Parents

The structure of “Parents” mirrors one of its most central themes. The poem’s narrative is circular, meaning it ends where it begins. The opening couplet suggests it is impossible to perceive ourselves as parents if we don’t already have children: “What it must be like to be an angel / or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner” (Lines 1-2). The end of the poem echoes this sentiment: “... we cry, wrinkling, / to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren” (Line 25-26). The speaker has gone through a journey from the beginning of the poem to the end. At the beginning, the speaker can't fathom being a parent; at the end, the speaker’s children and grandchildren cannot understand the speaker’s experience as a parent and grandparent. Because Meredith writes these experiences in the first-person plural, the argument here is this experience is universal, meaning all people in all generations will go through it or have already gone through it.

It’s possible to connect this concept to a broader view of life. Everyone is born, grows, changes, and then dies. People pass down their experiences to the next generation, and only with