Grandpa

Grandpa he was a man
He taught me the things that mattered
how to eat oxtail soup before
fishing on Saturday morning to
keep you warm how to
cast a line into a
streamful of angered anglers and
be the only one to
come home with anything worth
bragging about how to
set teeth in any saw and
dovetail a joint in a
chair leg and roof a
house and weld a
straight seam on a
kitchen pipe and make a
home out of a
workshop out of a
two-car garage and
smoke Granger’s tobacco and
love work out kids and
fishing for ‘a Man’s
life is his work and
his work is his life’ and
Once you take away his work
you pull the plug of his life
and it takes too long
for it to drain silently away.
one day the came and
told him to go home and
rest old man it’s time
that you retire he begged
them ‘let me stay’ but
they of course knew best for
every one knows at sixty-five
all men are old and useless and
must be cast off to
rot so he came home and
tried to fish and
couldn’t and tried to joke and
couldn’t and tried to live and
couldn’t Every morning he was
up and four and cooked breakfast for
grandma and warmed up the house and
went to the workshop and filed saws for neighbors but
they told him to stop that too
so he put all his tools away and
cleaned up the workshop and
came into the house for his
daily afternoon nap and
died. They didn’t know
what I knew because he didn’t tell them but
he showed them
Grandpa he was man.

W.M. Ransom

IMPORTANT NOTES

1. grandson sees grandpas as role model
2. grandson has a good relationship with his grandpa who has taught him many things
3. grandpa was a man whose life was devoted to his work
4. metaphor: grandpa stops working "Once you take away his work you pull the plug of his life and it takes too long for it to drain silently away"
5. pull the plug "when he's forced to retire" > drain silently away "his life going to end"
6. grandpa has been objectified as rotting plants - his life is no longer worth living
7. the shape of the poem is irregular and the lines seem to drag on endlessly, echoing the image of water going down the drain
8. all grandpa's words are direct speech- suggest a close relationship between the writer and his grandpa - grandpa's words are meaningful to the writer
9. Grandpa has taught the writer

• how to eat oxtail soup
• cast a line into a streamful of angered anglers
• set teeth in any saw and dovetail a joint
• weld a straight seam on a kitchen pipe

10. Grandpa was a working man

• smoke Granger's tobacco
• love work
• love kids
• love fishing