Meghan O’Rourke’s poetry collection Once: Poems explores the relationship between a mother and daughter in regards to the mother’s illness. She uses the themes of the different seasons and weather to show how her illness progresses.
O’Rourke’s first section begins with poems about summer to focus on the brighter days before her mother’s diagnosis. In her first poem, “Once,” the speaker describes a girl eating “ices/in the red summer. Bees/buzzed among the hydrangea,//heavy as plums…//You would not believe/how happy she was;/her mother pulled her//through the pool” (11). This poem juxtaposes happiness with the idea of summer and being alive with the words happy, summer, and buzzed, which emphasizes the idea of lively activity. She furthers this theme when she describes how “winter arrived/…creaking from the cold,/the black walnut’s roots/swelled beneath the snow…into the tree’s/long, crooked shadow. Nothing//was the same again” (14). This imagery shows the change of the summer’s brightness to the winter shadows, which foreshadows the events to come.
As the mother’s condition darkens, so too does the winter weather. In “Twenty-first Century Fireworks,” the speaker notes the “green landscape” and the “sapphire-blue water” (17); however, in the following poem, “Anticipatory Grief,” the warmth and color of the world is gone, replaced with “tacit gray waters— /an iceberg…colors/go cold/to the eye” (22). O’Rourke describes this imagery at first from the first person plural perspective, or two people viewing the gray color together. By the end, though, the perspective shifts to second person in which the speaker states “Stupid/with knowledge, you blink//and blink./Now black;/now pink” (22).
This shift in perspective suggests a separation of the speaker and her mother. Before this point, colors were becoming muted, going from the green of the previous poem to the gray and dusky-blue of this poem; however, now there are two distinct colors being viewed—the black of the mother’s sight and the vibrant, lively pink of the daughter. This leads to the next poem, in which the mother and daughter are further separated due to the mother’s memory loss.
O’Rourke continues with the weather theme when the mother’s illness further worsens in “When It Went to Her Brain.” In this poem, O’Rourke emphasizes the mother’s condition through the imagery of how a “hurricane beats a boat,” which brings attention to the mother’s quietness and inability to know the speaker’s name (23). The juxtaposition of the mother’s illness and resulting silence continues to O’Rourke’s elegy, “Elegy: Hill Without Scar.”
The speaker of this poem describes how “the snow lay on the ground like cold and cracking embers./…the dog comes wreathing through the door [and]/Fire haggles in the chimney,” all the while her mother “sleeps like an ember, a token, a door” (30). The stillness of the snow echoes the stillness of the now sleeping mother. By juxtaposing this lack of activity outside in the winter with the warmth and activity inside, O’Rourke emphasizes the difference between the two, creating a poignant end to her mother’s illness and the first section of the collection.
In one of her final poems, “Seven Months Later,” O’Rourke adds complexity to her theme of weather reflecting reality by using her descriptions to demonstrate a lack of emotion, as opposed to high emotion like the hurricanes. Unlike before her mother’s death when the weather echoed the speaker’s inner turmoil, the setting in this poem demonstrates a change in the speaker. O’Rourke suggests the speaker feels a quietness—even an emptiness—with her mother gone. At the beginning of the poem, she writes, “I don’t feel you in the air/…But I am still here,/walking among the shy midsummer trees” (83). The fact that the speaker no longer feels her dead mother is highlighted by the shy midsummer trees. O’Rourke’s use of shy emphasizes a lack of interaction and a resulting silence around the speaker—after all, the speaker has lost the interaction provided by her mother.
O’Rourke furthers this idea when she writes that “even the dogs have gotten quiet in your absence” (83). She finalizes this stillness in her last stanza when the mower starts and she “[startles] at the noise./Nothing should be growing” (84). Not only is the speaker startled by a noise next door, but she even says, “Nothing should be growing.” This demonstrates the speaker’s internal quiet and stillness, because a lack of growth suggests lack of change, lack of movement. In this poem, the speaker has shifted from the chaotic emotions of seeing her mother dying to the quiet sadness of her mother’s death.
