Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [28]
Blonde bobbing heads, the
smack of a jump rope, laughter
of my friends breaking
beer bottles. Putting out their
burning filters on the #5 of
a hopscotch court.
We reminisce of days when we were
Fat, pimple faced—
look how far we’ve come. But tomorrow
a little blonde girl will
pick up a Marlboro Light filter, just to play.
And I’ll buy another forty, because
that’s how I play now.
Reminiscing about how far I’ve come
Doing the Method on a Poem: Our Analysis
1. Words that repeat exactly: forty × 2, blonde × 2, how far we’ve (I’ve) come × 2, light × 2, reminisce, reminiscing × 2, filter, filters × 2, Brooklyn Heights × 2
2. Strands: jump rope, laughter, play, hopscotch (connecting logic: childhood games representing the carefree worldview of childhood) Coors Light, Marlboro Light filters, beer bottles (connecting logic: drugs, adult “games,” escapism?)
Smack, burning, breaking (violent actions and powerful emotion: burning)
3. Binary oppositions: how far we’ve come/how far I’ve come (a move from plural to singular, from a sense of group identity to isolation, from group values to a more individual consideration)
Blonde bobbing heads/little blonde girl
Burning/putting out
Coors Light, Marlboro Lights/jump rope, hopscotch
How far I’ve come (two meanings of far?, one positive, one not)
Heights/stoop
Present/past
4. Ranked repetitions, strands and binaries plus paragraph explaining the choice of one of these as central to understanding.
Most important repetitions: forty, how far we’ve/I’ve come
Most important strands: jump rope, laughter, play, hopscotch, Coors Light, Marlboro Light filters, beer bottles
Most important binaries: jump rope, laugher, play, hopscotch versus Coors Light, Marlboro Light filters, beer bottles; burning/putting out
Analysis (Healthy Paragraphs) The repetition of forty (forty ounce beer) is interesting. It signals a certain weariness—perhaps with a kind of pun on forty to suggest middle age and thus the speaker’s concern about moving toward being older in a way that seems stale and flat. The beer, after all, is warm—which is not the best state for a beer to be in, once opened, if it is to retain its taste and character. Forty ounces of beer might also suggest excess—“supersizing.”
The most important (or at least most interesting) binary opposition is burning versus putting out. This binary seems to be part of a more intense strand in the poem, one that runs counter to the weary prospect of moving on toward a perhaps lonely (“how far I’ve come”) middle-aged feeling. Burning goes with breaking and the smack of the jump rope, and even putting out (a strand), if we visualize putting out not just as fire extinguished but in terms of putting a cigarette out by pushing the burning end of it into something (the number 5 on the Hopscotch court). The poem’s language has a violent and passionate edge to it, even though the violent words are not always in a violent context (for example, the smack of the jump rope).
This is a rather melancholy poem in which, perhaps, the speaker is mourning the passing, the “putting out” of the passion of youth (“burning”). In the poem’s more obvious binary—the opposition of childhood games to more “adult” ones—the same melancholy plays itself out, making the poem’s refrain-like repetition of “how far I’ve come” ring with unhappy irony. The little blonde girl is an image of the speaker’s own past self (since the poem talks about reminiscing), and the speaker mourns that little girl’s (her own) passing into a more uncertain and less carefree state. It is 4:00 A.M. in Brooklyn Heights—just about the end of night, the darkest point perhaps before the beginning of morning. But windows are open, suggesting possibility, so things are not all bad. The friends make noise together, break bottles together, revisit hopscotch square 5 together, and contemplate moving on.
Why Do The Method?
It does take some getting used to, working with The Method. It fragments everything; it can appear as if you are