Poem Analysis: "Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove

The poem I chose to read is "Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove in the "Poems of Childhood" section of our poetry book. This poem actually stuck out to me when I glanced over the section and I thought it would summarize her fifth grade experience, or at least reflect on some memorable experience. This type of poem, actually was a portrait type of explanation, and used specific techniques in her poem. In my analysis, I first found an alliteration. When the author says, "His Davy Crockett cap" in line 4, she used a repeated consonant vowel sound. I thought the emphasis in that "k" sound was used to help us visualize the cap, because in the next two lines (lines 5-6), she says:

sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail
flounces down on the back of his sailor suit.

The author shows her brother's costume as kind of raggedy, which is how I imagined it since he wore a redneck-style raccoon cap (like Davy Crockett's). So, that must be the reason she described the costume with those repeated sounds. Next, she used imagery to reflect on the portrait setting, such as the description of her grandmother in the text. The entire second stanza of the poem lets us see the poem as if we were in that still setting. I thought that the people could be depicted as characters because she made them seem so real in the poem. One part that appeared really graphic to me were the last lines in the second stanza:

every Christmas. Grandmother's hips
bulge from the brush, she's leaning
into the ice chest, sun through the trees
printing her dress with soft
luminous paws.

From the part where she says "Grandmother's" on until the end of this stanza I found a lot of the same imagery used as she did for the Davy Crockett cap part of the poem. I annotated the last three lines because I painted a picture in my head, and could imagine those rays of sunlight on her dress, literally. However, when she used the word "luminous," I thought that figuratively meant she was bright and glowing with light. That was the main part of the poem where I could see it all in my mind.

Also, one line 17, she goes into more depth of the portrait, but uses deep language to show feelings for her family. She notes in that line: "I am staring jealously at my brother;". The word "jealously," of course is one that makes a big impact of the poem because you can still visualize how she feels when she looks at him, and that he is getting spotlight attention.

Lastly, the author used language that makes her seem nostalgic, which means she has a dwelling on the past like she's really there. There is a line break where there should be a pause that carries on until the last stanza. When she goes on about looking jealously, she then talks about her grandfather:

He smelled of lemons. He's died--

but I remember his hands.

First off, that last couplet makes her seem nostalgic like she misses that day she went out with her grandparents and brother. And also, the last enjambment breaking those two stanzas put the most emphasis on her memory of the past. Overall, I thought this poem used a lot of happy images to make a bright impact on the reader, but also put us in the same, feeling position as the author. I didn't predict that the poem would be more reflective than informative, but I did like the family outing; it seemed to be one where everyone was having a happy time. I felt like I could break the poem into two parts of a picture, one where they were all separated, and another where they were having a good time together. This poem was an easy one to read and didn't take me long to annotate or mark my own ideas.