Feliks Skrzynecki

My Gentle FatherKept pace only with the Joneses Of his own mind’s making –Loved his garden like an only

child,Spent years walking its

perimeter From sunrise to sleep.Alert, brisk and silent,He swept its paths

Ten times around the world.

Personal Pronoun and familial personal descriptive ‘gentle.’

suggests affection.

Joneses/SocietyFree from stigma

Simile/hyperbole

Sibilance

Sibilance

The use of hyperbole at the end of stanza one

links to Immigrant Experience.

Feliks Skrzynecki

Hands darkened From cement, fingers with cracksLike the sods he broke,I often wondered how he existedOn five or six hours’ sleep each

night –Why his arms didn’t fall offFrom the soil he turned And tobacco he rolled.

Vivid memories of a father from the perspective

of an awed child.

Reminder that the immigrant experience is

one of first and second

generation.

Personal Pronoun

Hyperbole

Simile

There is the strong suggestion of a cultural and generational divide.

Task: Find an example of a text with an immigrant experience that mirrors this one. You should find something to show the difference and dissonance between first and second generations.

Feliks Skrzynecki

His Polish friends Always shook hands too violentlyI thought … Feliks Skrzynecki, That formal addressI never got used to.Talking, they reminisced About farms where paddocks floweredWith corn and wheat,Horses they bred, pigsThey were skilled in slaughtering.Five years of forced labour in GermanyDid not dull the softness of his blue eyes.

Ellipsis to create stream of

consciousness

Cultural Exclusivity

Generational

Alienation

Note: the use of enjambment throughout the poem. Suggest the effect of the use of enjambment in lines 9-10.

Link to ‘Gentle.’

Historical Context

Feliks Skrzynecki

I never once heard Him complain of work, the

weatherOr pain, When twiceThey dug cancer out of his foot,His comment was: “but I’m

alive.”Note: The tone of admiration in this stanza. Where else do we see this tone of admiration. You may also notice that whilst there is the suggestion of respect and affection this leaves the persona excluded from the father’s experiences and in a way incidentally and accidentally alienated from the father’s world. Task: List all incidents like this in the text.

Stoicism

Immediacy through speech

Feliks Skrzynecki

Growing older, IRemember words he taught me, Remnants of a languageI inherited unknowingly –The curse that damned A crew-cut, grey-hairedDepartment clerkWho asked me in dancing-bear grunts:“Did your father ever attempt to learn

English?”

Return of Personal pronoun

Memories and legacy – suggestion of loss and lament. Emotive alienation through ‘curse.’

Satirical representation of an unwelcoming society. Bureaucracy is scorned here.

Task: What is the effect of direct speech at the end of this stanza?

Feliks Skrzynecki

On the back steps of his house,Bordered by golden cypress,Lawns – geraniums youngerThan both parentsMy father sits out the eveningWith his dog, smoking,Watching stars and street lights

come on,Happy as I have never been.

Cyclical return to

home

Note: the existence outside

Australian society.

Shunning of policy of

assimilation

Task: What does this last line connote about the conflict between the migrant experience of first and second generation migrants?

Feliks Skrzynecki

At thirteenStumbling over tenses in Caesar’s Gallic

War,I forgot my first Polish word.He repeated it so I never forgot.After that, like a dumb prophet,Watched me pegging my tents Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall.

School education ‘kicks in’ and affects the ability to connect with his parents language.

Feliks corrects the persona at first

and then eventually

concedes defeat.

Hadrian’s Wall: This is a reference to the wall built on the English and Scottish border by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. This is used as a metaphor by skrzynecki to suggest the alienation of the son from the father as he becomes more embroiled in the dominant culture and forgets his parent’s heritage.

Questions

1. There are emotions conveyed regarding the immigrant experience throughout this poem. How are they conveyed by the author to encompass both the experience of Feliks and his son?

2. How does this experience convey a sense of belonging or exclusion/alienation?

3. How does the use of non-native plants such as cyprus and geraniums metaphorically convey a sense of belonging/not belonging?