"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was raised in New York, but lived in Maryland. She won the Mademoiselle Poetry Prize her senior year in college, but decided to stop writing to raise her family. Then she picked back up her writing.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by: Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

As the speaker pushes her little girl off on a bike for the first time, it shows her whole life. As we grow up, we generally leave our families and move away, having our own lives. Throughout our school years- preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school- we are with our parents, unless other circumstances, but once we go to college, many students move away. This short poem expresses a lifetime of the parent-daughter relationship. As the setting being outside because the girl is learning to ride a bike, it is the parent’s perspective of how she takes on her life. Her life starts as she “wobbled away” soon to be growing “smaller, more breakable with distance.” The parents chase after the girl as she grows and is filled with life “screaming with laughter.” Parents often hold onto the children much longer than children hold to parents. The first taste of freedom children taste, they take it all. The sequence of the daughter’s life in the short poem shows how short life seems to be to a parent when their child grows up. The “hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye” is the daughter’s way of saying goodbye. It is never a real goodbye, but the parents know what it is. This poem can be translated to most parents’ life as they see their children going off; they get smaller in the distance as the parents sprint after them, never quite catching back up. 

"Paper Matches" by Paulette Jiles

Paulette Jiles was born in Salem, Missouri on April 4, 1943. She won the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry.

“Paper Matches"

My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That’s the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
“At Your Service,”
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire.

This poem's speaker can be defined as any women, mostly younger. Mainly this poem is from the view point of a young girl, who feels as that it is unfair that her "aunts washed dishes while the uncles squirted each other." It is the girl’s first step to realizing that women are seen as housewives, not to have fun, and constantly "At Your Service." A while back, women were only housewives; they did not have jobs except to take care of the children, the house, and the husband. The speaker asks “Why are we in here,…and they are out there?” asking why are we doing chores, while they are having fun? But the aunt just answers because “that’s the way it is,” it is the way it always has been. The women are meant to do the chores; the women clean the house, make sure warm, good food is on the table when the husband comes home, the children have their homework done, and then after dinner the dishes are washed and dried. Now, more women are gaining jobs, and there are even dads that stay home. Feminism is on the rise because many women want to turn away from the housewives idea of women to have equal rights for women and men. The younger girl is showing that this revelation comes across for all women at some point. They realized what society expects of them, where they want to be the cook, the maid, the housewife or not.