Analysis of The Last Christmas Card Writer
By the week after Thanksgiving she had
Purchased her supply of Christmas cards
That contained a nostalgic rural winter vignette
And a sweet, secular written message.
She didn’t want to offend anyone by
Pushing an overt religious creed.
With a hot cup of tea steaming on
The kitchen table, she carefully stacked
The cards next to the creamy white envelopes.
She had kept a hand-written list of
Recipients since her children were born.
Many addresses on the list had been scratched
Out now, reminders that time never loses.
Deaths and divorces had culled the names.
Undaunted, she carefully addressed each
Envelope in elegant penmanship that she
Had learned from Miss Kinsella when she
Was in kindergarten, back when the perfect
Formation of letters mattered. She hunched
Over like a monk preparing a medieval manuscript,
Ensuring that each letter flowed into the next
Seamlessly. Such precision mattered to her.
The ritual of Christmas card writing should not
Be rushed. Inside each card, she wrote a brief
Greeting that added a touch of humanity.
Her winkled hands, which had wiped
Hundreds of runny noses and folded
Thousands of clothes, began to cramp.
Her children told her not to bother with
This ritual. No one sends mail, they said.
But stopping would be an admission
Of mortality. The cards were a signal
That she still breathed, still felt alive.
The final step was walking to the post
Office to send the cards off like they
Were her children heading to school.
She always wanted her cards to be the
First ones to arrive in a person’s mailbox.
Then she waited, with the painful knowledge
That the cards she would receive would
Likely continue to dwindle because of
Death or contemporary preoccupations.
When the first card appeared in her mailbox,
She clutched it as if it were a rare diamond.
Scheme | XXXA XXXX XBXX XXXC CXXX XXXX CXXX XXXX XXXX XDAX BXDX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101101011 100011101 1010010101001 0011001010 111101101 101010101 101111101 0101011001 0111010110 111011011 0100101001 10110101111 11010111010 100101101 0101100011 100100111 111101011 1010011001 0101101011 10101010001010 010111010101 10010101010 010011011011 1101111101 101100110100 011111 1011010010 10110111 0101011101 1100111111 110111010 10100010010 11111101 0101110101 101101111 00101011 111001110 1110100101 1110101010 10111011 10010110011 1101000010 101101001 11111100110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,832 |
Words | 338 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 133 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
About this poem
We may all know a mother or grandmother like the subject of this poem.
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"The Last Christmas Card Writer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/140819/the-last-christmas-card-writer>.
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