Poetry Analysis ; I Stop Writing the Poem (by: Tess Gallagher)

I Stop Writing the Poem
by Tess Gallagher  
  
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives ~~kinesthetic imagery
or who dies, I'm still a woman. ~~Auditory Imagery
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt ~~ kinesthetic imagery
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt ~~Visual imagery
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl  ~~Visual imagery
standing next to her mother ~~ kinesthetic imagery
watching to see how it's done. ~~Visual imagery


The Analysis of the poem and paraphrase


to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.

As a woman (ref to: "I'm still a woman") She folds the clothes that the women usually do as a wife. The writer tries to show the reader that the person in the story is a woman that sad because her husband’s death. She has plenty of time to do the housework including laundry.



I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands

Until the time when she gets fold his husband’s clothes (ref to: "his shirt"), their memories rolls back (ref to: "get back to the poem") and their lovely memories never last. And there she cries again (ref to: "get back to being a woman.") the nature of woman who has melancholic and sensitive feeling if she starts to remember her past and her happiness moments with her husband.


and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

And now she has a daughter (ref to: "small girl") is standing right in front of her mother looking and watching her work folding the clothes, waits her mother until the work finish.

The relation between her daughter "I Stop Writing the Poem" could mean she presses herself to stop crying and flow into the sadness because now she has a daughter to take care and responsible with her future as single parent.


Conclusion

A woman that has a daughter and her husband dead, tells herself that she has to keep his spirit inside her heart and no more tears crying her sadness and her past memories because she is still have a daughter to take care the future and her life that still very long. She has to do it by herself as a single parent.


Author Biography

Tess Gallagher was born on July 21, 1943, in Port Angeles, Washington, to Leslie (a logger and longshoreman) and Georgia Bond. Gallagher received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Washington, where she studied poetry under the guidance of Theodore Roethke, a National Book Award-winning poet. She went on to earn a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa in 1974.

While she was teaching English at St. Lawrence University in New York, Gallagher published her first collection of poems, Stepping Outside(1974). The following year, she began teaching creative writing at Kirkland College, also in New York, and would eventually publish her second collection, Instructions to the Double (1976), which is often referred to as her best-known work. She would go on to publish six more poetry collections, as well as teach at various other colleges, and marry three times before publishing her book Moon Crossing Bridge in which “I Stop Writing the Poem” (1992) appears. This entire collection is devoted to Raymond Carver, the well known short-story writer, with whom Gallagher lived and whom she married shortly before Carver’s death.

Gallagher’s other publications include Owl-Spirit Dwelling(1997), a collection of poems; At the Owl Woman Saloon(1997), a collection of stories about living in the Pacific Northwest; My Black Horse(2000), a poetry collection introduced by an essay written by Gallagher that details events in her childhood; and Soul Barnacles: Ten More Years with Ray(2001), in which Gallagher relates some of the more interesting moments she shared with her famous husband.

Gallagher has also written two screenplays, one of them with Carver. She also conferred with Robert Altman for his 1993 film adaptation of Carver’s short-story collection called Short Cuts.

Equally comfortable writing poetry and prose, Gallagher compared the two forms in an interview for the Atlantic Monthly. If writing poems, she said, is like “deep-sea diving,” then “writing fiction is foraging.” She has won several awards for both styles of writing, including two from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976 and 1981), another from the Guggenheim Foundation (1978–1979), and several Governor’s awards from the state of Washington (1984, 1986, and 1987). She lives in her hometown of Port Angeles, where she writes (with the same special pen she has had since the publication of her second collection of poetry) from her Sky House, a home she designed and built for herself.