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Where I Come From – Elizabeth Brewster
Summary
Elizabeth Brewster’s Where I Come From talks about the place where she spent some of her life and contrasts it with the place to which she belonged. We are all shaped by the places where we have lived – not just the places we come from but also the places where we have lived. The first stanza describes the city where everything in shining and new and impersonal. There are very distinct smells in the city and none of them very nice. Even the tulip does not have a fragrance. Worked in short images that run into each other, the first stanza hurries the reader along in a dizzy whirl. The city on the other hand is wooded and the pace here is slow. Nature is everywhere in abundance, it does not have to be plotted as in the city,
“nature tidily plotted in little squares with a fountain in the centre;”
There are violets and blueberries and chicken scurrying about. Then, probably triggered by the memories of her home town, another memory is evoked, this one is less pleasant.
Main Subject
Main subject of the poem is the contrast between the city and the countryside where the narrator came from. Though no judgement is made the tone of the two stanzas are widely divergent, leading us to believe that she speaks approvingly of the country but of the city, she has reservations. The narrator believes that we are shaped by the places where we live.
Purpose
The purpose is to draw up a contrast between the city and the country. The narrator works on the premise that places have a big influence in our lives. The very smells of a city are different from that of the country. The absence of nature except in carefully tended plots with the artifice of a fountain is one of the factors that anger the narrator.
Emotions
This poem is suffused with emotions though they are not expressed forcefully. The poem starts off with a definitive statement that “People are made of places.” From that statement the poem moves on to the main theme
Summary
Elizabeth Brewster’s Where I Come From talks about the place where she spent some of her life and contrasts it with the place to which she belonged. We are all shaped by the places where we have lived – not just the places we come from but also the places where we have lived. The first stanza describes the city where everything in shining and new and impersonal. There are very distinct smells in the city and none of them very nice. Even the tulip does not have a fragrance. Worked in short images that run into each other, the first stanza hurries the reader along in a dizzy whirl. The city on the other hand is wooded and the pace here is slow. Nature is everywhere in abundance, it does not have to be plotted as in the city,
“nature tidily plotted in little squares with a fountain in the centre;”
There are violets and blueberries and chicken scurrying about. Then, probably triggered by the memories of her home town, another memory is evoked, this one is less pleasant.
Main Subject
Main subject of the poem is the contrast between the city and the countryside where the narrator came from. Though no judgement is made the tone of the two stanzas are widely divergent, leading us to believe that she speaks approvingly of the country but of the city, she has reservations. The narrator believes that we are shaped by the places where we live.
Purpose
The purpose is to draw up a contrast between the city and the country. The narrator works on the premise that places have a big influence in our lives. The very smells of a city are different from that of the country. The absence of nature except in carefully tended plots with the artifice of a fountain is one of the factors that anger the narrator.
Emotions
This poem is suffused with emotions though they are not expressed forcefully. The poem starts off with a definitive statement that “People are made of places.” From that statement the poem moves on to the main theme