hurt. The parent goes running after the daughter. The “Smaller, more breakable” daughter; the author is trying to explain how the child is fragile, in the parents eyes. Also, the daughter is not in reach with the parent. However, the child still continues to go independently on her bicycle “pumping, pumping”. She continues on with her life “screaming with laughter”. This makes the parent feel as if they are the