"Parent's Pantoum" by Carolyn Kizer

"Parent's Pantoum" by Carolyn Kizer

Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses

More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.

They moan about their aging more than we do,
A somber group--why don't they brighten up?
Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity
They beg us to be dignified like them

As they ignore our pleas to brighten up.
Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention
Then we won't try to be dignified like them
Nor they to be so gently patronizing.

Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention.
Don't they know that we're supposed to be the stars?
Instead they are so gently patronizing.
It makes us feel like children--second-childish?

Perhaps we're too accustomed to be stars.
The famous flowers glowing in the garden,
So now we pout like children. Second-childish?
Quaint fragments of forgotten history?

Our daughters stroll together in the garden,
Chatting of news we've chosen to ignore,
Pausing to toss us morsels of their history,
Not questions to which only we know answers.

Eyes closed to news we've chosen to ignore,
We'd rather excavate old memories,
Disdaining age, ignoring pain, avoiding mirrors.
Why do they never listen to our stories?

Because they hate to excavate old memories
They don't believe our stories have an end.
They don't ask questions because they dread the answers.
They don't see that we've become their mirrors,

We offspring of our enormous children.

The pantoum is composed of quatrains where usually the second and fourth line of each stanza are repeated as the first and third of the next stanza. The meanings of the lines change with shifting punctuation even the the words remain the same. The pantoum is known for subtle shifts in meaning through the shifting punctuation and therefore new context.

In the first stanza, the speaker clearly adores their children and is in awe of how much they have grown and their accomplishments. In stanzas two and three, the tone focuses towards slight bitterness. Kizer asks "why don't they brighten up?" The line "they beg us to be defined like them" hints that Kizer resents the embarressment her children feel when she tells them to "brighten up."

Stanza four introduces a middle way that will make Kizer and her children happy, as the children stop "patronizing" and parents become "defined like them". Stanzas six and seven introduce the fact that the children will soon separate from their parents and rely on them less and less. They will "pause to toss morsels of their history" towards their parents, but that is all.

In the last two stanzas, Kizer states that the children do not understand what they will become in the future. The parents are the children's "future mirrors". Kizer uses metonymy, a part for the whole, to show that mirrors represent the future. The last line suggests that children raise their parents as much as the other way around.

The overall scansion of the pantoum has meaning within itself. The repitition of lines in different contexts give different meanings.