The poem “forgiving my father” is about daughter that is mad at her father for all the bad things he put her family through. In order for her to forgive him she had to relieve the pain and anger she had towards her father. She can now forgive her father after getting past everything. The author is trying to paint a picture of her pain. The reader can feel her crying and it is an ongoing pain she had since she was young. She lost her dad and did not have a connection with her family. The poem shows how a father can affect a kid’s life. The way the poem is written makes the reader feel sorry for the daughter. The author uses the elements word choice, punctuation, rhythm and style to paint a picture for the reader.  

In stanza II line 2 the author uses the word “lecher” (9) which is not an everyday word. It refers to a bug that sucks your blood. The reader is going to question what “lecher” has to do with this paragraph. The author could have used stingy, self-centered or greedy. The author wanted to talk about the father and how he was sucking everything away from his wife and kids. The word lecher gives the reader a disgusting picture of lechers. The author uses the word “lecher” to paint a negative picture of the father. The author uses a negative adjective again to describe her father. The daughter uses the word “you” to refer to the father instead of using his name because she is embarrassed to tell everybody his real name. For example in stanza II line 1 the daughter says “there is no more time for you” (8).  At the beginning of the poem, the author uses the word “you” and “pocket” to paint a negative picture of the father. In stanza III line 1 the author says “you are the pocket” (17) because the father was the pocket that held everyone together at the beginning before he turned bad, but he came up empty at the end of his life. The word “pocket” is a different word choice because it is not human like to be a pocket. The author could have used the missing piece or glue that holds everything together to describe her father. The reader feels the father was good at one time and there was hope. The author paints a picture and brings the readers emotions up and down by using the words “you”, “lecher” and “pocket”.

            In the whole poem the author does not use capitalization because the daughter does not feel like the father is important. The writer could have been in a rush to go to her father’s funeral. The father made the daughter feel so small that the lowercase letters symbolize she was small to him. The author uses the question mark in stanza III line 5 “what am I doing here collecting?” (21) that is the only time she uses something other than a period or a comma. In the rest of the poem she is talking to her dad, but the question is the daughter reforming to herself. Throughout the poem she is blaming her father for everything then she finally stopped and asked herself “is it me?”   The poem is aligned left because everything the father did was wrong. The poem aligned left symbolizes the father’s life has been going left the whole time and he broke their trust. The sentences are broken up to show that her father broke her heart over and over again. The picture the author paints with punctuation and spacing makes a bad picture of the father. The poem makes the reader feel bad for the daughter because she lost respect for her father. The punctuation had a big part in the poem, which was written short and choppy.

            The poem had a short and choppy rhythm when the daughter was talking about her dad. Throughout the poem the sentences were not all complete sentences to show that her father was not in her life much, for example in stanza I line 1 the author says “it is Friday” (1). The author uses a lot of short sentences to make the father seem bad. The reader feels the negative affect that the father had on his daughter. The short and choppy poem shows that the writer is angry with the father because the father took the joy from the family. The daughter is trying to get a message that he could have been a better father, but he is too late. She is being short with her father because she thinks he is not worth her time. The poem stays short and choppy and nothing got better, so all she can do is forgive father. The poem is about the daughter trying to tell everything he did wrong, by letting her father know all the pain she has been going through. The poem stays the same pace and does not get angrier as the poem goes. The rhythm was short and choppy in the poem and the writer’s style was straight forward.

            The writer’s style was straight forward because the daughter did not want to waste time trying to get her point across. The daughter calls her dad by negative adjectives, for example in stanza 5 line 2 “old lecher”, “old prisoner” and “old pauper” (20). The words that she calls her father says what she feels and thinks about her father. The reader feels like the daughter is fed up with her father, sees her being disrespectful to her father. The daughter is probably a teenager that cannot control her feelings, crying and yelling at her father’s grave. The style shows how the daughter really feels instead of elaborating. The style helps the reader imagine the daughter yelling at her father and makes them feel sad for the daughter because she did not have a good father.                                                                                                           

The author uses word choice to describe how her dad was not a good father. Punctuation played a big role in this poem by using lowercase to show the daughter did not care about her father and he did not care about her. The rhythm is short and choppy to show she was angry at her father. The style was straightforward to not waste time and to get things off her chest. The author uses the elements word choice, punctuation, rhythm and style to paint a picture for the reader. This poem paints a picture of a girl crying about the loss of her father. The girl is angry and sad in the tone of voice when she talks. The elements help the reader understand what is going on. The reader feels upset and angry at her father. The elements give the poem a tone and emotion. The elements play a big part in poem because they give the poem meaning. 
