Student Question

What is your analysis of the poem "Plenty" by Isobel Dixon?

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Isobel Dixon's "Plenty" uses images of baths and bathing to contrast the privations and economies of the poet's childhood with the luxury of the present.

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Isobel Dixon's "Plenty" is a poem in free verse, using lines of varying length organized into eight quatrains. The poem contrasts past and present, with the poet's childhood recalled in the first six quatrains and aspects of her current life described in the final two. The poem revolves around images of bathtubs and bathing, using these as synecdoche for the difference between the privations of the past and the plenty the poet now enjoys.

The first physical image in the poem is that of "old enamel tub, age-stained and pocked." Not only was the bathtub itself dilapidated, but it could never be filled full, both because the family was poor, and because water was a scarce resource which had to be conserved. The poet describes how she and her siblings failed to understand the need for their mother's constant economies and rebelled in various ways, including the theft of "another precious inch" of water in the bath when her back was turned.

The last two stanzas describe the luxury of the poet's current existence, with deep bubble-baths and a shower that is "a hot cascade." In the midst of this plenty, however, she feels a nostalgia for "all those bathroom squabbles" of her childhood, which remind her of her mother, who is, finally, in her memory, detached from the "lean, dry times" in which she continually had to be careful.

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