The Full Text of “Poem at Thirty-Nine”
The Full Text of “Poem at Thirty-Nine”
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Introduction
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Alice Walker wrote "Poem at Thirty-Nine" to capture the profound transition from young adulthood to middle age. The speaker reflects on her childhood and the relationship she had with her father in order to gain a deeper understanding of the woman she is today. The various fragments of the speaker's memory come together to create a portrait of a woman who was empowered and emboldened by her father's positive influence, which allowed her to become a successful writer and rise above her humble origins. The poem was first published in a 1983 issue of Ms. Magazine, and later included in Walker's collection titled "Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful."
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Summary
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The speaker misses her father, who presumably has passed away, and expresses the desire that he'd had more energy when she was born.
Whenever the speaker writes a check, she's reminded of her father because he's the one who taught her practical skills growing up, including how to fill out paperwork. These lessons taught the speaker to view writing as a means to overcome the poverty and adversity that plagued her father all his life. She even opened a savings account when she was still in high school.
The speaker's father taught her that she could be honest with him without fearing harsh punishment, though a lot of the speaker's beliefs ultimately conflicted with his own values.
Reiterating how much she misses her father, the speaker goes on to describe his cooking as both a kind of dance and yoga meditation. He also loved to share the delicious food he made.
The speaker proclaims that now, as an adult, she has picked up these tendencies from her father, and both resembles and cooks like him. She approaches cooking (and life in general) as a free spirit, casually throwing ingredients into a pot and always trying out new seasonings, glad to share food with anyone who passes through her orbit.
Her father would be proud of the woman she is today—a person who spends her time cooking, working on her writing, chopping wood, and looking deeply into the fire.
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Themes
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The Bond Between Parents and Children
“Poem at Thirty-Nine” is a nostalgic poem in which the speaker explores the role her father played in shaping her life. Despite not always agreeing with her father, the speaker arrives at the realization that she would not be who she is today without him. The speaker honors her father’s memory by celebrating all the pieces of him that she has inherited, and in doing so illustrates the profound bond between parents and children.
The speaker starts by describing the lessons her father taught her throughout her life, demonstrating how he shaped her into the woman she would eventually become. First, the speaker touches on the practical skills she gained from her father, saying that he taught her to write “deposit slips and checks." She explains how her father was a prudent and hard-working man who encouraged his daughter to be financially responsible. She goes on to say that she even had a “savings account” by the time she was in high school, laying a solid foundation for the future thanks to her father's influence. Her father’s practical lessons gave her the opportunity to pursue a better life than the one he had, she insists, declaring that “I learned to see / bits of paper / as a way / to escape / the life he knew.”
The speaker then goes on to explain the way her father informed her philosophy of life and, in turn, her approach to writing. She says that her father empowered her to tell the truth, claiming “He taught me / that telling the truth / did not always mean / a beating.” This suggests that her father encouraged his daughter to use her voice without fear, which implicitly fostered a sense of independence in the budding young writer and facilitated her development as a creative person.
She then adds the qualification that many of her "truths," or beliefs and life choices, conflicted with those of her father "in the end." This only further illustrates the strength of their connection, however; that the speaker immediately follows this qualification with another strong declaration of how much she misses her father implies that such conflicts didn’t sever their bond. In fact, the speaker herself becomes a testament to her father’s character and to the enduring love they share even after death.
Now approaching middle-age—and thus getting closer to her father’s age when she was still living under his roof—she says that she “look[s] and cook[s] just like him,” having inherited not only her father’s work ethic, but also his capacity for spontaneity, joy, and generosity. The speaker thus ends the poem on a high note, remarking that her father would be proud of the woman she is today, thanks to his positive influence. Overall, the speaker’s nostalgic reflection on her childhood results in a renewed appreciation for her role model as well as her own accomplishments.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-45
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Poem at Thirty-Nine”
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Lines 1-5
How I miss ...
... born.The poem opens with the speaker declaring how much she misses her father, who has presumably passed away. She then expresses a desire that he was not "so tired" when she was born. This is almost certainly a reference to the real career of Alice Walker's father, who was a sharecropper (a kind of tenant farmer). The speaker acknowledges that her father was already exhausted from his labor-intensive and emotionally-draining job by the time she entered the world.
As the poem progresses, all of her father's contributions will be considered in this context. Despite his own fatigue, he was still extensively involved in the speaker's life and upbringing, promoting her personal and spiritual growth.
In addition to setting the stage for the rest of the poem, the first stanza also establishes the poem's overall stream of consciousness style. Enjambment plays a big role in this. All the lines here apart from the first and last are enjambed, allowing the speaker's thoughts to bleed into each other. This makes sense, given that people tend to think and remember things in bits and fragments, rather than in complete and coherent sentences.
The speaker will continue this pronounced use of enjambment throughout the poem as she explores her memories and thoughts in relation to her upbringing. This approach allows the poem to read like a constant flow of someone's inner thoughts and feelings that actually resembles the loose structure of human consciousness.
