Young

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Young” is a free-verse poem, having no regular meter and rhyme scheme. The poem features enjambment with sentences carrying over from one line to the next, bringing forth the collective details that make up the environment of the speaker’s childhood as well as making the poem feel like a story that the speaker is orally sharing in the moment:

a thousand doors ago

when I was a lonely kid

in a big house with four

garages and it was summer (Lines 1-4).

In particular, the ending of “four” in Line 3 leaves the reader anticipating what noun will follow in Line 4; the payoff suggests that the speaker comes from some wealth. The poem also utilizes alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds, and consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds within words, which both add to the rhythm of the poem. An example of alliteration includes the soft “s” sound in “sailed on their strange stalks” (Line 16), and consonance appears in the following line with a more contrasting sound, the hard “k,” in “as the crickets ticked together” (Line 17). The use of assonance, or the repetition of vowel sounds, also contributes to how the poem sounds. An example includes the long “e” in the final line: “elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight” (Line 23), which makes the poem feel as if it could go on forever.

Personification

When the speaker is lying on the grass, she describes the clover as “wrinkling over [her]” and the stars “bedding over [her]” (Lines 7-8). These elements of nature are empowered with human characteristics, which come across as friends to the speaker, who perceives herself as “a lonely kid” (Line 2). In fact, the clover and stars, because of the personification, appear more accessible to the speaker than her own parents, who sit inside by separate windows, one of them “half shut” (Line 11). The speaker describes the stars as “wise” and asks them her questions (Line 8), which is what young people often do with friends or even their parents. In addition to appearing friendly, the personification of the clover and stars also makes them seem cozy, something with which the speaker can cuddle and retrieve emotional as well as physical comfort.

Imagery

Visual imagery takes the spotlight in this poem. The entire experience of the poem encapsulates what the speaker is seeing and thinking on this particular summer evening. The speaker describes the details of her environment from the general layout of her “big house with four / garages” (Lines 3-4) to the nature surrounding her as she lays on the grass: “the clover wrinkling over me, / the wise stars bedding over me” (Lines 7-8). She also fixes her attention on the separate windows for her mother and father and on “the boards of the house” (Line 13). Each of these little descriptors takes on larger-than-life qualities that make it seem that they could subsume the speaker. The one aural imagery of the “crickets ticked together” (Line 17) stands out as the loudest moment in the speaker’s otherwise quiet night. At the end of the poem, the speaker switches her attention to her own body, of which she does not describe in as vivid detail as she does the things around her, only mentioning it is “not a woman’s yet” (Line 19).