Ben Collins English Mr. Bruce
             The first point about the poem is the title, Passed On. This has a few different meanings the first of which is to do with the death of the mother of the poet, Carole Satymurti. This ties in with the main theme of the poem. The second meaning of the title is the handing down of the box from the mother to the daughter. The mother has passed on her knowledge to her daughter. The third meaning is that the daughter has got passed the reliance on the box of index cards that her mother left her. She gets over using them for everything, which cumulates in her burning the cards in the last stanza. The final meaning is that she may pass on the diaries, which she is now keeping, to her children.
             The first stanza starts with a line that is quite misleading, "this box contained my mother". This first leads you to think she is talking about a coffin but the next line makes it clear that it is a box of index cards. She refers to her mother being squirrel like when she wrote the cards and to her "providing for a string of hard winters". The mother knows that she is going to die and she is trying to provide for the hard times ahead for her daughter, just like a squirrel would collect nuts for the string of hard winters.
             The second stanza is all about how the mother poured herself into the cards. She put everything into them, "rendered herself down from flesh to paper" The mother has put down everything she knew in an ordered way, making sure that the daughter could just look up anything she wanted. There is an image created that the cards are the mother. The third stanza develops this idea.
             The poet start with the line "The cards looked after me." She then writes, "I'd shuffle them and almost hear her speak." The mother has been passed into the cards and now the daughter is relying on them for guidance. "Then the world was box shaped.&qu
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