Strategy Response 1, Week 15

Poem: (a beginnging)

Strategy: Overlapping layers to construct identity

The strategy that stands out to me the most in this piece is a sense of overlapping layers of identity and time. The strongest instance of layered identity is the imagery of the daughter’s and the father’s face, “That her face is not the father’s is not a sign. It is / a coincidence always that a daughter’s face is a father’s and often a blue one” (5-6). The fact that the father’s face deviating from the norm and is not the daughter’s face foreshadows the end of the piece when the father is not a breath and he passes on. His face also passes away from the daughter. In addition, there is a sense that the speaker’s identity layers over the daughter, “I slip and slip under the sheets and / the daughter sleeps” (4-5). Sheets are thin covers that are meant to lie over something; so the boundary between the identity of the speaker and the daughter appears to be nothing more than a thin sheet. It appears as the speaker is the daughter and the past event of the father dying is overshadowing the present moment in which the speaker is reliving the memory (past over-layers the present). She is obviously a part of the poem and is not serving as a distant observer of the piece, “You smiled and smiled with / me” (11-2) The repetition of words like, “smile,” “slip,” and “breath,” along with the connected relationships of the father and daughter, work together to emphasizes this idea of overlapping layers of identity and time.