Parenting in Poems Magi and Not Bad Dad, Not Bad Essay Sample

📌Category: Poems
📌Words: 831
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 19 June 2022

Parents are expected to raise their children to be successful people, but sometimes the child can put too high of a standard on the parent who wants the best for their child. The poems, “Magi'' by Brenda Shaughnessy and “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi are both about parents who are doing their best effort with raising their children correctly, but the children still feel the negative effects that this parenting has on them. The back and forth conversations between the mother and daughter in “Magi” tell both sides of the story, and as a result, shows the daughter that the mother was trying her best with what she was given. Similarly, the narrator in “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” also feels as though her father was not a great parent, but later comes to the realization that despite him being average, he was trying to be the best parent he could be. Both “Magi” and “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” express the disconnect the children feel with their parents due to them overestimating how the abilities of parenting towards them should be, despite the genuine effort that both parents have using what they already have.

In the poem “Magi,” Brenda Shaughnessy symbolizes how being a good mother should be handed down, like a gift, from generation to generation. The daughter discusses with her mother about how her mother could have been better, and the mother responds with reasons why that wish was not possible with the situation they were in. The daughter starts the poem by expressing that she wished her mother had been a better mother, and the mother responds saying: “The gift that keeps on not being given.” (Shaughnessy 8). The well-known idiom, “the gift that keeps on giving,” refers to the continuation of something that was given to someone. The gift represents being a better self and mother that should be handed down. Shaughnessy’s inversion of that idiom depicts the idea that this gift was never handed down, therefore leaving the mother incapable of being what she was supposed to be to her own daughter. The daughter also refers to the disconnect that she feels with her mother by using a metaphor to compare their relationship to temperature.  She describes how the bears are never cold because they are sleeping, but then finishes the phrase by saying: “but I am one cold, cold bear.” (Shaughnessy 31). Warmth is often referred to as affection and connection, so describing herself as a “cold bear” portrays the disconnect that she feels with her mother. The use of repetition in the word “cold” emphasizes how much weight this has on her.

Similarly, the child’s dissatisfaction with parenting continues in Heller Levi’s poem “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad.” Here the daughter uses an analogy to compare her dad’s parenting to swimming. She describes how he was not fantastic or miserable at his swimming, just somewhere in the middle. Despite the father’s attempts to stay at the surface, the daughter always felt as though she was drowning: “in that icy ocean between us” (Heller Levi 14). The use of the word “ocean” portrays a distant relationship between the father and daughter, as if they are separated on opposite sides of a vast ocean. Similarly to “Magi,” the ocean’s description of being “icy” emphasizes the coldness and disconnect that the daughter feels towards her and her father’s relationship.

Both “Magi '' and “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” deal with the disconnect between the parent and the child, but the daughters in both poems come to different realizations in the end of the poems. There is a poem shift in between the third and fourth stanza of “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” that shows the realization that the daughter had about her father after formerly thinking he was never fast enough to save her from drowning: “you were moving as fast as you can.” (Heller Levi 15-16). The knowledge that the father was trying his best in being a good father could act as “closure” for the daughter, who always felt as if he were not putting in enough effort and letting her drown. However, the daughter in “Magi” does not receive the closure she was hoping for in the end and instead feels the opposite when she says: “There is no end to ending.” (Shaughnessy 26). The daughter understands that her mother was unable to be a good mother because of the generations prior not passing on the gift, but the daughter does not feel closure because she knows that this problem that she has is eternal and there is not much that can be done to fix what has already happened.

The poems, “Magi'' by Brenda Shaughnessy and “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi are both about parents who are doing their absolute best effort with raising their children correctly with what they have, but the children still feel the negative effects that this parenting has on them. While the daughters in both poems feel a disconnected relationship with their parent, the daughter in “Not Bad Dad, Not Bad” feels a sense of closure at the end of the poem as she learns that her father put in his best effort, while the daughter in “Magi” does not feel closure and instead feels like this struggle that she has is eternal and never ending.

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