To my nine year old

• Title


  Dedicational, evocative of a letter, sense of reflection on the past
• Themes


  Responsibility

  Innocence

  The past

  Experience/growth
• Techniques


  Use of imperative ‘must’ ‘don’t’ trying to hold control over the future

  Use of rhetorical question, unanswered

  Use of pronouns to distance/become closer ‘you’ ‘I’ ‘we’

  Contrast between reality and innocence, uncompromised

  Sudden hints of the current
• Structure


  Opens as an address, confession, reflection, agreement of distance, image of past self
• Tone


  Dominant

  Confessional

  Considersate
• Structure


  5x stanza

  6-8 lines in length

  Heterometric

  Attempt at control