His Speed and Strength (Poem Summary)

Poem Summary

Lines 1 – 2

In these lines, the speaker introduces a boy's physical speed and strength, repeating the word "strength" twice for emphasis. The poet reinforces the sense of speed by using alliteration, beginning nearby words with the same "s" sound. The traits of speed and strength signal other masculine traits about which the speaker is both proud and concerned. With the first line, Ostriker invokes the expression "the strength of ten men," but she uses enjambment, wrapping the sentence onto the next line, to create two meanings at once. First, the poet causes readers to complete the phrase "the strength of ten" in their heads with "men." She thereby introduces themes of manhood and great strength without stating them directly. Next, by beginning the second line with "years," the poet deflates the heroic phrase and reveals that "he" is only a boy of ten. Though the word "years" holds comic surprise here, the poet causes readers to keep both ideas in their heads: the boy is only ten, but he will grow into a strong man one day just around the corner. Poets often use enjambment to create two meanings from one sentence or phrase.

Lines 3 – 4

These lines set a tone of playfulness and companionship between the speaker and the boy. That the mother is first ahead of and then outdistanced by the boy shows that she fosters his sense of competition and that he will soon grow faster and stronger than she. For the moment, however, they are equal. In line 3, the speaker characterizes herself as the Greek goddess Niké, who represented winged victory, or speed, and whose image commemorated military victories in particular. This allusion, together with the themes of manhood, begins the poem's subtle meditation on masculinity and war. The speaker's mention of the "Times crossword" suggests both that this is a leisurely day and that the mother enjoys intellectual as well as physical challenges.

Lines 5 – 7

The rest of the first stanza shows the boy's competitive energy as he races out of sight. Comparing the boy to "the Green Hornet," a popular radio adventure series of the 1930s and 1940s, the speaker again highlights and gently deflates the boy's super-manly aspirations. Like Superman, the Green Hornet was a newspaperman by day and a masked crime-fighter by night. Playing on the name "Hornet," the speaker watches the boy "buzz" and "flash" away like an insect. This also identifies the speaker as a member of an earlier generation who heard, or has heard of, that radio show. The names "Witherspoon" and "Nassau Street" locate the poem in Princeton, New Jersey, where those main streets meet.

Lines 8 – 9

In stanza 2, the setting shifts to the town pool. The speaker's mention of "noon sharp" may have several implications. Noon is poised between morning and afternoon, as the boy is poised between childhood and adulthood. The sun at that hour approaches its peak strength, as the boy approaches his. This moment is recorded exactly in time with the precision of a mother, recalling events in her own and her child's shared lives. The boy's precise flip again reminds the reader of his maturing physical agility.

Line 10

This line identifies the speaker as a mother and the boy as her son. The slightly sarcastic cheer, "Oh, brave," indicates a mother's blend of pride and teasing toward her children. The boy's need for his mother to see, approve, and acclaim his feat is characteristic of child. Note that his "demand," "Did you see me," has no question mark, though, because it is not really a question. This mother does not seem to respond, and the boy does not seem to need her to. The words and punctuation in line 10, then, reinforce the theme of a boy poised on the verge of manhood: the boy is still a child who needs and wants his mother's approval, but he is almost beyond this stage.

Line 11

Here, the speaker imagines herself as the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the wife of Jupiter, queen of the gods, and the goddess of married women and childbirth. (In Greek legend, Juno is named Hera and her husband is known as Zeus.) In myth, Juno is fiercely jealous of her unfaithful husband Jupiter and uses her powers primarily to punish the women with whom he cavorts. Thus, most references to Juno imply a jealous, wrathful, implacable woman. By referring to Juno luxuriously doing the backstroke, the speaker reinterprets and revises the traditional myth of this goddess. The mother in this poem shows none of those negative traits, so a relaxed, accepting, loving Juno emerges in these lines.

Line 12

The poet may separate the name "Juno Oceanus" on two lines because of rhythm and/or meaning. Line 11 has eleven syllables already; adding the four syllables of "Oceanus" would disturb this stanza's rhythm of mostly ten and eleven syllable lines. The poet also may have enjambed "Oceanus," writing the name on the next line, to create a dual meaning. Oceanus was a mythical male figure who fathered thousands of sea nymphs and river gods. He was a powerful but kindly old titan who ruled the oceans before Jupiter and his brothers took over the heavens and earth. By conceiving of "Juno Oceanus," the speaker envisions a new, dualistic, mythic figure who is both female and male, mother and father, and a ruler of the heavens and the seas. By splitting the name over two lines, the poet underscores this dual nature. This new mythic figure who encompasses male and female provides a model for the son to emulate as he combines masculine and feminine qualities in himself.

