Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Response to Taking Down the Laundry

Taking Down the Laundry, I believe is a poem about a mother and her children. It compares the children to the laundry on the clothesline. The laundry represents the children. It talks about how the children are growing by the clothes that are present on the clothesline. The poem is written from a mother's perspective. She is telling the story of her children growing older and leaving the nest.
What struck me about the poem was how the mother related the children to laundry on a clothesline and how it will bring absence to her. She says,
"Years
in this house, playclothes
are simply clothes now, having grown
large with my children, larger
than my own clothes. This house, too,
has grown large around me
& a full of absence."
This part of the poem is my favorite. It talks about how when they were little they had playclothes, but now they are older and have clothes now. The poem shows the emotion of the mother, that she is not ready for her children to keep growing and to have an empty house. Also, she knows it is going to happen and that she can't control this.
This relates to me because this will soon be my mother. Although, we don't have a clothesline. She will realize when there is not as much laundry to do. I

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