My Grandmother by Elizabeth Jennings

My Grandmother by Elizabeth Jennings

Introduction

Poetry is an oldest art. It is a performance in a few words. My Grandmother is a touching poem by Elizabeth Jenning. She presents here a strong attachment between her and her grandmother. Though her grandmother is died, she still lives in the memory of poets. Family is a little world and the poet's point out her emotional relation with her grandmother.

Poem

She kept an antique shop-or it kept her.

Among Apostle spoons and Bristol glasses,

The faded silks, the heavy furniture,

She watched her own reflection in the brass

Salvers and silver bowls, as if to prove

Polish was all, there was no need for love.

And I remember how I once refused

To go out with her, since I was afraid.

It was perhaps a wish not to be used

Like antique objects .Though she never said

That she was hurt, I still could feel the guilt

Of that refusal, guessing how she felt.

Later, too frail to keep a shop, she put

All her best things in one long, narrow room.

The place smelt old, of things too long kept shut,

The smell of absences where shadows come

That can’t be polished. There was nothing then

To give her own reflection back again.

And when she died I felt no grief at all,

Only the guilt of what I once refused.

I walked into her room among the tall

Sideboards and cupboards-things she never used

But needed: and no finger-marks were there,

Only the new dust falling through the air.

Theme

The poem 'My Grandmother' focusses is on the memory of the poets for her grandmother. The poem shows how poets recalls her grandmother and repents for hurting her feeling.

Title

This is a poem regarding women relationship, 'the poet' and the dead grandmother. The title is apt, as the grandmother is in the center of the poem. My Grandmother is a short, simple and suggestive title for this poem.

Content

The poem is divided into four parts. The first stanza describes the poet's grandmother working in the shop, the second incident which causes her guilt, the third stanza shows her in her retirement. In the final stanza after her grandmother has died. The speaker reflects on herself and her grandmother's life. The words 'It capt her' suggests that seems, to the speaker, her only reason for leaving she had great bond and a passion with her possession this can be found in these line ;

"She kept an antique shop or it kept her.

Among apostle spoons and bristol glass,

The faded silks, the heavy furniture."

The Grandmother of poets polished the object and antiques very well. It was a well run shop.

Elizabeth describes a particular incident that happened in her childhood. ones her grandmother asked her if she would go out with her grandmother. The poets refused the proposal as she did not want to go with her at that time, but later she started to feel guilty about refusing to go out with the old woman.

In the fourth and final stanza Elizabeth mentions the uncared antique shop. The echos of death have been surrounding the shop because it is lost its life just like the grandmother's room and finds all her belonging which is there and she realizes that she needs nund of them. There is dust everywhere and the shop is in neglected condition.

Style

Elizabeth jenning Mrs Robert Brownie is famous for her verse that is rich in quality and extremely personal. In the present poem, she employs simple language and style. The poem was set in the mind of a child and memory of Elizabeth Jenning. There is a rhyme pattern in the first stanza we find that in the first and in the third line, this is a rhyme and the fifth and sixth line also shows rhyme. When we read it, it does not sound a like but when we pronounce, there is a similar sound.

for example

True love, the poem has been design in four stanza of six line each

To wind up

My Grandmother is an emotional poem by Elizabeth Jenning. In this poem poet's remember her past days and become so emotional. This is a so fine poem by Elizabeth Jennings on the base of the relationship between the poet's and her grandmother. In this poem poet shows and recalls her attachment in past with her grandmother.