Analysis of Fawn's Foster-Mother
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels
With her meagre pale demoralized daughter.
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun
And saying that when she was first married
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.
(It is empty now, the roof has fallen
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)
"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."
Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.
Submitted by Holt
Scheme | XABXBBXXXXXXCAXXXXXXCB X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011011010101010 101101010 11111100110001 0101111110 1100111110 1110101110 1011110101001 1111101110 0111110011001 1111011010 1101011110011 0111111101 101111111011110 11110101 1011011101110 11111111010 0110111101011 1101011001 111110101101111 1111101111 1111001110010100 011010101010 01011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,116 |
Words | 219 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 22, 1 |
Lines Amount | 23 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 442 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 11, 2023
- 1:05 min read
- 52 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Fawn's Foster-Mother" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32794/fawn%27s-foster-mother>.
Discuss this Robinson Jeffers poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In