Back to category: Miscellaneous

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.

Understanding A Sunday Phone Call

Maxine Kumin’s poem, A Sunday Phone Call, is about a daughter
whose parents have both died and on this particular Sunday, has a
conversation with her late father as if he were still alive.
Throughout he poem we are given the opportunity to overhear a
private discussion between a father and his child, a conversation
that might not have occurred in many years. We are also invited
to aspects of her childhood that she remembers while talking with
her father.
Kumin’s use of alliteration, the repetition of consonant
sounds, in the first stanza gives the reader a better sense of
how Kumin is feeling and how the weather plays along with her
feelings. “Drab December, sleet falling./ Dogs loosely coiled in
torpor./ Horses nose-down in hay.” (ll. 1-3) The ‘d’ sound is a
very hard sound, and it gives the impression of finality and
completeness. That first line alone sets the tone that the poem
is going to be more on the serious side. However, had she
started ...

Posted by: Rebecca Wyant

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.