English Commentary

'Passed On'- Carole Satymurti

     The poem 'Passed On' by Carole Satymurti is a poem about letting go. The poem is written in retrospect and in it, the poet tells us what she went through just before and directly after her mother's death. The poet has subtly portrayed her emotions to her readers, making them automatically relate to her. Losing a parent would be a harsh blow to anyone and in this poem, the poet tells us about how with she came to terms with this devastating loss and in the process how she found herself. The title of the poem too is beautifully thought of as it could have three meanings, signifying the three stages of the poem. Firstly, the passing on(or death) of the poet's mother, then the passing on of the mother's thoughts and advice to her child and lastly the passing on of the child from her state of dependency to her state of maturity.

     In the first stanza of the poem we feel the poet's despondency at her lack of control of the situation. Her mother is slowly dying and she can do absolutely nothing about it. Subconsciously the poet knows this but she is still in denial about the fact, and so she nags her mother about the simplest of things in the desperate attempt to keep her alive for longer. At this point the poet fails to understand the importance of what her mother is tirelessly writing about with a 'squirrel concentration'; by this phrase, the poet is probably referring to the extreme dedication and concentration with which a squirrel collects and stores nuts before winter. However, the poet believes that whatever it is that her mother is writing, is draining the strength out of her finger tips as fast as the ink is draining out of the pen, and so her mother should stop immediately. The poet is still very young, not even twenty-one, and she wants to avoid the 'hard winters' she knows she will have to face once her mother dies so much that she is fooling herself into believing that if her mother takes some simple precautions she will be fine.

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     In the next stanza the poet immediately takes us to the time after her mother's death when she opens the box and finds herself face to face with an embodiment of her mother in the index cards. She is surprised, but extremely grateful for the way in which her mother had 'rendered' herself onto the pieces of paper in every way she could anticipate in order to help her young daughter deal with life without a mother. Here the reader is taken back to the apt comparison of her mother's concentration to that of a squirrel, because ...

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