Mementos, 1 by W.D. Snodgrass
Title
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Mementos are small objects that we keep to remember our friends and special times in our lives.
Examples are photographs or letters.
Snodgrass wrote another poem, called Mementos, 2, which is why this poem is called Mementos, 1.
Summary
This poem looks at how we keep mementos that remind us of the past and when they symbolise an emotional
connection they are difficult to get rid of. The poem is about a photograph of the speaker’s wife, reminding him
of the beginning and end of their relationship. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker or persona is seen sorting
out some old things. He found his wife’s picture there. The picture shocks him and reminds him of how beautiful
she once was and how uncomplicated life seemed when they were young He likes the shock to a man who has
suddenly found a severed hand in a pile of dead leaves. He was glad to have the old picture of hers in which she
dressed in a long gown decorated with green lace netting and daisies. She wore that dress at their first dance.
While he served as a soldier during World War 2, he had the same picture in order to relieve his mind from the
horrific incidents. Before their official divorce, they already had drained each other’s feelings. Yet the speaker
put the picture back where it was, hoping to stumble upon it again in the same, careless manner.
Form/Structure
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The poem is of the type known as confessional poetry, in which the poet confesses or shares very personal
and private thoughts and feelings. In this case, he shares his memories of and feelings about his first
marriage: how the marriage started and how it culminated in a divorce.
It is written in first-person, from the poet’s point of view.
This piece consists of a total of four stanzas, each having six lines, and the lines are similar in length
It is written in FREE VERSE meaning there is no set rhyme scheme or meter. The rhyme which is
present occurs in no set pattern.
There is occasional rhyming in the words ‘old’ and ‘cold’ in the first stanza, ‘carried’ and ‘married’ in
the third stanza, and ‘force,’ ‘divorce’ and ‘course’ in the last stanza.
Enjambment is used throughout the poem. Enjambment is the use of run-on lines to keep the flow intact.
An idea continues in the next line. For instance, it occurs in “Sorting out letters and piles of my old/
Canceled checks, old clippings, and yellow note cards/ That meant something once, I happened to find/
Your picture.”
Analysis
Stanza 1 (Line 1-6)
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This stanza describes the poet’s reaction to finding an old photograph of his ex-wife. He is sorting out
old papers, probably to throw away what he no longer needs.
Alliteration – The alliteration of the ‘c’ sound in “Canceled checks, old clippings, and yellow note cards”
suggests the choking of dust and also contempt or disgust.
The poet uses visual imagery in order to depict the scene. There are ‘Canceled checks’ which are old
cheques that have been paid and returned by the bank. There are also pieces cut from old newspapers or
magazines that had interested him at the time, and old note cards which have turned yellow with age.
The words ‘canceled/ old/ yellowed’ (line 2) tell us that these papers have been there for a very long
time; they had been important to him long ago.
Suddenly, he finds a photograph of his ex-wife; perhaps he had forgotten about it, for he is shocked.
There is short, sharp punctuation in line 4, with two full stops in four words: “Your picture. That picture.
I stopped there cold.” The short phrases and full stops make us stop short so that we experience the shock
that the poet feels when he sees the picture.
‘That picture’ is emphasis that he knows this particular picture and it is a special picture of someone who
was once very important to him.
The poet’s use of the word “cold” in line 4 helps to describe his shock at seeing the picture. He froze
when he saw it.
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Simile – ‘Like a man raking piles…/ Who has turned up a severed hand.’ The speaker compares his
surprise with that of a man who has found a severed hand while raking piles of dead leaves in his yard.
Stanza 2 (Lines 7-12)
 This stanza describes the poet’s memories of the time when the photograph was taken. In spite of the
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shock, the poet feels glad for a moment as it brings back a happy memory.
The photograph was taken of his ex-wife at the first dance they had gone together and she looked very
beautiful in a lovely green lace dress with little daisies on it.
The wife is described as ‘shy, delicate, slender’ – this captures the woman’s youthfulness and that maybe
she was still unsure of herself. She was probably still at that age when you cannot really make big life
decisions.
‘stunned/ Us all’ – everyone at the party admired her beauty.
