PAUSE

I really enjoyed reading Pause because of its focus on that moment right before everything seems to explode. There have been so many times where everything seems calm in my house and right outside it, then the school bus comes and lets out a million screaming kids, with one especially loud child coming into my house. It always makes me wonder about my mother because it's usually the first sign that her day by herself is over and as Eamon Grennan says, it makes me wonder about "the shape of the live you've chosen to live". My mom is a stay-at-home mother to four children and works hard throughout the few hours at home before it's absolute chaos.

Symbol- I think that the bus of children is very symbolic for the chaos that the author feels in his life right before he makes a new decision.

Imagery- This poem does not lack in imagery at all and can thoroughly describe the "daughter in her blue jacket and white-fringed sapphire hat" that gets off the bus. The imagery makes it to be more real and really contrasts the poem's meaning with its literal meaning.

Figurative Language- I feel as though the whole poem's metaphor for the pause of a child coming home from school is crucial to the interpretation of how the author feels towards the moment where he had decided to live this way.

Tone- The tone is almost resentful, as the author resents all of the crazy things that happens in those moments and the decisions he made. He really emphasizes the "vast unanswerable intrusions of love and disaster" and compares it to the "winter clothes on the hall floor", proving to be significant to how pausing is crucial to one's soul.

I really liked this poem, but it did make me feel a little sad. I don't wan to always feel like the winter clothes on the hall floor, nor ever feel as though my decisions will lead to being laid around on the hall floor.