"If I Should Have a Daughter" Poem Response

      "If I Should Have a Daughter,” is an inspiring and connectable poem by Sarah Kay.  It is a poem that makes you think and learn something by connecting and by using real things in life.  Sarah Kay uses
figurative language and intriguing words to get her readers to understand.  Within her poem there are similes and metaphors with a hint of rhyme.  It doesn’t follow any rules and she made it what she wanted to by letting her voice shine through.  She compares situations to real life and the different things that go on.  An example of where she mixes real life situations with similes and metaphors would be
where she says:
     
      There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so
      the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make
      sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself.
      Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will
      always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe
      me, I’ve tried.

She talks about little kid things such as wonder woman and wearing a cape.  She also ties all of the lines together, connecting different ideas and making them one.  And in that last line, she uses her own life experiences using her voice.  This poem has a strong theme that connects to me and can connect to anyone willing to look for it.
      
      There are many different themes that you can connect to in this poem because poems have no limitations and you can make it what you want, depending on who you are.  The theme that I noticed was to never stop
dreaming and continue to look at the world through open eyes and that life is made for living and learning.  This theme was hidden beneath her analogy of if she were to have a daughter.  The whole poem is
about teaching her daughter about life and its experiences.  The last part of this poem is what made me think of this the most:
     
      “Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa
      is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who
      never stops asking for more.”
     
      Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and
      always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever
      apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
     
      Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally
      hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand
      you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them
      that they really ought to meet your mother.

When it says that her daughter would be the girl with small hands but big eyes it made me think that she would be looking at the world with open eyes always going big and asking for more than what she has.  It
also says to apologize for doing something wrong but never to apologize for looking out onto the world curiously and making mistakes because you live to learn.  She said that her voice may be small but she can still make a difference and dream.  The last line that Sarah Kay put in about herself (the mother) was about how nothing can take her down because she lived and learned and now she’s stronger and she
passed that down to her daughter.
      
      This poem connects to me and basically to anyone who lets it.  I am nowhere thinking about if I were to have a daughter but rather the theme behind it, analyzed in the paragraph above.  Me?  I’m the type
of person that thinks big and dreams a lot.  Sometimes people say that I live in another world just because I go the distance and dream for whatever I want, no matter how unlikely it is that it will happen. This is what Sarah Kay is trying to say throughout the poem to her daughter if she was going to have one.  I look at the world with open eyes and I try to achieve any goal that I have no matter what problems get in my way and Sarah Kay wanted to prepare her daughter for all the bad but also good things that in life.  But the second part of this lesson is living and learning, which sometimes doesn’t work too well with me.  I make mistakes in life just like anyone else but sometimes I take them too seriously and make a big deal out of it but Sarah Kay
wants you to learn from your mistakes and keep going because that is what life is all about.  Making mistakes but then getting back up and learning from them because that is what living is all about.
      
      The very first time I was introduced to “If I Should Have a Daughter,” it was by Sarah Kay sayinit in a video.  When I heard it, I instantly knew that this was the poem for me because it didn’t follow any rules and it told a story of its own, letting the theme and connections just flow through.  When Sarah Kay read it, she inspired me.  She owned the poem and had such charisma that I wanted to listen to it a few times over.  It was compelling to me how one poem can impact me so much.  When I then read it and analyzed it, I learned
that it was more about teaching her daughter but it was also about teaching you.

** The lines used are directly from poem but the line numbers differed in different variations of the poem so I didn’t write the line numbers next to the cited lines.