Li-Young Lee
“The Gift”
Physically he did not receive a gift but spiritually he did. The gift his father gave him, he gave to his wife. The gift was discipline. Confidence, security & trust was what his father showed him because although he had a splinter, he thought that he would die. So he carefully executed the same thing (minus the prayer because he did not remember word for word) to his wife.
Tess Gallagher
“Choices”
The “nest” becomes an epiphany/moment of self awareness for the speaker because to think that she was going to remove something that was so beautiful which would have made her feel a way. The view itself held beauty & to take away a nest which belonged to a creature would have been wrong. Maybe she felt like, who am I? To take away something that does not belong to me. Something so innocent, at that.
"Under the Stars"
The “you” that was addressed in stanza 3 collides with the envelope in stanza 1 means that the envelope contained a letter to the “you”. I want to believe that the “you” is a childhood love because she showed imagery of a “couple” in stanza 3. She also reminisces on the childhood games that were played in the dark and uses the word “intimate” in stanza 4.
The “games” is referred to her childhood memories that her & “you” use to play when they were younger. Everyone had childhood games that they would be play back when they were young.
In relation to the imagery, the significance in the final line is that her mind was running rapid on things that she sees around her. You know when you’re happy & content with a thought of something that you notice the beauty of things you see everyday & you end up getting wrapped up in your own world. Well on her way to the mail drop off area her thoughts were flying. As she got closer back to home she got back into reality.
Well, I don't know that we would say the speaker in "Under Stars" is happy and content, but you've made some interesting observations; it's not clear that the "you" is a childhood friend, and we don't need to make a literal connection, necessarily, but a symbolic/emotional one--ie, both are distant, and all the speaker has is names, words, the images, envelops--think of the opening image, the letter alone in its tin house says its one name all night (literally,of course, the addressee) in comparison to the closing one--a childhood memory in it's imaginative house, though, found, there, though contact with nature, returned to, perhaps, something larger, the children's voices in a game of hide and seek not become voices of the distant stars... distant but intimate....
ReplyDeleteI think discipline is the perfect interpretation of "the gift" he gave. I thought the poem revolved around the speaker and his father, but your view on how he passes down this practice is very intriguing
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