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Lines 6-11
Writing deposit slips ...
... it is done. -
Lines 12-19
I learned to ...
... account. -
Lines 20-26
He taught me ...
... before the end. -
Lines 27-33
How I miss ...
... of good food. -
Lines 34-40
Now I look ...
... strays my way. -
Lines 41-45
He would have ...
... into the fire.
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Symbols
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Food and Cooking
Cooking and food in the poem symbolize warmth, vitality, and generosity. Cooking and food are commonly associated with these things in literature, which makes sense; think how comforting a home-cooked meal can be.
The way the speaker's father approaches cooking— "like a person / dancing / in a yoga meditation"—reflects his own zest for and appreciation of life. Similarly, the extended metaphor the speaker uses to describe her own culinary endeavors refers just as much to how she approaches her life as to her time in the kitchen. She is creative and spontaneous, "tossing this and that / into the pot," constantly filling her life with new and exciting "seasoning."
Meals are also often eaten with other people, making food a common symbol of community and connection. Here, that idea is echoed in the fact that both father and daughter love to share their "good food" with others—symbolically, to offer some of their own warmth and joy to those around them, to "whoever strays [their] way."
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 28-30: “He cooked like a person / dancing / in a yoga meditation”
- Lines 31-33: “and craved the voluptuous / sharing / of good food.”
- Line 34: “Now I look and cook just like him:”
- Lines 36-37: “tossing this and that / into the pot;”
- Lines 38-40: “seasoning none of my life / the same way twice; happy to feed / whoever strays my way.”
- Line 44: “cooking”
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Fire and Chopping Wood
At the end of the poem, the speaker describes the "woman" she has "become" simply: she is someone who spends her time "cooking, writing, chopping wood," and "staring into the fire."
She does literally do all these things, but they are also symbolic of the way she lives her life more generally. Her cooking represents her zest for life and generosity of spirit; her writing represents the way she "escape[d]" her father's fate; and her chopping wood symbolizes her independence and self-sufficiency. In other words, it represents the fact that she can take care of herself. This is something, of course, that the speaker's father sought to teach her how to do, and the closing image of the speaker "staring into the fire" emphasizes the idea that she absorbed her father's teachings.
Fire itself often symbolizes trials or struggles of a sort (think of the phrase "a baptism/trial by fire," which refers to having to quickly adapt to a difficult situation or do well under pressure). The speaker is saying here that she is strong and capable, the kind of woman who will boldly look directly "into the fire"—into the difficulties of life—and face them head on.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 44-45: “chopping wood, / staring into the fire.”
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Asyndeton
Asyndeton appears in the second-to-last stanza as the speaker describes the way she goes about her life, and again in the final two lines of the poem as she describes the multiple dimensions of her personality. In the first instance, she details the ways she "look[s] and cook[s] just like" her father, describing "tossing" things into a pot willy-nilly, "seasoning none of [her] life / the same way twice," and so forth.
Later, after remarking that her father would admire "the woman I've become," the speaker uses asyndeton to elaborate on the activities that essentially define the kind of person she is. She mentions cooking and writing, which have already been described several times throughout the poem, but she also brings up "chopping wood" and "staring into the fire."
In both instances of asyndeton, the lack of conjunctions builds excitement by speeding up the lists, and suggesting the speaker's confident, self-assured tone. It also subtly suggests that there may be more aspects of her identity (the lack of conjunction means the list doesn't really have an end), but these are the most important. Overall, the reader gets the sense that her father played a pivotal role in shaping the speaker's multi-faceted personality, allowing her to become a complex, nuanced, and well-rounded individual.
Where asyndeton appears in the poem:- Lines 35-40: “my brain light; / tossing this and that / into the pot; / seasoning none of my life / the same way twice; happy to feed / whoever strays my way.”
- Lines 44-45: “cooking, writing, chopping wood, / staring into the fire.”
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Simile
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Extended Metaphor
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Repetition
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Metaphor
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Enjambment
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Assonance
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"Poem at Thirty-Nine" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Deposit slip
- Escape
- Grieved
- Meditation
- Yoga
- Voluptuous
- Seasoning
- Strays
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(Location in poem: Line 6: “Writing deposit slips and checks”)
A form used when placing cash with a bank.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Poem at Thirty-Nine”
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Form
The poem does not follow a traditional form, which is in keeping with its overall stream of consciousness style. Its 45 lines are broken into six stanzas that vary significantly in length. The loose structure of the stanzas visually demonstrates the ebb and flow of the speaker’s memories throughout the poem. As the speaker’s thoughts move between the past and the present, the stanzas also fluctuate in length and shape, mirroring the shifts in her thought process.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse and thus has no steady meter. What is consistent, however, is that all the lines are relatively short—some made up of just a single word or phrase. This reflects the poem's content: since memories often appear as partial thoughts and incomplete ideas, the loose, fragmented language captures the speaker’s experience of navigating her recollections as they organically emerge. The reader gets the sense that they are traveling through the speaker’s mind during her process of self-reflection.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem is written in free verse and thus has no consistent rhyme scheme. This keeps things feeling loose and fresh throughout. A strict rhyme scheme might make the speaker's memories come across as artificial-sounding, rather than organic and free-flowing.
