Advice to My Son Summary and Analysis

Overview Among Peter Meinke’s most anthologized poems, “Advice to My Son” is best known for its humorous, ironic tone and contemporary interpretation of traditional rhyme structure. First published in 1964 in The Antioch Review, the poem was anthologized in the volume Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems (1991), published by the Pittsburgh Press. According to Meinke, he had little idea that the poem would so deeply resonate with readers when he first wrote it as a young father, inspired by a fellow professor’s bountiful garden. “Advice to My Son” centers around a speaker giving life lessons to his son. Though much of the speaker’s advice is contradictory, it covers the deep existential question of how to fully live while being aware of one’s mortality. The speaker exhorts the son to seize the day since life may suddenly end, yet also thoughtfully plan for a long life. The final stanza ends with the speaker advising the son to serve both bread and wine, symbolizing the importance of striking a balance between necessity and beauty. Critics agree that Meinke’s fearless embrace of formal verse in the poem predate the new formalism movement, thus marking Meinke a trailblazer in his own right. Though “Advice to My Son” is made up of only 22 short lines, which are mostly direct and casual in tone, the poem is rich with symbolism, metaphors, rhyme, and other literary devices. Additionally, Meinke uses irony, humor, and colloquialisms to illustrate deep, philosophical concerns, creating strong moments of juxtaposition. The effect of all these elements is to illustrate the poem’s central themes centered on the bewildering, tragicomic range of human experience. Poet Biography Peter Meinke was born to a salesman father and a homemaker mother in 1932 in Brooklyn, New York. After receiving a BA at Hamilton College, Meinke served for in the US Army from 1955-57, during which time he was stationed in Würzburg, Germany. He went on to earn an MA at the University of Michigan and a PhD at the University of Minnesota. Chronologically a contemporary of American poet Sylvia Plath, Meinke’s career as a poet and short story writer spans six decades. He has published many volumes of poetry, including Lucky Bones (2014), The Contracted World: New & More Selected Poems (2006), Zinc Fingers (2000), Liquid Paper: New & Selected Poems (1991), and The Night Train & the Golden Bird (1977). Also a celebrated short story writer, Meinke has published short fiction collections including Unheard Music (2007) and The Piano Tuner (1986), which won a Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction. In 2015, Meinke was appointed to a four-year term as the poet laureate of Florida, after serving as the first poet laureate of St. Petersburg, Florida, where he has lived since 1966 with his wife, artist Jeannie Clarke. After directing the writing workshop at Eckerd College for many years, Meinke works as a professor emeritus there. Known for his wit and tragicomic sensibility, Meinke writes about everyday concerns, objects, and realities. He eschews the idea that poetry should be lofty and hyper-literary. Using verse, language that ranges from philosophical to colloquial, and a juxtaposition of warmth and dark humor, Meinke explores important contemporary subjects such as war, the global arms race, and environmental degradation. In an interview with The Clockwatch Review, he stated: I don't separate my poems into "light" and "serious"—they're cut from the same cloth, using as my model not just Donne, but the tragedies of Shakespeare, with all their imbedded jokes. I have a basically dark view of the way the world's going […] but I look on poetry as a kind of beacon in the darkness, and I would like my poems, at least, to shed a little warmth as well as light. Summary “Advice to My Son” features a speaker giving seemingly conflicting life advice to his son. The guidance encourages a balance between a carpe diem or "seize the day" mentality and a practical, planned way of living. The poem opens with the maxim that the son of the speaker should "live your days as if each one may be your last" (Line 2) for time very quickly passes and even young men can meet an unexpected death. Though the son should live as though he may die tomorrow, he should also plan for the future in case his days run slow and he lives a long life. In case the son escapes the "shattered windshield and the bursting shell" (Line 7)—referring to a violent, unexpected death—he'll reach the long stretch of adulthood known as "our approximation here below of heaven or hell" (Lines 9-10). If the son does make it to a long life, he should plant a mixed garden, growing vegetables like squash, spinach, turnips, and tomatoes between the aesthetically pleasing peony and rose. According to the speaker, planting beautiful flowers is important because beauty is “nectar” (Line 13). Yet, while beauty and hope can save a man who is starving in the desert, a man requires something more substantial