Poetry Project

by Terrence Amani Hartman

Along with Youth

By Ernest Hemingway

A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning,

It must have ended somewhere.
Stuffed horned owl, Pompous, Yellow eyed;
Chuck-wills-widow on a biased twig, Sooted with dust.
Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy's letters
And the line of love, They must have ended somewhere.
Yesterday's Tribune is gone, Along with youth
And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach
The year of the big storm, When the hotel burned down
At Seney, Michigan.

Interpretation
I feel like the poem is about the troubles that come along with growing
up. When you hear him talk about old magazines and letters from
boys you can go back to when you were growing up and how those
things carried a special part of you with them. How he uses the owl
and porcupine skin to describe the pain is also very vivid. You can feel
how when you are young that its poking and itching at you to finally
be an adult. It drains you in a way like how he describes the owls
yellow eyes. The way that he ended the poem was very climactic and
I feel brings in the point that it is a struggle by how he uses the storm
and fire to symbolize the turmoil that he feels.

Interpretion
The voice and tone of the poem is also very melancholy which goes
along with the theme that it's draining for the youth. I also feel like the
way that he organizes the poem with the line it must have ended
somewhere also gives a special meaning to the poems that gives the
idea that the readers will eventually grow up and not always be young.

Thank You