My Sweet Old Etcetera
My Sweet Old Etcetera - meaning Summary
War Compressed Into Etcetera
The poem contrasts patriotic rhetoric and domestic wartime labor with a speaker’s detached, muddy reality. Family members rehearse reasons, duties, and hopes — aunt, sister, mother, father — while the recurring word etcetera both dismisses grand statements and accumulates small, intimate details. The speaker’s repetition ends in a private, affectionate yearning that reframes the public language of sacrifice into personal desire and quiet irony.
Read Complete Analysesmy sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister Isabel created hundreds (and hundreds)of socks not to mention fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
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