for sustenance to actually survive the experience. This sustenance can also be in the form of a good life partner. The speaker encourages the son to marry a pretty girl, but only after having seen her mother. They tell the son to show his soul or share his secrets only with a man with whom he doesn't work. Above all, the son must be hospitable and serve nourishing bread with sensuous wine. The speaker repeats their advice to the son in the last line, but with a critical difference: Now, they advise the listener: "But son, always serve wine” (Line 22). Poem Analysis Analysis: “Advice to My Son” The title of “Advice to My Son” is formal and imperative. The use of the word “to” instead of “for,” implies the speaker is directing his son rather than guiding him, in the manner of an old fashioned parent. The phrase “advice to” also creates a sense of hierarchical distance between the speaker and the son, creating a giver and a receiver rather than the more intimate, equitable implications of “advice for.” Thus, the title sets up the expectation that the advice the speaker is providing will be imperious, formal, and definite. However, the opening lines quickly undercut this expectation, contradicting the tone of the title. The phrase “the trick is […]” (1) is casual and conversational, with the persona of the speaker moving into that of a huckster offering life-hacks rather than a serious-minded parent. Further, the short "i" sound is repeated in the first line in “trick” and “live,” enhancing the sense of quick wit and hustle the line carries. The advice that follows is impossible: The speaker suggests the son live life to the fullest since he may die any day, yet also slow down and plan for the future. Thus, the illogical advice seems to question the very notion of offering advice on life. The sudden phrase "shattered windshield and the bursting shell" (Line 7) introduces a jarring note of violence in the poem. The words “shattered” and “bursting” are dynamic and disruptive, puncturing the thus casual tone of the poem. They recall the fate of other young men who have died over the generations, as they may have done in car accidents or combat. The image also carries an air of cynicism, as if the speaker has seen too much of life to know that nothing goes as planned. The reference to the “bursting shell” may also be linked to Meinke’s anti-war politics. Having been stationed in Germany during his service in the 1950s, Meinke saw first-hand the damage World War II had wreaked in Europe, strengthening his stance against war. From the somber atmosphere created in the closing lines of the first stanza, the speaker moves again to a casual mode with the phrase, “To be specific […]” (Line 11). Again, the short “i” sounds of “specific” convey a switch to a lighter tone. Ironically, though the speaker promises specific advice to the son, in the next few lines, he moves into a field of symbolism, creating yet another layer of surprise. The advice to plant a mixed garden may be literally taken, but also carries metaphorical weight. Interestingly, the contrast between the specifics promised and the abstract delivered is echoed through the prosody, with longer syllabic sounds following the staccato of “to be specific” (Line 11). Longer “e” sounds, such as in 7 “between” and “peonies” follow, as well as the long “o” of “rose” and “tomatoes.” The "peony and the rose" (Line 11) refer to life’s aesthetically pleasing items. While the flowers of beauty nourish the senses and the soul, the son must also grow plants that sustain his body. Here, the text plays with the multiple meanings of sustenance. Beauty can be sustenance or nectar, saving the starving man in a wasteland of despair, as much as the “stronger sustenance” (Line 15) craved by the stomach. Love and marriage can bring emotional sustenance, while a wife, the speaker implies, can actually sustain the son by cooking for him. By evoking the many aspects of what sustains a person’s entire being, the speaker guides the son to balance all kinds of cravings: physical, emotional, and spiritual. The poem’s quasi-spiritual and religious undertones in conjunction with its central tenet of balancing the physical and the metaphysical become more pronounced in its last two lines. The advice to serve bread and wine has been interpreted by some critics as a reference to the Christian tradition of the Eucharist, with the bread being symbolic of Christ’s body and the wine his blood. The scriptural reference here adds another layer of meaning to the phrase “bread and wine.” Now the speaker seems to be telling his son to nourish body and soul, instead of stomach and senses. Yet, lest the reader delve too much into metaphysics, the last line changes the tone again, urging the son to “always serve wine” (Line 22). Here, the meaning of wine lapses into the literal, with the cheeky suggestion that life is best tolerated with a generous dose of spirits, or that the son won’t make many friends if he refrains from serving alcohol at his table. Contextual