Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 13-16
Give me something to eat!
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well
- Man, this lady is really hungry.
- She again demands something to eat, and this time the speaker slaps an exclamation mark on it.
- The speaker speaks back as he joins in the dialogue and reasons with his grandmother, trying to get her to go the hospital.
- Check out how the speaker ends the stanza with "and after you are well."
- Using enjambment, he lets the second half of the line spill over into the next stanza, which isolates this part of the sentence.
- It's kind of ominous, right? Especially in a poem where we're pretty positive from the start that this lady isn't going to make it.
- The placement of the line emphasizes the sad subtext of the statement: we have a strong feeling that this lady will never be well again.
- Has anybody else noticed that there're no quotation marks around any of this dialogue?
- To us, it has the effect of taking this everyday speech and placing it in a poetic context.
- You know, by not separating it from the language of the poem, it is the language of the poem.
- So, the common-sounding dialogue becomes just as important as the language geared toward imagery and whatever other fancy poetic things are going on.
- Again, you can check out "Form and Meter" and "Sound Check" for more of what W.C.W. may have been up to here.