In the poem “Long Distance II” the speaker remarks how his father has kept the habit of preparing things around the house for his mother, believing that she will eventually return, even though she has been dead for several years.
The speaker goes on to explain that his father is ashamed of his behavior (or is at least aware of the fact that not everyone would understand it) and demands an hour of preparation before he lets anyone visit the house. While the speaker is not judging his father’s way of grieving, he understands that his own firm realism would make it difficult for his father to keep the illusion alive.
In the last stanza however, the speaker admits to an unnamed addressee that he has carried their phone number over into his new phone book and keeps calling even though that person has either left the speaker or is dead themselves, thus confesses to dealing with this loss in a similar way that his father is with his.
The poem “Heredity” is a brief 4-line poem about the speaker’s motivation to become a poet.
The first stanza begins with the assertion, posed in the form of someone asking, that the fact that the speaker became a poet is incredulous, followed by the question of where the speaker got the aptitude for poetry from.
The second stanza consists of the speaker’s inscrutable answer in which he simply refers to two uncles, one of whom was “a stammerer” (l. 4) therefore lacking the physical abilities for language, and the other who was “dumb” (l.4), thus lacking the mental capacities.
In the poem “Book Ends” the speaker describes the long and difficult relationship between himself and another person, which is shaken to the core by the death of the latter’s wife.
The speaker describes how one night they are slowly sharing the meal the deceased prepared on the day of her death, indicating that the death happened not long ago.
Leading with the admittance that their relationship has always been difficult, the speaker states that the other person needs his presence at the moment but that he wishes for the dead woman, who served as a bridge between the two.
While they show no apparent similarities, the speaker recalls how she likened them both to the titular book ends. In the end the speaker takes this comparison as a comfort while they are sitting in silence.
