Question

what is the signicant about the poet's use of punctuation in the final stanza in the poem exiled

Answer 1

“Exile,” rich with watery images of beaches and divers, is about learning how to swim; simultaneously, and more important, the poem threads the liquid images throughout the narrative of the persona’s immigration memories to create a natural comparison of the immigrant experience with that of swimmers learning to brave the deep pools of their new environment. Swimming is the perfect metaphor for the hastily departed immigrants who dive into an idealized America to discover, with some surprise, their own vulnerability and a keen sense of loss.

This juxtaposition of dramatically different expectation and reality heightens the poem’s sense of unease. The beachwear-clad family in the department store window marks a sharp line between the privileged, successful upper-class American (who can afford to shop at Macy’s) and the almost mirror inversion of the out-of-place persona and her Papi. (They are never named; they represent universal immigrant experiences of exile.) Readers sense that they are swimming against the current, but the persona has been told by her uncles, “What a good time she’ll have learning to swim!” This prediction, and her own admission that she “had already swum ahead,” seems to foreshadow the rapid assimilation of the persona, like most children, into a new culture; but the portrayal of the artificial pursuits of the window people leads to the conclusion that her old culture offered a more tranquil