Li-Young Lee really captured the heart of a father/child relationship in this poem. He used some great visual words and strategically placed them at the end to invoke the desired emotion. He starts with the very first line with "palm" - which made me visualize the symbol for a helping, healing open hand. In the second stanza he uses "well" and "prayer." A well brings forth water to support life and is a source of living strength. Leaning on our father's is a source of emotional strength which helps us endure the trials we face. Prayer demonstrates a father's deep love for his child, which can also relate to a spiritual symbolism of a Heavenly Father loving an earthly child. He also demonstrates the powerful lesson of the perpetual nature of love. This little boy learned to love and nuture from his father and passes it along to his wife. In doing so he returns to those childhood feelings of being safe, loved, nurtured, and is able to focus on his father and not the thing that so tormented and caused him pain. This gift is universal through all cultures, and can also parallel all spiritual philosophies in the powerful impact of loving, caring and helping those in need.
In "Woodwork" there is a similar theme of the bond that develops between father and son through father teaching his son the art of woodworking. This created strong memories and the physical wood, smells, and process bring to heart the emotions shared and special moments spent with a loving father. For me the poem moves me through the cycle of life demonstrating that those that are gone live on in our memories and the way we live our lives.
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I really like the connection you make between the speaker's past experience and how it continues with him in his relationship with his wife. It is often hard to make the connection between the things we learn in our youth and how they apply when we reach adulthood. I think "The Gift" captures a learning moment, an epiphany of sorts that the speaker wants to share. Best of all, he makes a clear connection between what has been learned and how it applies in life.
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