Where I come from Summary

Where I Come From - Elizabeth Brewster

Summary: This poem is about the poet meeting all sorts of different people in her life. She notes their background and the wonderful adventures that they have about they themselves travelling the world.  She then contrasts it to the world that she grew up in before she met these people. She, living in a small rural area with little need for money and education, finds her life very different from those in the urban world. 

Structural analysis

1.       Repetition on the word “smell”

a.      Is the strongest memory sense. Therefore by utilising the sense of smell, it is easier to create a strong empathy link between the reader and the poet so that the reader will be able to relate with poet more easily to point out the vast difference between the urban and rural area.

b.      There is a sense of irony and hypocrisy involved as the poet was educated about the power of smell in memory, yet she is using this to be able to make fun of the urban area and describe the failures that come along with it.

2.       Free verse

a.     The whole poem is in third person and that it is somewhat impossible to be able to express all the contents of the poem if it was in first person. The big shift from urban to rural will not be so dramatic if it was not in first person as it will be gradual. By utilizing a third person narration it is easier to illustrate the vast difference between the two.

3.       Indentation in the second stanza

a.       The indentation in the second stanza is so that it starts when the first stanza ends, illustrating the link between the two although there is a shift in idea. They are therefore parallel ideas, although the author is trying to link the two ideas together. She is trying to connect the two ideas together because the poet tries to impress onto the reader that the two co-exist with each other. The rural area is not possible without an urban area as there is no point of comparison and the urban and rural area both depend on each other for progress and development. The urban area depends on the rural area for raw materials and electricity while the rural area depends on the urban area for technology, employment and modern entertainment.

4.       Simplistic writing.

This is used by the poet so as to be able to make it easier for the reader to be able to imagine about the reader extensive use of imagery used when the poet describes the place. It is also used to provide fluidity so as to be able to make a quick transition when she starts to list out areas. Secondly when we make the big shift from the rural to urban area, the use of simplistic writing is good to address the big contrast between the two.

Word analysis

First stanza

1.       “People are made of places” people are affected with them by their birthplace and that their character reflects the area that they grow up in. This is also the topic sentence of the whole poem, it is, in essence, the summary of the whole poem.

2.       “They carry with them hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace or the cool eyes of sea-gazers”

a.       It is here that the poet addresses different biomes so as to be able to include all the different parts of the world and in turn to be able to describe everyone from different backgrounds.

b.      The phrase “cool eyes of sea-gazers” demonstrates the atmosphere surrounding sea-gazers (which are people who live along the coast) as the coast along the sea is usually cool (as they usually are in Canada, the place of birth of the poet herself). This once again reflects the fact that once again “People are made of places”.

The lines that lead up to this moment all address either memories or backgrounds, creating a good foundation for the poem as it deals with the constant shift of these areas.

3.       “Atmosphere of cities how different drops from them”  creates a sense of imagery to emphasize the difference in individuality and uniqueness of every different person.

4.       “Like the smell of smog or the almost-not-smell of tulips”, this deals with the contrast between the smell of something so strong and something so faint (which is the smell of tulips), illustrating the fact that the world is full of contrasts and contradictions, and it is these things that make it so beautiful. And what is the point of having something beautiful if we do not have nothing to compare it with?

5.       “nature tidily plotted in little squares”

a.      Wild nature is not the same as artificial, or the one planted/sewn by humans in a square of garden or pots or any other parcel of land.

b.      It can be used to describe how development/globalization is starting to make everything uniform as urbanization starts to control the dispersion and growth of plants, taking away the mystery and the uniqueness of different parts of the world.

6.       “With a fountain in the centre; museum smell, art also tidily plotted with a guidebook”. The fountain symbolizes the reign of the urban, educated world over nature, being in the centre. The fact that nature has been plotted around it implies a negative force, as if commanding nature to conform. This is in a sense the educated world mocking the natural world, as we often find a way to defend ourselves against the elements using technology.

