Blackout Poem – “Where the Sycamore Grew”

“way back when”

The poem “Where the Sycamore Grew,” written by Carrie Richards is about a person who had previously owned a house where is a sycamore tree was growing. The speak remembering all the good and bad memories that came to her after looking at the house, her kids, anniversaries, their first Christmas tree and her mother’s death. The theme of the poem is memories and the past because the whole poem is about a woman who has gone back to one of her past homes and is now looking back at all the memories she had in that house. The poem is significant because many people move in their life time and each person that does that creates memories whether they are good or bad, until the house is being sold. Then memories will no longer be created in that house and you can only look back at those times. In the poem a poetic device would be imagery, this would be when she says, “the streets seem narrower and the trees are taller”(3). this makes us imagine a picture of the old neighbourhood and the new neighbour hood and the aging process that her yard and house went through. Another poetic device would be the use of a simile, this appears when it says, “like a whirl wind of leaves” (17). This compares a whirl wind to leaves using like or as. A third poetic device would be an end rhyme scheme, which would be, “…Our first Christmas tree… Our first anniversaries…” (18). This shows the two sounds that sound the same while being placed at the end of each line.