{"id":16626,"date":"2011-09-01T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=16626"},"modified":"2011-09-01T08:24:07","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:24:07","slug":"poem-remembering-the-children-of-first-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/01\/poem-remembering-the-children-of-first-marriages\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Remembering the Children of First Marriages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Lucy Tunstall\u2019s poems leaped out at us from the slush pile for their fresh, unfussy takes on the vagaries of contemporary life; she is one of those poets whose voice already seems familiar. \u201cRemembering the Children of First Marriages\u201d invokes the structured repetition and close observation that make Christopher Smart\u2019s \u201cJubilate Agno\u201d\u00a0(\u201cFor I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey\u201d) so extraordinary; here, Tunstall, a British poet, turns her gaze not to a winsome cat, but to children of divorce, as if they, too, could be held up to the light and anatomized. An irony, of course, is that there is nothing singular about children of divorce.<\/em> \u2014Meghan O\u2019Rourke<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>REMEMBERING THE CHILDREN OF FIRST MARRIAGES<\/p>\n<p>Oh remember the children of first marriages<br \/> For they are silent and awkward in their comings and their goings;<br \/> For the seal of the misbegotten is upon them;<br \/> For they walk in apology and dis-ease;<br \/> For their star is sunk;<br \/> For their fathers\u2019 brows are knitted against them;<br \/> For they bristle and snarl.<br \/> All you light-limbed amblers in the sun,<br \/> Remember the grovellers in the dark;<br \/> The scene-shifters, the biders, the loners.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Lucy Tunstall\u00a0is a doctoral student at the University of Exeter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy Tunstall\u2019s poems leaped out at us from the slush pile for their fresh, unfussy takes on the vagaries of contemporary life; she is one of those poets whose voice already seems familiar. \u201cRemembering the Children of First Marriages\u201d invokes the structured repetition and close observation that make Christopher Smart\u2019s \u201cJubilate Agno\u201d\u00a0(\u201cFor I will consider [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498],"tags":[3621,3622,2493,165],"class_list":["post-16626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-christopher-smart","tag-jubilate-agno","tag-lucy-tunstall","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Poem: Remembering the Children of First Marriages by Lucy Tunstall<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 1, 2011 \u2013 Lucy Tunstall\u2019s poems leaped out at us from the slush pile for their fresh, unfussy takes on the vagaries of contemporary life; 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