17 pages • 34 minutes read
Fifth Grade Autobiography
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Fifth Grade Autobiography” is written in free verse, meaning the poem contains no prescribed form or meter. As in most free verse poems, there is no observable rhyme scheme in the poem. The poet’s choice to focus on the language and the visual details of the poem, rather than on the regulation of line length, is also characteristic of free verse. As a result, line lengths vary throughout the poem, from nine syllables to the poem’s briefest line, Line 16’s four syllables.
The poet incorporates natural pauses at the end of phrases beginning with the first lines: “I was four in this photograph fishing / with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan” (Lines 1-2). Typical phrasing would break Line 1 after “photograph,” but Dove keeps “fishing” on the first line to create more momentum at the beginning of the poem. Readers experience the first two lines of the poem without a pause due to the lack of punctuation at the end of line 1, which leads the reader directly into Line 2. The lack of punctuation that sets free verse apart from other poetic forms enhances the impressionistic quality of the poem and the childhood memory it contains.
Enjambment
Enjambment is the ending of lines in poetry without punctuation, and more than half of the lines in this poem are enjambed. While ten of them are end-stopped, which is the opposite of enjambed, the other twelve flow directly into the following line without a pause.
The use of enjambment is most evident in the longest stanza, Stanza 2, which includes eight enjambed lines and only one line ending in a period. Dove may have chosen this strategy for a number of reasons. Perhaps the speaker’s emotions are higher as they recall their grandparents, leading them to recount their presence in the photograph. As well, the speaker recalls details about them thanks to the visual aid of the photograph, experiencing the memory in a single outpouring of emotion. In addition, the poet might have chosen this strategy to illustrate the enthusiasm emotion of the fifth grade speaker for her assignment. The pace of this stanza is in contrast to that of both the previous and succeeding stanzas, which each contain three significant end-stopped lines.
Finally, the deemphasizing of end-stopped lines means that the poet can conclude Stanza 3 with the addition of a significant life event for the poem’s speaker: “He’s died—” (Line 21). While an em dash is a punctuation mark, it is a far less decisive one than the period with which the stanza would have ended otherwise. The em dash indicates either an interruption or a visual marker for the slight pause that it indicates. Either way, it serves to highlight the final line of the poem, further emphasizing a line that the poet views as important enough to stand alone as its own stanza.
Lyric
While “Fifth Grade Autobiography” contains elements of narrative poetry, it best suits the category of the lyric, which is a type of poetry that explores the speaker’s thoughts and emotions. In this poem, readers witness two temporal levels of such feelings, first while learning what the fifth grade speaker remembers about the photograph and also the reaction of the four-year-old speaker.
The poet highlights the emotional connection between the speaker and their grandfather when describing the speaker’s wrapping of the grandfather’s tobacco “every Christmas” (Line 12). In addition, the speaker “was strapped in a basket / behind my grandfather” (Lines 19-20) during their horseback ride, demonstrating the degree of care the grandfather took in looking after his young grandchild. Finally, as a result of the memories brought up by the photograph, the speaker realizes, “I remember his hands” (Line 22), a poignant reminder that no one can predict or control recollections of those who are gone.
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By Rita Dove
