Sign inventory, Week 5

Retrospect in the Kitchen
-Maxine Kumin

*The "you" addressed in the poem is addressed also as Earth Wizard and Limb Lopper.

*The poem exhibits barriers not only in life and death, but time: "stand at midnight-nine o'clock / your time".

*The speaker plans to ingest "things / unsaid" between herself and the you.

*The speaker is concerned with numerical markers and is also concerned with quanities: "forty pounds of plums," "three thousand miles," "stand at midnight," "nine o'clock your time," and "the fourth day of your death."

*Culinary items act as a connection to the speaker and the you: "I pick / forty pounds of plums from your tree," "putting some raveled things / unsaid between us into a boiling pot / of cloves, cinnamon, sugar."

*The final couplet is the only sentence that is incomplete and the least correct grammatically.

*The first two stanzas are one long sentence, the three stanza poem is composed of two sentences.

*The poem is focused on specifics (40 pds., DC 10, 3,000 miles, 4th day of your death, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, etc) yet the speaker just puts "some raveled things unsaid" into the boiling pot.

*There is a concentration on physical and intimate distance in this poem: three thousand miles and things unsaid between us.

*The you, the poem's deceased is referred as "behind" the speaker, she stands at midnight whereas the "you" would have been only at nine o'clock.