7. from long distance, tony harrison

• poem summary

  as poem begins, speaker recalls their father's ritualistic behaviour following the death of his wife (the mother)

  
  

  the father persists in a form of denial to help manage his grief

  
  

  in the poem's final stanza, the speaker reveals employing the very same tactics to deal with his own father's death

  
  

  the poem is written as a commemorative annual piece of meredithian sonnet: the parents are the absent, intended addressee
• though my mother/ slippers warming / couldn't ... drop

  in / such a crime

  sonic texture

  harsh consonant sounds: couldnt... drop / crime

  soft consonant sounds: though / slippers warming

  soft consonant sounds: illustrate dreamy, fantastical coping coping mechanism of the speaker

  harsh consonant sounds: increase as poem goes on to portray the speaker's grief setting in

  facade begins to crack with prickly, callous, harsh consonant sounds

  the spikey prickles of pain and grief protrude at the sonic level
• put hot water bottles her side of the bed and / still went to renew her transport pass

  iambic pentameter: imperfect, has 11 syllables

  both imperfect iambic lines reflect both father's and speaker's attempts to act like their loved ones are still there: portrays how their delusions are discordant with reality

  
  

  iambic pentameter is at times perfect, at others halting: when is breaks, speaker's facade cracks further, presenting his grief

  a subtle, formal way of reinforcing how grief can throw speaker off-hither
• dad kept her slippers warming by the gas

  father's rituals persist as a coping mechanism of denial

  small, somewhat pitiable gestures hint at his debilitated emotion by ritualising quotidian tasks
• long distance (title)

  indicative of harrison's fraught, tense, emotionless parental relationship

  harrison's father deliberately places distance between him and other relations

  harrison's time spent learning languages in other countries further tears them asunder
• you couldn't just drop in.

  caesura: emphatic statement and disrupted line

  minimal, tense relationship flecked with disconnection

  no speaking: 'long distance' is both physical and emotional
• you had to phone

  modal verb: responsibility

  telephone is indicative of emotional distance and tension

  relationship is one of practicality: a formal act
• he couldn't risk my blight of disbelief

  blight = disease

  son jeopardises the mirage of mother's existence

  father is decaying like a blighted crop, yet he persists that the son's realism is the disease

  son's acceptance of reality poses the threat that the father will eventually have to handle his very real loss: he can't live a lie
• sure that very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock

  father's grief is so overwhelming he cannot maintain quotidian cleaning routine

  stubborn refusal to accept, commitment to preserval: the same way the lock rusts, the father rusts in his stubbornness
• he knew she'd just popped out to get the tea

  italicisation: for emphasis

  demonstrates the extent of the father's self-delusion

  tone: colloquial

  something he would say to his wife in real life

  emphasises father's denial as he pretends his wife is there to tell him he's 'popping out
• i believe life ends with death, and that is all.

  lineation — end-stopped line: matter-of-fact tonality assured of no life beyond death
• there's your name / and the circulatory number i still call

  circularity of phone is both touching & ironic: telephone is indicative of long physical distance

  only now, when the father is in the nether-world, can the poet speak to him sincerely
• just the same, ... in my new black leather phone book there's your name /

  late volta: 'just the same'

  speaker reveals he deploys the same rituals the father utilised by introducing the phone book

  this infuses the object with sentimental meaning

  
  

  loop back to the first stanza
• what does the rhyme scheme reflect about the distance between the speaker and their parents

  first 3 stanzas: abab rhyme scheme

  father and son never quite align

  last stanza: abba rhyme scheme

  suggests a new-found closeness once the father has passed