{"id":80186,"date":"2014-11-26T17:31:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T22:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80186"},"modified":"2014-11-26T18:01:29","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T23:01:29","slug":"william-merediths-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/26\/william-merediths-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"William Meredith\u2019s \u201cParents\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

James Vaughan, via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Some of the poems in The Cheer<\/em> revolve around a single, central, and somewhat mysterious idea. I\u2019m thinking of poems like \u201cParents\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

MEREDITH<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to tell you the story about \u201cParents\u201d because it occurred one time after I\u2019d gone to a Thanksgiving dinner where a couple I\u2019m very fond of had three surviving parents. The three parents seemed to me valid, charming, interesting people, about my own age, and to their children they seemed, as parents normally do, embarrassing, stupid, tedious, albeit lovable. I saw my friends suffering and I remembered such suffering. The poem says essentially, \u201cIt is in the nature of things that one\u2019s own parents are tacky, and this should give you compassion because your children will find you tacky.\u201d The poem came out of that particular experience.<\/p>\n

\u2014William Meredith, the Art of Poetry No. 34<\/a>, 1985<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.<\/p>\n

The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.<\/p>\n

They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.<\/p>\n

Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.<\/p>\n

They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.<\/p>\n

It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them<\/p>\n

The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.<\/p>\n

Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.<\/p>\n

This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,<\/p>\n

they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,<\/p>\n

how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,<\/p>\n

taking the last link
of that chain with them.<\/p>\n

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

INTERVIEWER Some of the poems in The Cheer revolve around a single, central, and somewhat mysterious idea. I\u2019m thinking of poems like \u201cParents\u201d\u2026 MEREDITH I\u2019d love to tell you the story about \u201cParents\u201d because it occurred one time after I\u2019d gone to a Thanksgiving dinner where a couple I\u2019m very fond of had three surviving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4715],"tags":[8892,5398,1132,12826,8432,7221,1428,7519,14113,14112],"class_list":["post-80186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-poem-stuck-in-my-head","tag-childhood","tag-holidays","tag-interviews","tag-parenthood","tag-parents","tag-poems","tag-thanksgiving","tag-the-art-of-poetry","tag-the-cheer","tag-william-meredith"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWilliam Meredith\u2019s \u201cParents\u201d by Dan Piepenbring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 26, 2014 \u2013 INTERVIEWER Some of the poems in The Cheer revolve around a single, central, and somewhat mysterious idea. 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