1. Reflections of Family Poetry Analysis Lectures 3

2. Flash Cards by Rita Dove In math I was the whiz kid, keeper of oranges and apples. What you don't understand, master, my father said; the faster I answered, the faster they came. I could see one bud on the teacher's geranium, one clear bee sputtering at the wet pane. The tulip tree always dragged after heavy rain so I tucked my head as my boots slapped home. My father put up his feet after work and relaxed with a highball and The Life of Lincoln. After supper we drilled and I climbed the dark before sleep, before a thin voice hissed numbers as I spun on a wheel. I had to guess. Ten, I kept saying, I'm only ten.

3. Flash Cards Background Like the other poets in this selection, Rita Dove chooses a moment from her childhood which conveys more about the relationship than just a particular incident. She says in an interview with Bill Moyers (THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE: A FESTIVAL OF POETS. Bill Moyers, James Haba, ed., Doubleday, 1995) : "There was stress there for me mainly because flash cards never end, but I didn't realize that [my parents] were preparing me for life, where things don't end either." This experience, like most in life, is bittersweet.

4. Flash Cards Background Notice the second stanza which is not set in the living room, but out of the house. The young child is curious, a student of life, and her "inner poet" is studying the sounds and images of the world as it sputters, drags, and slaps about. The last line is surprisingly ambiguous as "Ten" works both as an answer to the flash card, and as a way of protesting the pressure her father puts on her. In that same interview, Dove tells Moyers that "Flash Cards" is "my daughter's favorite poem because I made her do flash cards, too, and I had sworn I would never do that to a child."

5. Flash Cards Analysis What is the setting of the poem? What is the story? What is happening? Who is the narrator? What do we know about the father? What specific details show us what he is like? Look at Stanza 2. What is unusual about it? How does the young girl's perspective change? What tickles her? How do the verbs reinforce her interest? What does the first "Ten" mean in the last line? How does its meaning change when it is repeated? Do you really like this poem? Why or why not?