"Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove

"Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove

I was four in this photograph fishing

with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan.

My brother squats in poison ivy. 

His davy Crockett cap

sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail                    5

flounces down the back of his sailor suit.

My grandfather sits to the far right 

in a folding chair,

and I know his left hand is on

the tobacco in his pants pocket                                     10

because I used to wrap it for him

every Christmas. Grandmother's hips

bulge from the brush, she's leaning

into the ice chest, sun through the trees

printing her dress with soft                                           15

luminous paws.

I am staring jealously at my brother;

the day before he rode his first horse, alone.

I was strapped in a basket

behind my grandfather.                                                20

He smelled of lemons. He's died-

but I remember his hands. 

      This week, I analyzed the poem called "Fifth Grade Autobiography" by Rita Dove. I chose this poem because to me, it seemed like the author would talk about their childhood and the great memories in it. I also thought that it would have reminded her of an actual fifth grade biography. It also reminded me of the many memoirs we had to do in middle school of some good or bad memories. 

     In this poem, the author likes to use enjambents in her poem. In almost every other line, there is a break between sentences. I think the author does this for emphasis on the sentence. It helps the author have a certain rhythm to the poem. It breaks it up to show the different scenes of the poem. This shows how she thinks of her memories of her family.

    Something I noticed is that she talks a lot about her family in this poem. She talks about her brother, her grandmother, and her grandfather. It seems that she never talks about her parents though. She talks about her greatest memories with her family as the simplest ones. I also noticed that she liked to talk about clothing and textures a lot. Whenever she describes her family, she always describes them with some sort of object. 

     The author also talks a lot about body parts. She talks about the hat sitting on top of her brother's head, her grandmother's hips bulging, and her grandfather's hands. She seems to personify the parts of their body as though they were not attached to the body.