Analysis Authorial Context Though Peter Meinke counts modernists like Ezra Pound and Hilda Dolittle as his literary influences, he departs from the supposed tenet of modernism, which eschews formal structure. From the very onset of his poetic career, Meinke experimented with traditional poetry forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, and the pantoum. While the idea that modernist poets were merely against form is highly questionable, Meinke chose to steer clear of affectation for affectation’s sake. Meinke’s poetry can also be read as a response to the schools of literary affectation and anti-formalism in the American poetry of the mid-20th century. Referring to himself as a “neighborhood poet,” Meinke finds both wisdom and darkness in domestic spaces and everyday life. His poems often encompass life’s contradictory aspects in a singular narrative—“Advice to My Son” epitomizing this approach. Literary Context Profoundly influenced by 17th-century English poetry and the work of John Donne in particular, Peter Meinke often uses literary devices like juxtaposition and irony to capture the contradictions of human experience. Just like Donne used unusual conceits and humor to navigate difficult questions of time and mortality, Meinke too uses wit to explore dark themes. One way Donne tackled the idea of fully living within the ambit of mortality was through bringing the unlikely theme of death into his love poems. For instance, in “The Canonization” (1633), one his most famous love lyrics, Donne defends the primacy of love above all worldly matters. Yet he also acknowledges that he and his beloved are “tapers” or candles, who “at our own cost die.” Though the lover and his beloved are forever united in immortal spirit and in poetry, their mortal existence is time-bound. In “Advice to my Son,” Meinke too offers contradictory suggestions to his son because the central question of life is unanswerable. The truth is one must live life to the fullest, while being aware that catastrophe can strike at any time. There is no evading this contradiction. While Donne reconciles the contradiction through religion—the lovers in “The Canonization” rise in their death like phoenixes—as a contemporary poet, Meinke does not have an equally definitive answer. Though like Donne, Meinke often combines religious themes with secular imagery and vice versa (the biblical images of bread and wine, and the desert and nectar or manna in “Advice to my Son”) unlike Donne, Meinke interprets the questions in more contemporary and secular fashion than Donne. In “Advice to my Son,” beauty or art—rather than religion—is the nectar nourishing the soul. For Donne, writing in the 17th century, art, everyday life, and spiritual ecstasy coalesced into a whole. Meinke believes poetry has a place in everyday living, and disdains overtly literary language and references. This is reflected in the use of aphorisms and colloquial language in “Advice to my Son,” as well as its concrete imagery of roses, bullets, gardens, and bread. Like Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, Meinke uses easy language to illuminate complex, philosophical ideas. However, though Meinke’s language is straightforward, it is packed with metaphors, as if to underscore the point that everyday objects can also be imbued with great symbolic value. As seen in “Advice to my Son,” Meinke is unafraid of using rhyme and traditional forms, unlike the poets of the 20th century who shunned traditional forms as too restrictive and old fashioned. American poetry of the 1960s and 1970s saw a trend to reject form, since it was seen as antithetical to expressing organic truth. However, Meinke does not believe in the dogma. Not only is “Advice to my Son” packed with half-rhymes and end rhymes, its overall structure is a riff on the sonnet with the last couplet serving as twist to the preceding stanzas. In this Meinke can be deemed a precursor of the school of new formalism, popularized in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Protesting the debasement of the lyric, new or neo formalism promotes the celebration of meter and verse. In “Atomic Pantoum” (1983), Meinke uses the traditional French pantoum form, in which the second and fourth lines of each quatrain (or four-line stanza) become the first and third lines of the next stanza. The freshness of Meinke’s approach is that he uses this traditional form to register horror at nuclear warfare—a wholly contemporary predicament. Themes The March of Time One of the more overlooked themes of “Advice to My Son” is the complex way in which humans negotiate time, and by extension, mortality. On a close reading, the poem is suffused by this conundrum. The very first line considers how to live “one’s days.” The word “days” immediately conjures up a sense of one’s time being borrowed and limited, measured in days. Yet even though all lives are finite and temporal, time runs fast or slow depending on the particular circumstances. While the bulk of life, with its mundane, practical