“The Giant Slide”
Ted Kooser https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42634 “The Giant Slide” by Ted Kooser is a poem that creates feelings of nostalgia for childhood memories through descriptive imagery and enjambment. It describes an old slide on an abandoned playground and describes the speaker’s distant memories of when they once experienced enlightenment when playing on a similar playground. Kooser begins his poem by describing the decrepit state of a dilapidated slide by the side of a highway. He wrote, “with its rusty undulations lifts/ out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used/ for a generation.” Kooser is trying to describe how old the slide has become after years of nobody utilizing it for its purpose. He could also be referring to how old the speaker has become. By describing the slide as one that is deserted and broken down, Kooser essentially established that the speaker of the poem has not been on a slide, or any other sort of playground equipment, in years and is probably an adult. The slide does not seem to be alone in its deteriorating state, for Kooser also described a beat-up ticket booth next to it. Kooser then wrote, “A chain link fence keeps out/ the children and drunks.” The scene Kooser is trying to set is of an old, dusty, raggedy playground that has not been touched in years and is isolated from the rest of the world. Kooser is trying to emphasize how isolated the speaker is from his memories and his childhood and even uses a chain link fence to emphasize that barrier. Kooser’s message becomes clear in the next line when he makes a shift in the poem and writes, “Blue morning glories/ climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters/ of laughter.” The blue morning glories are small, blue flowers that add a sense of beauty and adventure into the poem. He also added words like “bright” and “laughter” to add a sense of liveliness and cheerfulness. This is a stark contrast from the deserted playground he had just been describing. These observations may even be symbols to represent the speaker’s feelings and the excitement he felt as a kid going on the slide. They represent relics of the speaker’s past that are brought up the longer he stares and remembers the playground. The next line, “Call it a passing fancy,/ this slide that nobody slides down now” conveys a sense that the speaker may feel like he/she is missing out on something. They also might be feeling a twinge of guilt or regret seeing the slide like that, to remind them that no one has taken care of it or maintained its quality. Kooser then wrote “Those screams have all gone east/ on a wind that will never stop blowing.” This could symbolize that all the children who had once played on the slide have moved away and presumably grown up. It is also assumed that the speaker is standing somewhere in the west coast, for Kooser describes the wind rolling over the Rockies and over the great plains. He ends the poem when he writes “where things catch on for a little while,/ bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.” The second to last line wraps up his message of the speaker reminiscing about their childhood, but Kooser also makes a point to say that things change. Once upon a time, kids thought that it was fun to go and play on the playground and go down the slide. Now, the slide is deserted and all the children have grown up. “The Giant Slide” is not just a poem about childhood memories, it is also a poem about how we grow away from them, and how they may seem isolated and reserved in our minds. The speaker of the poem feels nostalgic upon recollecting what that they once thought was an enjoyable experience in their childhood. Though the slide is described as rusty and surrounded by weeds, it is also given a sense of wonder by the blue morning glories preserving its once glorious nature. Things change and people change and Kooser is trying to convey the message to live in the moment and preserve and enjoy the events and people important in life right now.
1 Comment
Hi Kelly!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2017
Categories |