A poem I have recently read is called "poem for my sister", which was written by Liz Lochead. This essay is going to investigate how Liz Lochead feels as an older sister towards her little sister, what techniques she uses to get what effects, what the sister's relationship is like and how effective the poet has been.
The poem is made up of three stanzas. In stanza 1, Liz Lochead explains about how her little sister likes to try on her grown-up shoes. In stanza 2 though she tells us about how she likes to watch her little sister play kid games and how good she is at them. Finally, in stanza 3, Liz Lochead warns her sister away from wearing unsuitable shoes.
In stanza 1, Liz Lochead shows us how she feels about her little sister. She tells us of an everyday occurrence; her little sister trying on her shoes, "My little sister likes to try on my shoes, to strut in them". The obvious meaning of this stanza is that her little sister wants to wear grown-up shoes but the big sister thinks she is still too young, "She says they fit her perfectly, but wobbles". The second meaning is that the little sister is at a difficult age in her life, she's getting too old to be a kid but is no good at being an adult but keeps trying desperately to be an adult anyway. The word "wobbles" means both that she physically cannot cope with wearing grown-up shoes and that she is also wobbling between childhood and adulthood, showing that it is not easy to balance, this message becomes clearer through the poem as she starts to speak of her little sister playing kid games.
Liz Lochead uses quite a lot of alliteration in Stanza 1. She uses dashes and commas to speed up the rhythm of the poem, "admire her spindle-thin twelve-year-old legs". I find her use of dashes and commas very effective in speeding up the rhythm.
Stanza 1 shows much about the sister's relationship, they are quite close but not too close in age. You can tell this because the older sister wears "grown-up" shoes that the little sister wants to try on.
