Parent-Child Relationships

"Slow Children At Play" by Cecilia Woloch

vs.

"What I Do" by Douglas Goetsch

These two poems are unique because they address parent and child relationships. These poems are about the same topic but they are addressed in such a different way. Not only are parent and child relationships addressed in these two poems but they’re both similar because they display different child behaviors.

In the first poem, “Slow Children At Play” the narrator, as I assumed, was a mother. She tells the reader about these children who are moving so fast. All the words the poet uses in the first half of the poem are fast, quick or easily pronounced. She says they are hurrying up to wash their hands and get ready to eat dinner before their father gets home.

Then she shifts the mood to slower and uses longer words. She announces the slow children playing with fireflies and making “ohhhs and ahhhs” sounds. These children as well have slow mothers. The most remarkable sentences in this poem is when the poet asks the questions: Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

Those last two lines connected these poems for me. Everyone can look at the last two sentences and get a different image in their head. The image I immediately thought of was: do these children have fathers? If they do have fathers why would they leave them? She says the fast children have fathers who they are waiting for at dinner but the slow children are never associated with having a father. Consequently, I think the father has left them with nothing, and especially left them without food.

In the second poem, “What I Do” a man who isn’t too old but definitely not in his 20s, tells how he resembles his father as he has aged in life. He tells how he never looked at his father as a good person or understood why he made the decisions he did but now that he is in the same shoes or the same age as his father was he finally understands his decision making.

He starts off the poem with an explanation of how he pays his bills exactly like his father did. He tells about a flashback from his childhood when he would repeatedly bring his father coffee as he spent hours slaving at his desk. Not only did he bring him coffee, he cleaned his ashtrays, shined his shoes, anything to get his father’s attention. Even though he made multiple attempts to get his father’s attention but in the end he saw it was never enough in his father’s eyes.

The most remarkable sentence in this poem is when he talks directly about their relationship. He says, “… now that I’m approaching the age he was when we stopped talking.” That is the only direct quote he gives the reader of the status of him and his father’s relationship now. Maybe he understands his father’s decision making because he is in the same position in life. But the questions this poem rises for me is, what did his father do to hurt their relationship so bad?

These two poems are related because it portrays children’s actions and the variety of child environments at home. In the first poem the fast children seemed to have a good life because they had a father and had food on the table. Unfortunately, the slow children had no food on the table and a missing father. In the second poem, the narrator had a father but their relationship was not on good terms. It shows a child thriving for his father’s attention and constant disappointment. Even though there is no definite answer from either of the poems, the hints and small remarks in both poems can have an imagination going wild.