Poetry analysis and interpretation techniques

¶ … remark when passing a magazine on the stand called Teenage Glamour with a girl who barely had anything extra blossoming on her bosom area on the cover. And people wonder why children, especially girls, want to grow up so quickly? Is it any wonder? Next week, a new magazine is coming out called Baby Girl Glamour.

"Wit's end," by Daisy Fried is about a father pained by the fact that his "baby" spends countless hours in the bathroom doing inane things like shaving her legs and applying tons of makeup. The poem clearly demonstrates both the success the cosmetic companies are having with their target audiences and how girls use makeup as a means to cut themselves off from their fathers and show who is boss.

The "beauty" (pun intended) of the poem "Wit's end" are the images that can be quickly visualized by anyone having lived with a female who uses a lot of makeup: kislipped tissues and Kleenexes, snarls of hair in the shower shed like saffron threads and red kelp, clown faces painted on a face like the cover of the latest teen and women's magazine.

The use of literary devices and figurative speech runs throughout. Rarely used terms such as "pink meniscus," and "Glitter-white chevrons," and alliterations such as "lipstick leaking," and "clownface copied," and repetitions like "me mooning," and "me sighing" and then a combination of the two in "me incessantly hairbrushing, singing stupid" are a wonderful addition.

Now jump back in time (not too far back) and father is remembering his sweet little girl of 7 or 8 with the only red on her face being a blush or excitement. She throws her arms around his neck and says "I love you daddy!" Then recall the "the used-to-be lovable 12-year-old formerly his." Where did that time go? How did it get replaced by unwashed bras and nose zits? Most importantly, now she is interested in "boys," and that is a major worry for fathers.

Of course, the father knew teenage years would change his little girl. How much, he did not realize. Or why. Yet the poem even mentions the Sassy, Seventeen, Glamour that most likely have their impact along with other teenager magazines, MTV, commercials and advertisements on what is in and what will look attractive to the other sex.

Of course, anything that the father offers -- double his daughter's money on all the cosmetics and other "stuff" -- will not be acceptable. In fact, it just makes her more adamant to do her own thing.