7.        “art also tidily plotted with guidebook;” not even paints are seen live, it shows artificialness. Also Poet expressing her criticism on the lack of originality found when you have seen the artworks of too many artists and thus fail to come up with an idea of your own, time and time again pointing out to faults in development, that it has led to the loss of creativity that we used to see so often in people. Therefore there is a suppression of expression and people start to look, do and sound more and more the same thing as they start to conform to the pressures of the urban area.

8.       “Or the smell of work, glue factories maybe”

a.       The poet is expressing her opinions of the industrial revolution, the place where development all began. Relating to the structure based analysis, note how the poet is using smell once again to try and make us remember those times, as the metaphor found in the smell of work (eg: sweat, grit and dirt) are usually things quite hard to forget when you were living in those times, or if you are now working in the secondary sector.

                                                               i.      The factory can also be used by the poet to convey a sense of claustrophobia and confinement in the reader, which one can often feel when you move from a big open area to an area where you are surrounded by buildings and roads. 

9.       “Chromium-plated offices; smell of subways crowded at rush hours”  Chromium-plated office and the sense of claustrophobia that we often feel when we are in the “Subways crowded at rush hours”

Second Stanza

1.       “Where I come from”. This already shows a shift as we shift from the urban perspective to the rural perspective, from her point of view. She is about to talk about her life in the rural area and her experiences.

2.       “people carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;” this indicates that in the poet’s hometown, the main point of trade is in the wood trade, particularly fine woods like pinewood. The poet feels a sense of pride towards her hometown.

3.       “blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;” this indicates the concept of rejuvenation and how we can create something new from old. This is basically because the nutrients from the burned-out bush are used for growth in the blueberry patches. 

 a.     Could be addressing development and how we always tend to get rid of the old things of the past and keep replacing it with something new. She could also be addressing urban sprawl, and how the old (rural area) will be eventually replaced with the new (urban area) given enough time.

4.       “wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint, with yards where hens and chickens circle about, clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses behind which violets grown.”

a.       This is where the poet relates the poem to memories of the past, specifically hers. Evidences the farmhouse has been used a lot, probably by the childhood in her past which implies that she has spent a long time in that area and probably has a very big impact on her. This creates a sense of nostalgic feelings in poet and in the reader due to the empathetic bond between the two. This gives the impression that what the poet is seeing through her own eyes is not what is physically there, but what is metaphorically there – her childhood. This causes the reader to thinking about his or her own nostalgic memories and how what they physically see is not what they mentally see.  This creates an even stronger bond between the two parties, despite the fact that they are not mentally seeing the same thing.

b.      The fact that the “violets grown” along the school house demonstrates a symbol representing a rebellion against the structured and organised world, as the growing pattern of the violet is often the opposite – disorganised. Furthermore it gives the image of the plant and thus nature trying to engulf the place of study, the place of development, to give a sense of nature finally being able to triumph over something man-made.

5.       “Spring and winter are the mind’s chief seasons; ice and the breaking of ice”. This is when the poet starts to get surreal as she starts to get lost in her own memories of her past. She is implying that the spring and winter are the two main peaks in the thought pattern of the brain. The other two seasons are the times that lead up to that very special moment, which is the ice and the breaking of ice, completely metaphoric though.

a.       The ice represents rigidity, the conformity into acting as one.

b.      The breaking of it represents the fact that we cannot do this forever and that in some time of our lives we will all crack and leave. It can also represent the vast difference between the rural and urban area, as if the area was a ‘break’ from the stresses and that they are so vastly different as if the rules and regulations of the urban area did not apply in the rural area.

6.       “A door in the mind blows open, and there blows a frosty wind from fields of snow” the door represents a new alternative to the ‘line of thought’ that she is about to go through.

a.       The poet is trying to imply the fact that there will be something that she will experience that will change the way that she interprets the world, change the way that she thinks as a person. She here could be addressing urbanization and how urban sprawl will eventually catch up with its rural part, changing the area forever and the people with it. Change is coming. The fields of snow represent the fact that it is something that is tough.

c.       Also, note that the door is man-made while snow is naturally formed. The poet recognizes its power of the duality of having both natural and man-made devices in our lives and that it is obviously important to us because we carry it/it affects us. In other words, our identity is shaped by the nature/world around us.