Despite the lack of a formal rhyme scheme, there are a few moments of internal rhyme (or near rhyme) interspersed throughout the poem. For example, in the penultimate stanza, the speaker describes the similarities between herself and her late father by saying, "Now I look and cook just like him." The internal rhyme of "look" and "cook" emphasizes the connection between their personalities and stresses the influence that the speaker's father had on her life.
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Speaker
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As the title indicates, the speaker is a 39-year-old woman who is reminiscing about her relationship with her father while she faces the transition from young adulthood to middle age. The speaker presents herself as someone who both appreciates her origins and embraces the woman she has become.
In this particular poem, the speaker and the poet are considerably similar. Like the speaker, Walker also pursued a professional writing career and ultimately achieved success. Walker also had a close relationship with her father, and she spoke publicly about his importance in her life and the impact that his death had on her.
The speaker's poverty and humble origins parallel Walker’s own biography as well. In fact, Walker’s father made a living as a sharecropper, an occupation that the speaker seems to allude to when she says of her father “I wish he had not been / so tired / when I was / born.” Given such consistencies between the speaker’s narrative and Walker’s personal life, it is fair to say that Walker is using this poem as a way to explore her own relationship with her father and how it influenced her career and personality as an adult.
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“Poem at Thirty-Nine” Setting
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The setting of this poem takes place within the speaker's mind as she explores different memories of her childhood and the relationship she had with her father. The speaker continually drifts between memories of her past and her experiences in the present throughout the poem. Notably, the end of the poem is marked by a return to the present day, with the speaker on the cusp of turning 40 years old. The ongoing shift between past and present echoes the self-reflective nature of the poem as a whole.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Poem at Thirty-Nine”
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Literary Context
Alice Walker wrote this poem in 1983 when she was 39 years old. "Poem at Thirty-Nine" was first published in an issue of Ms. Magazine (co-founded by famed feminist activist Gloria Steinem). This came directly on the heels of Walker's most famous novel to date, The Color Purple, which was released in 1982 and earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.
"Poem at Thirty-Nine" was thus published when Walker was at the height of her career, and, of course, approaching the milestone of turning 40. Given these circumstances, it makes sense that Walker would use this opportunity to reflect on her life.
Walker would go on to write many more critically-acclaimed novels, short stories, and poems following the publication of "Poem at Thirty-Nine." She continues to be an influential figure in the literary field to this day, giving voice to many of the experiences and struggles that Black people, and particularly Black women, have faced in the U.S. throughout history.
Many other poets have used also their work to reflect on the intense, and often fraught, bond between parents and children. Mervyn Morris's "Little Boy Crying" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" both focus on fathers in particular, while Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son," "Mother, any Distance" by British poet Simon Armitage, and "Mother" by Vuong Pham all turn towards mothers. For an entirely different take on approaching middle age, readers may want to check out "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" by the Romantic poet Lord Byron.
Historical Context
This poem effectively covers two generations: the speaker's generation and her father's generation. Since the speaker here is based on Alice Walker herself, her own life is a reasonable reference point.
Walker's father was a sharecropper, which she alludes to in the first stanza when she describes him as "so tired" when she came into the world. Walker's family thus directly experienced the historical transition from slavery to sharecropping. For generations after slavery was officially abolished, Black people continued to be oppressed and economically exploited in the U.S. through other mechanisms that were technically legal, and sharecropping was one of them.
Under this system, sharecroppers would rent small plots of land from a landowner and return a portion of their crop at the end of each year. Although this system allowed many to feed their families and survive, it also kept them indebted to white landowners and perpetuated a cycle of poverty and economic stagnation. In "Poem at Thirty-Nine," the speaker delves into how this system impacted her family and her upbringing, as her father is committed to making sure his children have a better life (and better career prospects) than the one he had to endure.
By the time Alice Walker was born in 1944, the United States was still a harsh and oppressive climate for Black people, who were continually subjected to economic, political, and social discrimination. Walker's father's determination to provide a stable life for his daughter and support her growth and upward mobility was a response to the oppression they were experiencing on a daily basis.
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More “Poem at Thirty-Nine” Resources
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External Resources
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From Poor Childhood to Pulitzer Prize — This article provides an overview of Alice Walker's success in the literary world as well as a discussion of her personal life.
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Alice Walker in Ms. Magazine — A 2011 birthday tribute from the feminist publication, featuring links to Walker's stories and short speech by Gloria Steinem.
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Biography of Alice Walker — A discussion of Walker's life and literary career, including her relationship with her father and the impact of his death.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading and analysis of the poem, delivered by an English instructor.
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An Interview With Alice Walker — Alice Walker discusses her life, work, and activism.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Alice Walker
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