The poem is autobiographical, with an element of sentimentality, perhaps.

Feinstein immediately characterises her father as a man who worked with his hands as a carpenter, a trade or profession which carries the weight of biblical symbolism, associated with honesty and strength of character. The rounded assonance of the letter a creates a sense of solidity and dependability personified by the poets father.

Father - Elaine Feinstein

The wood trade in his hands at sixtyone back at the sawbench, my stubborn father stands and planes birchwood for kitchen chairs.

All my childhood he was a rich man unguarded purchaser of salmon trout, off-season strawberries and spring in Switzerland.

The first and second stanzas juxtapose images of honest and unpretentious physical labour against a free and generous ability to enjoy the more exotic of lifes luxuries. Note: the relative extravagance of the poets alliteration in the second stanza.

The contrast of laughter and tutting. Bully to prudish aunts whose niggard habits taught them to assess honest advantage, without rhetoric: his belly laughter overbore their tutting. In the third and fourth stanzas, Feinstein defines the character of her father by what he is not: neither petty (without grudge) nor wishing to impress (without rhetoric).

Still boss of his own shop he labours in the chippings without grudge loading heavy tables, shabby and powerful as an old bus. Images of physicality and humility.

The structure of the poem is uncomplicated and unembellished to r character of the poets father. The poem, like its subject, is largely