The poet must also have been very young. He reflects that when they were young, they had simpler
needs and less complicated expectations of each other, and of life itself, perhaps.
Their “ideals came easy” – young people are usually more idealistic and hopeful about what they believe
and about their goals in life. They just felt for one another. There was nothing much they thought about
at that time.
The tone changes in the two last lines of this stanza from the glad and pleasant commentaries to a sad
one. ‘Well’ captures this change.
Stanza 3 (Lines 13-18)
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The speaker remembers how this photograph had helped him cope with his fear during the two years he
had spent at war.
By describing the two years at war as ‘long’, the poet tells us that this was a difficult and unhappy time.
The speaker saw the horrors of war in which not only soldiers but also Japanese civilians (ordinary
people) suffered. He refers to Japanese people lying dead in their ‘shacks’ amid the ordinary belongings
of their everyday lives: “dishes, dolls and lost shoes”
All these things suggest emptiness and death. Dishes where food is gone, shoes with no feet inside and
dolls without children playing with them. These images create a futile projection of the war.
He carried the photograph with him in the war as the “glimpse” of her gave him comfort. The photograph
helped him to push back (“choke down”) his fear and reminded him of a happy time in his life; it gave
him hope that he can go back to that happiness again.
The photo reminded him that he must survive at all cost as he had something to return to – the love of
his life.
Metaphor – the phrase “choke down” – When you choke , something is stopping your breathing, and so
chocking something down suggests that this is not an easy thing to do. Pushing the thoughts of the
atrocities and evil of war from his mind was very difficult.
The speaker ends this stanza by saying with a bitter tone that the photograph comforted “…before we
got married”
Stanza 4 (Lines 19-24)
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In this stanza, the speaker recalls the breakdown of the marriage and the unhappiness this brought.
The first line continues the thought of the last line of stanza 3. Once they were married they “drained out
one another’s force”
Metaphor – “drained out one another’s force” – in this metaphor, the speaker compares the way they
took away each other’s enthusiasm for life (‘force’) to the way water drains out of a pipe. When a pipe,
or bath,is drained, it is left empty, and they were emptied of happiness.
The speaker says “we’ which suggests that they were both to blame for their unhappiness.
The speaker says the causes of this were the lies they told each other, and their ‘self-denial’. Self-denial
suggests sacrifice. Perhaps they both felt they had given up dreams or things they wanted to do for the
other person’s sake and then resented it and felt bitter about it.
Both felt ‘regret’ – felt sorry – but did not say so; their feelings remained ‘unspoken’.
They blamed each other for their unhappiness with ‘sick eyes’.
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Metaphor – ‘sick eyes’ is a metaphor suggesting that their feelings were reflected in their eyes – they felt
anger and dislike and their eyes showed how each blamed and accused the other, neither taking
responsibility for what they were doing to their marriage
Eventually, they got divorced.
The speaker refers to their ‘treachery’; perhaps this was their betrayal of the ideals they used to have, or
perhaps they were unfaithful or deliberately hurt each other in other ways.
However, he does not throw the picture away, but puts it back to look at again some other time. It could
be that in spite of the painful memories of marriage, the photograph still reminds him of a time when he
and his ex-wife were happy. It could also be that he still has feelings for his ex-wife.
The poem ends with a gentler tone as he decides to keep the photograph.
TONE/MOOD
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Overall, the poem has a conversational tone, as though the poet were talking directly to his ex-wife.
However, the tone changes through the poem.
The tone is one of horror when he first discovers his ex-wife’s picture, and changes to a happy tone as
he remembers the war and the breakdown of their marriage.
The final lines, though, have a hopeful tone.
The mood of a poem is how it makes the reader feel. How does this poem make you feel? For example,
happy, sad, angry, or indifferent.
THEME
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The theme of this poem is memory, and the power that mementos such as photographs have to bring
back feelings and memories from the past. No matter how bitter some memories are, they still tend to
stick to our hearts. In this poem, the speaker even though hates to remember the bitter days of his
relationship, he still keeps the picture of his ex-wife.
Horrors of war
Discord in marriage/ divorce