Mementos, 1

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form/Meter

The poem has a conversational tone and is written with an inconsistent rhyme scheme, relying more often on near-rhymes or a lack of rhyme to create a sense of momentum and unexpected development. There is an exception to this general rule: In the poem’s third stanza, an ABCABC rhyme scheme is followed quite strictly (years/fear, shacks/back, carried/married), but this is the only stanza in the poem that conforms to such an even rhyme scheme. This may be because the third stanza is when the speaker recalls how the photo helped him to maintain a sense of order and stability in the midst of a chaotic situation (the war), and the stanza’s conformity to a rhyme scheme reinforces this sense of order he describes. In contrast, the other stanzas—which sometimes have rhymes and sometimes do not—help to embody the sense of ambiguity and fluctuating emotional states the speaker experiences in recalling his more complex feelings toward his former wife.

Flashback

The poem is built around a series of flashbacks inspired by the speaker’s rediscovery of the photo. A flashback occurs in a literary text when the narrator or speaker describes an event (or events) that occurred prior to the present action. In this poem, the present action is when the speaker is an older, divorced man who has recently rediscovered a photo of his former wife. The flashbacks are when he describes meeting his wife at a dance and how she “stunned / Us all” (Lines 10-11), his time serving during the war, and the unhappy years of their marriage. Flashbacks allow a speaker to engage in a more creative retelling of events, and in this poem they enable the speaker is create affecting contrasts between the past he describes and the present situation he is now living in.

Apostrophe

An apostrophe is a literary device used when a speaker appears to address someone or something who is either dead or not literally present in the scene. In this poem, the speaker addresses his former wife, speaking to her directly at each stage of the poem through the use of “you” instead of using the pronouns “she/her.” The speaker’s habit of describing past events and his emotions as though his ex-wife could hear him creates a richer and more complicated emotional register for the poem. The apostrophe creates the sense that the speaker would like to be able to say these things to his former wife directly, but since she is not present, he reverts to addressing her even while alone to help process what he is feeling about their past and their failed love.