activities like work, domestic matters, child-raising, and gardening—all of which the poem either directly or indirectly mentions—passes slowly, some phases seem to whiz past. Sometimes, death overtakes life, as in the case of youth abruptly interrupted by the violence of accidents and wars. Even for the majority of folks who make it to the middle of life, the scepter of time’s unpredictability looms large. That is why the speaker advises the son to prepare for both summer and winter, symbolizing the sunny and umbral phases of life. Though the blush of love briefly frees one of time’s chains, the speaker advises the son to “marry a pretty girl / after meeting her mother” (Lines 17-18) so as to better predict the girl’s—and the son’s own— future. The speaker suggests that life’s unpredictability cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet. All a person can do is accept the puzzle of mortal existence and adapt or even celebrate it. The poem builds up to this note of celebration through the mentions of bountiful harvest, nectar, bread, and wine, invoking a full, hospitable table. The Importance of Balance “Advice to My Son” ponders various, contradicting elements of experience: the practical and the whimsical, the realist and the fanciful, the tragic and the comic, the temporal and the timeless, and the secular and the religious. Considering so many oppositional pairs, the overarching theme of the poem is seeking balance rather than resolution. Perhaps the best advice the speaker can offer the son is to balance different aspects of one’s own being. Thus, the son must temper his youthful recklessness and carpe diem spirit with a mellow thoughtfulness. The son’s garden—which refers to a number of things from his lifestyle to his character—must contain both the flowers that feed the soul and the fruit that sustains the stomach. The juxtaposition of the soul’s yearning for “nectar, in the desert” (Line 14) with the stomach’s crude hunger for stronger sustenance establishes the idea that human beings have both spiritual and bodily needs. The son need not subsume one into another; he must accommodate both. The Futility of Life Advice Meinke’s poem is a masterclass in contradictory and often impossible-to-follow advice, ranging from living fast and slow at the same time, to “show your soul to one man, / work with another” (Lines 19-20). Why does the speaker offer their son such dizzying rules? At one level, the speaker is gently mocking the genre of the “advice poem”—an established genre in English poetry. Advice poems from parents to children are often serious and high-minded in tone, which Meinke satirizes here. The other reason for the levity, of course, is that the speaker acknowledges that no one can really tell anyone else how to live their life. Though humans would like to believe life seems to follow a template, the reality is that it rarely does. A child has to chart their own course, forged by their own experiences and learnings. Though the well-meaning parent wishes to solve life to ease their children’s burden, the truth is that no parent can inhabit their child’s suffering. Further, even practical hacks and tricks to game life are often a mixed bag. In Lines xx, the poem refers to the common advice about being able to tell how a woman will age by looking at her mother. Yet, the knowing irony of the speaker’s tone suggests that telling the future is impossible. The final line delivers a twist in the advice poem: Though the speaker builds up to the central advice of balancing life symbolized by serving both bread and wine, in the end they tell the son to “always serve wine” (Line 22), undercutting everything that has gone before. Symbols & Motifs Shattered Windshield and Bursting Shell The shattered windshield in Line 7 likely refers to a car’s damaged glass visor during a fatal road accident. The bursting shell likely refers to an exploding bullet or a grenade in a war-like scenario. Though these are concrete, literal images referring to real-life apocalyptic scenarios, they also carry great symbolic weight. Both images symbolize a sudden, untimely death, as happens to so many young people. However, at a deeper level, they symbolize nihilistic humanmade violence and tragedy. Significantly, unlike the natural vegetable and fruit images in the second stanza, the windshield and shell are synthetic, manufactured devices. Thus, the poem ties an unnatural, early death with the symbols of manmade violence, industry, and war. Further, the shattered windshield and bursting shell also symbolize the unpredictability of life. Their sudden introduction in the poem comes as a breach symbolic of the nature of happenstance and disaster. The broken windshield cannot be mended and the bursting shell cannot be rebuilt nor reintroduced in the chamber it left. Life is irreversible and therefore must be thoughtfully lived. Flowers and Vegetables In the second stanza, the speaker urges the son to plant both “the peony and the rose” (Line 11) as well as “squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes” (Line 12). The flowers symbolize beauty, while the vegetables are indicative of practical necessity. The vegetables must be planted “between” (Line 11) the peony and the rose, symbolizing the necessity for balance. While the fruit and vegetable imagery resonates with the poem’s theme of living life in a balanced, thoughtful way, there is a deeper meaning to the particular plants. The sweet smelling rose is a universal symbol of beauty and sensuality, but is also associated with love, religion, and mysticism. In the poetry of William Butler Yeats—one of Meinke’s prominent influences—the rose is both a symbol of his lifelong love Maud Gonne, as well as a state of union between art and life, matter and spirit. Thus, use of the rose here evokes the idea that beauty and necessity are not adversaries; rather, they are two sides to a coin. Unlike the rose, the peony is not a fragrant flower. Yet it offers aesthetic value and is often associated with healing, modesty, and courage in Greek and Chinese mythology. Planting both the rose and the peony could symbolize appreciating beauty in all its forms, or indulging various senses. The speaker’s choice of vegetables is also interesting because the squash and the turnip are winter vegetables, while the tomato is a warm-season crop. Squash and turnips are known for being hardy and are often stored in cellars to last the long winter. Thus, when the speaker advises the son to plant winter vegetables, they are suggesting the younger man prepare for a lean season. In other words, the son should plant in himself a temperament that can withstand periods of difficulty since life features both summers and winters. Further, the metaphor of planting a garden refers to the son adopting values of flexibility, hard work, and creativity. Bread, Wine, and Nectar The poem uses several symbols from religious and biblical iconography and imagery. Though on one level, bread and wine can be read as stand-ins for vegetables and flowers or necessity and beauty, in Christian tradition these symbolize the body and blood of Christ (referring to Christ’s sacrifice for humanity). Some critics interpret the reference to bread and wine as the speaker advising the son to follow religion. However, rather than serving as overtly religious symbols, bread and wine are more likely used to highlight the importance of inculcating the values of faith and generosity. Similarly, the idea of a man in a desert seeking nectar symbolizes the spirit’s search for beauty and hope, but also carries overtones of the manna the god of the Old Testament provided as holy food for his chosen people while they wandered the desert. In the context of the poem, the secondary meaning of the desert and nectar could again be linked with having faith, which will see a man through a literal and metaphorical desert. Finally, the very idea of planting a garden is associated with God creating the Garden of Eden. However, unlike Eden, the son’s garden should be neither perfect nor unearthly. It has to be planted with toil and thought, thus creating a life worth living. Literary Devices Rhyme The poem’s elaborate symbolism is discussed in the “Symbols and Motifs” section. Not only are the symbols emotionally resonant, they are also often introduced in the poem in new and surprising ways, such as the jarring, violent image of the shattered windshield and exploding bullet breaking the casual, funny tone of the poem’s opening lines. Further, the poem juxtaposes images of whimsical and the mundane—the man in a desert versus a man going to work—creating a surrealistic effect. The juxtaposition is precisely used to underscore the idea that the real itself is surreal. Ideas of calculating how a young wife may appear in her later years jostle with the religious and metaphysical imagery of serving bread and wine, creating a chiaroscuro (the treatment of both shade and light) effect. One of the most striking aspects of “Advice to My Son” is its play on traditional verse and meter. A poem’s aural quality is especially important for Meinke, who speaks aloud his work during the process of composing it. As a contemporary master of traditional form, Meinke often uses a combination of internal and end rhyme to create a musical yet irregular tone in his poems. In “Advice to My Son,” the use of internal rhymes puncture the lulling effect that a more rigid rhyme structure may produce. Additionally, the end rhymes are not evenly spaced in a uniform scheme such as abab or aabb, creating moments of friction. Note the rhyme scheme of the opening stanza: “The trick is, to live your days as if each one may be your last (for they go fast, and young men lose their lives in strange and unimaginable ways) but at the same time, plan long range (for they go slow; if you survive the shattered windshield and the bursting shell you will arrive at our approximation here below of heaven or hell)” (Lines 1-10). Here, while Line 1 (“days”) rhymes with Line 4 (“ways”), Line 3 (“lives”) rhymes