Lines 13 – 14

The rest of line 12 through the end of the stanza presents images of earthly oppositions synthesized into a harmonious whole. The speaker watches boys of two races, whom she compares to two types of fruit, play roughly and softly. Each difference the speaker identifies is balanced by similarities: the boys are all boys, "teammates," and all like fruit. The speaker may compare the boys to "plums and peaches" in part because these are summer fruits (and it is summer in the poem). Also, fruits are often associated with the freshness of youth, femininity and sexuality, since the story of Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. By describing the boys this way, the speaker suggests that she sees how their youthful play contains opposite elements — femininity and sexuality — of which they are not yet aware. The last words of the second stanza, "as if," emphasize that the image of the boys as "teammates" is more the speaker's hopeful vision than a reality.

Line 15

The speaker ends stanza 2 with "as if" also in order to make the first line of stanza three a bold declaration of her vision of human relations. The third stanza's assurance balances the second stanza's tentative ending. Denying the need for strife between races of people, the speaker indirectly reminds the reader that this mother's contemplations take place during or shortly after the Vietnam War. The words "make hate" echo the Vietnam-era slogan: "make love, not war."

Line 16

In this line, the speaker refers to Walt Whitman, an American poet who wrote exuberant poetry in the 1800s about the connectedness of all life. Repeating "as if" to add on to her first wish, the speaker links the idea of racial and human harmony to Whitman's idea that "there is no death." Whitman's poems assert that every individual joins the earth in death and lives on in "leaves of grass," trees, and other life forms. Humans also live on, according to Whitman, by nurturing their own children and imagining future generations. When writers allude to previous writers, they often intend to invoke that writer's outlook on life rather than any specific poem or story. By alluding to a famous, visionary poet who believed that all life forms, differences, and contradictions were connected in a vibrant whole, Ostriker reminds the reader that there is a tradition of thought in this vein. Not only mothers, hoping their sons will not be killed in war, envision the world as so interconnected. Looking back from this line to line 14, the reader can see that the phrase "touching each other" means more than the boys' literal, physical contact as they wrestle. In light of the reference to Whitman, the boys "touch each other" spiritually as well, insofar as each life is linked to the universe.

Lines 17 – 18

This line creates an expansive feeling. It is the longest line in the poem. Whitman's poems had enormously long lines that strove to encompass everything, and Ostriker may be echoing his style here. These lines also provide a breath of fresh air by simply describing the wind in the trees; all the other lines describe the boy or the mother's thoughts. When the speaker uses a simile to compare maple boughs to "ships," she implies that the wind is like an ocean on which the boughs "ride." Without stating this likeness between the wind and the ocean, the speaker shows how different elements (water and air) are, like people of different races or genders, indivisibly connected. The word "ships" might invoke associations with the military.

Line 19

Here, the boy again asks his mother a question without a question mark or quotation marks. The punctuation in these lines reinforces the ideas that the boy is growing up and that he is nevertheless similar and connected to his mother. "He says" rather than "he asks" in line 19 shows the boy again asserting his decision rather than asking permission. The phrase "I'll catch you later" on the same line at first appears to be spoken by the boy, but the period after he speaks and the comma after "later" and "see you" indicate that the mother speaks this phrase. By omitting quotation marks, the poet forces the reader to look closely to distinguish who is speaking. The use of slang — "take off," "catch you" — by both the son and mother also makes it hard to tell them apart. The poet writes these lines without quotation marks and in the same slang diction purposely, to suggest that the son and mother are, like many other diverse elements in this poem, intimately connected.

Lines 20 – 21

The final two lines connect several of the poem's metaphors. The expression, he "peels away" reminds the reader of the fruit metaphor from stanza two. Because the other boys by the pool are associated with fruit in the mother's mind, the words "peel away" suggest that the son goes off to join the other boys in their play. The son's wish to play with boys rather than his mother is a final sign that he is leaving childhood and growing up. The last words of the poem, "rocket and pilot" again invoke images of war, since rockets were created for war. The mention of a rocket also makes literal the son's metaphor for leaving: "taking off." Though the mother waves happily as he speeds away, her vision of him as both "rocket," the instrument of war, and "pilot," an agent of war, is an ominous ending to the poem.