"Marks" by Linda Pastan is all about a woman's relationship with her family, described via grades. My whole life at the moment seems to fall somewhere on a scale of its "correctness" (ACT, GPA, Transcript, Audition seating, etc.) and so that allows me to relate to this poem. This poem is fantastic because of its unique way of addressing a topic of relationships.
Word Choice: All of the diction is fairly common place, it has been put in terms of a report card and thus the ideas are fairly simple on a surface level. There are no words strong towards either a positive or negative connotation but they are all fairly average.
Imagery and detail: There is not much imagery in this poem, in place detail is given through the categories of the grades. For example, we learn about her lack of completing everything with her getting an "incomplete for [her] ironing."
Style: The whole poem is very based in parallelism, each section starts with each person's relationship to the speaker and then abruptly lists her qualities. There is a lot of enjambment, signifying how the grades just go on and on, how the grades never end. The main irregularity is the last two lines where it is its own short sentence, causing a shift.
Theme: One should not strictly evaluate others on scales, but instead look at the whole person.
Right now I feel like everything I do is being looked at through a microscope so this scrutinizing at such a close level is how I feel about my actions at the moment.
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