with 6 (“arrive”), and Line 7 (“shell”) with Line 10 (“hell”). The other lines do not use end rhymes. However, the “last” of Line 2 creates an internal rhyme with “fast” in Line 3, and the mid-line “slow” of Line 6 rhymes with the ending “below” of Line 9. Further, though the second stanza contains examples of both end and internal rhymes, it does not replicate the rhyming pattern of the first stanza. Alliteration The poem also contains several examples of alliteration, such as the “shattered windshield and bursting shell” (the repetitive “sh” sound in Line 7) and “heaven or hell” (Line 10). The alliterations pick up pace in the second stanza, as “squash and spinach” follow “turnip and tomatoes” in the same line (Line 12) and the “stomach craves stronger sustenance” in Line 15. Words, too, are repeated, such as “nectar” in Lines 13 and 14, and “wine” in 21 and 22. Additionally, “wine” rhymes with and echoes the “vine” of Line 16. Thus, the sounds snowball, creating the effect of a musical crescendo. Irony and Humor The poem’s diction and tone are also idiosyncratic, juxtaposing heavy symbols and harsh reality with casual speech. Abstract, philosophical statements clash with colloquial expressions, such as when the metaphysical undertones of “Beauty is nectar” (Line 13) is followed, a few lines later, by the salesy wisdom of “marry a pretty girl / after seeing her mother;” (Lines 17-18). As the latter lines show, Meinke expertly uses the aphorism in “Advice to My Son.” Meinke satirizes common sayings and cliches to enhance the poem’s tone of irony. Witty and tough-to-follow advice such as “Show your soul to one man, / work with another;” (Lines 19-20) echo common sayings like don’t defecate where you eat. Through this use of aphorism, Meinke mocks the idea of presenting life advice in a simplistic capsule. Thus, the use of vernacular, colloquial speech, the overarching tone of irony, and various uses of juxtaposition enhance the subtle humor of the poem. Further Reading & Resources Related Poems "To a Daughter with Artistic Talent" by Peter Meinke (1991) Included in Liquid Paper (1991), “To a Daughter with Artistic Talent” was written several years after “Advice to My Son.” The poem has a similar theme, with the speaker offering life guidance to a daughter who loves to paint. However, unlike “Advice to My Son,” the mood in “To a Daughter […]” is more melancholy and nostalgic, mourning the loss of the daughter’s childish creativity years in advance. Unlike in “Advice to My Son,” there is little irony here to ease the poet’s realization that artists have to contend with the world’s practical demands. The poem is useful to study the range and evolution of Meinke’s style. Here, he uses a far more painterly approach than in “Advice to My Son,” and the surrealist imagery is starker and otherworldly, almost as if Meinke has entered his child’s vivid imagination. "If" by Rudyard Kipling (1895) A traditional example of the advice poem in English, “If” by was written by English poet Kipling circa 1895. In “If,” the speaker conveys to their son the stoic, courageous values he must inculcate in order to live a worthy life. Unlike “Advice to My Son,” the tone in “If” is serious and free from irony. It is interesting to compare the two poems to see how Meinke overturns the notion of parental advice, tongue firmly in cheek. "In Every Life" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker (2011) Born in New York in 1937, Ostriker is Meinke’s contemporary. Like Meinke, Ostriker’s subject is every day events, related in unpretentious language. “In Every Life” Ostriker contemplates deep existential questions through considering simple domestic and natural entities like a sugary teacup, tulips, or a dog. Like Meinke in “Advice to My Son,” Ostriker too does not shy away from end rhymes, and undercuts her poem’s philosophical tone with a final, funny line. Both Meinke and Ostriker are examples of contemporary poets writing warm, accessible poems veined with multi-layered symbolism. Further Literary Resources "Peter Meinke - The Soul of a Poet" by Jeff Kunerth (1986) Orlando Sentinel staff writer Kunnerth presents a vivid, affectionate profile of Meinke, unpacking Meinke’s approach to writing and his views on poetry. An Interview with Peter Meinke by James Plath (1990/1991) Published in the December 1990-January 1991 issue of The Clockwatch Review, Plath’s illuminating interview highlights Meinke’s technique in writing both poems and short stories. It locates Meinke in response to contemporary trends of minimalism and anti-formalism, and in the process paints a vivid portrait of Meinke’s artistic sensibility. Greatest Hits (1964-2000) by Peter Meinke (2001) No. 92 of contemporary poets on their most successful works, this slim book includes Meinke’s invaluable commentary on beloved poems “Advice to My Son,” and “Supermarket” (1978), among others. Meinke places his poems in the context of their creation, showing the surprising elements that come together in the making of a perfect poem.