O’Rourke’s first section begins with poems about summer to focus on the brighter days before her mother’s diagnosis. In her first poem, “Once,” the speaker describes a girl eating “ices/in the red summer. Bees/buzzed among the hydrangea,//heavy as plums…//You would not believe/how happy she was;/her mother pulled her//through the pool” (11). This poem juxtaposes happiness with the idea of summer and being alive with the words happy, summer, and buzzed, which emphasizes the idea of lively activity. She furthers this theme when she describes how “winter arrived/…creaking from the cold,/the black walnut’s roots/swelled beneath the snow…into the tree’s/long, crooked shadow. Nothing//was the same again” (14). This imagery shows the change of the summer’s brightness to the winter shadows, which foreshadows the events to come.
As the mother’s condition darkens, so too does the winter weather. In “Twenty-first Century Fireworks,” the speaker notes the “green landscape” and the “sapphire-blue water” (17); however, in the following poem, “Anticipatory Grief,” the warmth and color of the world is gone, replaced with “tacit gray waters— /an iceberg…colors/go cold/to the eye” (22). O’Rourke describes this imagery at first from the first person plural perspective, or two people viewing the gray color together. By the end, though, the perspective shifts to second person in which the speaker states “Stupid/with knowledge, you blink//and blink./Now black;/now pink” (22).
This shift in perspective suggests a separation of the speaker and her mother. Before this point, colors were becoming muted, going from the green of the previous poem to the gray and dusky-blue of this poem; however, now there are two distinct colors being viewed—the black of the mother’s sight and the vibrant, lively pink of the daughter. This leads to the next poem, in which the mother and daughter are further separated due to the mother’s memory loss.
O’Rourke continues with the weather theme when the mother’s illness further worsens in “When It Went to Her Brain.” In this poem, O’Rourke emphasizes the mother’s condition through the imagery of how a “hurricane beats a boat,” which brings attention to the mother’s quietness and inability to know the speaker’s name (23). The juxtaposition of the mother’s illness and resulting silence continues to O’Rourke’s elegy, “Elegy: Hill Without Scar.”
The speaker of this poem describes how “the snow lay on the ground like cold and cracking embers./…the dog comes wreathing through the door [and]/Fire haggles in the chimney,” all the while her mother “sleeps like an ember, a token, a door” (30). The stillness of the snow echoes the stillness of the now sleeping mother. By juxtaposing this lack of activity outside in the winter with the warmth and activity inside, O’Rourke emphasizes the difference between the two, creating a poignant end to her mother’s illness and the first section of the collection.
In one of her final poems, “Seven Months Later,” O’Rourke adds complexity to her theme of weather reflecting reality by using her descriptions to demonstrate a lack of emotion, as opposed to high emotion like the hurricanes. Unlike before her mother’s death when the weather echoed the speaker’s inner turmoil, the setting in this poem demonstrates a change in the speaker. O’Rourke suggests the speaker feels a quietness—even an emptiness—with her mother gone. At the beginning of the poem, she writes, “I don’t feel you in the air/…But I am still here,/walking among the shy midsummer trees” (83). The fact that the speaker no longer feels her dead mother is highlighted by the shy midsummer trees. O’Rourke’s use of shy emphasizes a lack of interaction and a resulting silence around the speaker—after all, the speaker has lost the interaction provided by her mother.
O’Rourke furthers this idea when she writes that “even the dogs have gotten quiet in your absence” (83). She finalizes this stillness in her last stanza when the mower starts and she “[startles] at the noise./Nothing should be growing” (84). Not only is the speaker startled by a noise next door, but she even says, “Nothing should be growing.” This demonstrates the speaker’s internal quiet and stillness, because a lack of growth suggests lack of change, lack of movement. In this poem, the speaker has shifted from the chaotic emotions of seeing her mother dying to the quiet sadness of her mother’s death.