Poem Response #4

Linda Pastan, “Pass/Fail” 

"Pass/ Fail" by Linda Pastan 
you will never graduate 
from this dream                             
of blue books. 
no matter how 
you succeed awake, 
asleep there is a test 
waiting to be failed. 
the dream beckons with two dull pencils, 
but you haven't even 
taken the course; 
when you reach for a book-- 
it closes its door 
in your face; when 
you conjugate a verb-- 
it is in the wrong 
language. 

now the pillow becomes 
a blank page. turn it 
to the cool side; 
you will still mother 
in all of the feathers 
and have to be learned 
by heart.

TPCASTT: 

Title: I would say the title of this poem relates to a person who can't come to a conclusion if he/she passed of failed something in a certain situation. 

Paraphrase: This poem is basically in terms of the speaker's inner self and how they feel an anxiety that they will never escape but they can heal it. The speaker is scared that he/she won't ever succeed. The speaker also has an nightmare for test taking and they are scared. 

The view from the speaker vs the author is needed to understand in any poem, but also they way it sounds and looks. In this poem, the author and the speaker are two separate people. The speaker in this poem is the voice inside someone's mind that is making the anxiety and the stress worse. This is a man vs man scenario. The person taking the exam is nervous about what success they will end up having and the speaker is basically saying that they will most likely fail. 

"You will never graduate/from this dream/of books" (Pastan, 1-3). In this line, Linda Pastan uses a tone that shows patronizing. I like that this poem is also more relatable to people my age because I go through the same thing sometimes and I'm pretty sure other high schoolers do too. Another important thing about this poem is that the sounds are effective because of the way the lines are paused. One line will be stopped and then another line would be continued without a pause. The lines go back and forth and this constant was consistent throughout the poem. This could most likely represent how the test taker is not sure whether they will pass or fail.