 Speaker of the poem: the poet herself, both the semi-physical (second stanza) and the omniscient part of her (first stanza), Elizabeth Brewster

Speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the poem:  – duality, positive and nostalgic about nature and negative about city

Paired poems (Identify poems in the anthology and why they are appropriate to be paired)

1.       The Planners in the similar hatred over the urban environment and the consistency, conformity, and the lack of creativity from the people that come with it.

2.       Horses in the sense that there is a similar time shift in the poem. The time shift can be found here when the poet mentions her childhood and the industrialization period. However, it is not chronological.

3.       Summer Farm in the sense that there is great detail in the natural aspect of the world in order to reinforce the subject matter. In this poem, it is the fact that nature conquers over development, of which nature made up more of the poet’s childhood than the latter. In the other poem, it was of course to reinforce the mental state of the poet.

Memorable Lines:

1.       People are made of places.

2.       Nature tidily plotted in little squares with a fountain in the centre; museum smell, art also tidily plotted with a guidebook

3.       Wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint, with yards where hens and chickens circle about, clucking aimlessly;

4.       Spring and winter are the mind’s chief seasons; ice and the breaking of ice. 

Where I Come From by Elizabeth Brewster

This is a free verse. The poem does not have any rhyme scheme. In fact it reads like prose.

1) The poet opens with a very profound statement saying that people and personality are made up of features of places that they come from.

2-3) She talks about how people display personality traits that are born from the regions that they come from like jungles, mountain, coastal areas and the tropics. What she means is that a region has a huge influence on the personality of the natives.

4) The poet begins her description with a setting that she does not feel “at home” in. she describes the cities and how the residence are quite familiar with the smell of smog due the pollution. She uses olfactory imagery.

5) Brewster goes on to hinting out at a scent that she is familiar with but misses in the urbanized dwelling.

She talks about the missing smell of tulips in springtime.

6) The poet goes on to describe the city using vivid visual imagery of the landscape plotted into restricted area due to the lack of space.

7) She describes mans need for peace and serenity amidst the fast paced city life. She talks about landscaping features like fountains that are an essential part of modern architecture. She also uses olfactory imagery to describe the typical scent of museums

8) The synthetic look and feel of the city is described by her observance of how even art is imprisoned in museums, with no space in nature, and people have to go through guidebooks for their artistic pursuits.

9) She describes with olfactory imagery the typical smell of offices and factories.

10) She describes with tactile imagery the chromium plated offices and the smells that are associated with urban life.

11) She even mentions the typical smell of the subways at rush hours.

12-13) Brewster uses the second stanza like the sestet of a sonnet in which she establishes the true intent behind writing the poem. She discloses the fact that the pope Canadian woods with acres of pine trees is what she is familiar with.

14) She describes the contrast of the blueberries growing against the backdrop the agricultural land burned for fertility.

15) Unlike the structures in the city, she describes the country farmhouses as old wooden structures that are in need of paint.

16) She uses kinaesthetic imagery to describe open yards where poultry move around freely.

17-18) While describing the poultry an using auditory imagery to hint at the clucking sound that they make she also talks about the old and run down n schools that offer an open view of wild violets growing in the country side.

19-20-21) Brewster highlights her strong feeling and emotions on human identity tied to regions by a metaphor in which she personifies happy and sad memories as spring and winter that rule the human mind. She talks about how memories of familiar things enable us to get through tough days she compares the obstacles in our minds to ice, through a metaphor . Finally the poet reveals where her heart lies. She believes that if you open the door of the metaphorical mind she would feel the familiarity of the cold winds blowing across the fields of snow.