Lauren Sweers

14 December 2017

ENGL 282

Poetry Project: “Looking at My Father” by Wendy Xu

Wendy Xu’s poem “Looking at My Father” uses the liberty of free verse to mimic

a stream of consciousness, using one moment to invite the reader into her memory. Her

memories and epiphanies are anchored by the simple moment of watching her father,

“contemplating” him as he weeds the “Midwestern lawn” outside (lines 1-3). The

simplicity and innocence of this first image is deceiving, because her word choice packs

it full of meaning. First of all, the two-word phrase leaves the reader to imagine on their

own what a “Midwestern lawn” looks like- maybe set in a middle-class neighborhood,

the short, spiky height of the grass, the way a few yellowy patches appear where the

underground sprinklers don’t quite reach. Even more, the connotation of a lawn is

important; it is different than that of a backyard. A backyard feels like home, maybe a

place for barbeque parties or a swing set or a baseball game. A lawn is something you cut

and tend to keep up with the rest of the neighborhood, a sign of uniformity.

Xu uses a form of the word “arrive” twice in her short poem. “I am never arriving”

she says in line 3, and later “...pointless cut flowers / appear on the kitchen table when

one finally arrives / into disposable income” (lines 11-13). This, to me, was an

intentional choice to symbolize the immigrant’s experience, because the immigrant’s

journey to a new place is not necessarily over once they’ve physically arrived there.

Arriving is a process of assimilation, she seems to imply. “My country / inoculates me

lovingly, over time. My country grasps me / like desire” (lines 7-9). “Inoculates” is an

eye-catching verb, literally meaning “to treat with a vaccine to produce immunity

against a disease.” The reader must infer which country she claims as her own.

A short note from Xu on the poem says this: “I wrote this poem for my father, to

send him a prayer by way of loving contemplation. As poetry is a practice of sustained

revision and betterment, so is the act of being my immigrant father’s daughter. I honor

him by revisiting myself.” Her father is represented as a “diligent” (line 2) and joyful

man, and the poem reveals that he has committed himself religiously to protecting and

providing for his daughter’s future. “...pointless cut flowers / appear on the kitchen table

when one finally arrives / into disposable income. Still possible” (lines 11-13). There is

the second appearance of arrival, but compared with Xu’s confession that she is never

arriving, this part of the poem describes a long-awaited arrival to disposable income,

meaning income left over from essential bills and needs that can be saved or spent on

nonessentials. Disposable income is a key element of the so-called American dream, the

financial freedom to spend money on things like “pointless cut flowers,” and, more

importantly, to accumulate savings for the future. “Still possible” is a mysterious

two-word sentence, but it becomes more clear at the end of the poem: “...in the name of

my Chinese father now / dragging the tools back inside, brow shining but always / a

grin, faithless except to protect whatever I still have time / to become, Amen” (lines

15-18). What is still shrouded in possibility is his daughter’s future, and as the poem

returns back to the present reality, watching him come back inside from his work on the

lawn, it ends like a prayer, “Amen.”

 I chose this poem because I somehow felt that I understood its meaning, but

could not put my finger on why or how. It had appeared one day in my email inbox from

Poem-a-Day, and I was intrigued from the first few lines, so this was a great excuse to

really dig into it. I used a whiteboard in an empty classroom to write the poem out by

hand with a dry-erase marker, and then I began reading it aloud, writing notes, making

observations, and connecting themes. I tried to read with my instincts first, picking the

words that jumped out at me, words I didn’t fully understand, sentences and line breaks

that seemed kind of clunky or unrelated. Then I started working out meaning, surprised

when I would suddenly put something together that I had brushed over a dozen times.

The process took probably a little under two hours.

Analyzing the poem like that was a fantastic experience. It was super valuable for

me, of course, but I also began to imagine how I could use a technique like this in my

future classrooms. The best takeaway for me was the fact that I didn’t feel pressured to

come to some magic conclusion about what the poem “means.” Summing up a poem like

that defeats the whole purpose, and it can’t possibly be fully accurate because a good

poet uses every single word carefully in crafting meaning, to the extent that not even one

word could be added or removed without affecting the meaning. I plan to read poetry

like this more often, just getting to sit with it and play with it and wonder with it for a

while. It was relaxing.

Poem analysis pt. I
Poem analysis pt. II