To a Daughter Leaving Home

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem’s form and meter fit within its timeline as a late Modern/Contemporary work, relying on devices other than typical formal structure for its internal organization. Within its free verse composition, line lengths maintain some consistency, most lines made up of only two stressed syllables. Lines with one or three stressed syllables are textually significant, often mirroring the action of the narrative, as with breathlessness of the speaker (Lines 12-14) or the increasing distance of the girl on the bicycle (Line 17). Most lines are enjambed, often in unexpected, less natural line breaks, adding to the breathless and halting tone the speaker takes on as she describes both the young rider’s efforts to find stability and her own struggle to remain steady alongside her. As with many free verse poems, the poem’s physical shape on the page constitutes a feature of its form, its lines deliberately constructed to imitate the curving movements and circular images in the narrative.

Narrative Voice

As with many of Pastan’s poems, the narrative voice in “To a Daughter Leaving Home” appears to be a version of Pastan herself, at once both parent and poet. Even as a mother experiencing the same day-to-day events and situations of any mother, this speaker notices and conveys details more characteristic of a poet’s scope of observation. While the speaker’s diction stays colloquial and informal, the use of extended metaphor, wordplay, simile, and synecdoche within this short work indicate a sophisticated poetic voice. Pastan’s voice here and in other poems conveys both closeness and reserve, intimate details and critical remove. The speaker of the poem confronts potential catastrophe as she allows for the worst scenario to enter her mind, “the thud/of your crash” (lines 12-13). In the same moment, she takes care to frame her fears as the product of maternal perspective; the girl is smaller and “more breakable” only “with distance” (Lines 16-17). Pastan’s quietly rueful speaker draws beauty from the pain of experience by enfolding both internal anxiety and outward joy in language and image.

Metaphor and Simile

Pastan employs an extended metaphor throughout the poem, commenting on her daughter’s initiation into adult independence by telling the story of her childhood bicycle lesson. The wobbling of the bicycle in the opening lines represents the adult daughter’s presumable uncertainty as she moves away from home (Line 5). The bicycle wheels repeat in the shape of the mother’s mouth and in the curve of the path the girl follows (Lines 7-10). Besides this sustained metaphor, the poem ends on another transportation-related device, the simile in which the girl’s hair becomes a waving handkerchief that signals departure (Line 23).

Alliteration

Alliteration subtly unifies this free verse poem with interlaced consonance and assonance between lines. In Lines 3-4, the cross alliteration of “bicycle” and “besides” frames the long “o” sounds and “-ng” endings of “loping along.” In Lines 5-6, repeated “w” sounds in “…wobbled away / on two round wheels” lead to echoed vowel sounds in “round” and “mouth.” “Surprise” and “pulled” in Line 8 resonate percussively with Line 10’s “path” and “park,” with a faint near rhyme at the end of Lines 8-9: “pulled / curved.” Other similar sounds like “crash” and “catch” (Lines 13-14), or “life,” “laughter,” and “flapping” in Lines 19-21 provide a web of poetic sensibility within the language of the poem.