Still Memory

Still Memory by Mary Karr is a very touching piece.The memory is a crazy thing, and sometimes it is unreal how vivid it can be. This poem is a description of how Karr remembers her childhood. A reflection on how she remembers life to be when she was ten and before her mother and father passed away. At the same time, however, this poem also brings up her passion for writing and how it blossomed at that time in her life.

My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.

When I read this poem and especially that last stanza, I get the feeling that when she wrote it she was thinking about how much everything has changed since this time. I feel like Karr was almost expressing how naive she was at that time and how small her world felt but as she grew she found out how big it really was. The bulk of this piece is small details about her childhood which, to me, shows that when she was then her world was pretty concentrated. It is natural to miss what was and think often about childhood and how easy everything was, but it is also easy to think about how far you have come and how much has changed. That is what I think this poem is about.