Learnings on The Fury of the Overshoes

I stand in plain amazement as I now open myself up into the world of poetry and to the many more worlds that present itself to me through the poems I read. Today, as I take my obligation to write a blog about the poems the class has already tackled, it seemed to me that as I reread all these poems over and over again, they no longer become an obligation but a tribute to the artists who in their greatness of articulation and wonder, opened for me a lens wherein I can see their view of the world.

Let me begin with Anne Sexton's The Fury of the Overshoes. The poem immediately gave me the notion of "colors" for which the first thing that we associate with childhood and that sense of freedom and spontaneity when every child looks at the world with curiosity and fun. The poem gives me thoughts of cute little dresses, small shoes and those heart melting smiles of little children implying that they still have much to learn about the world.

But then childhood isn't all that fun. The shift in the poem reflects a child's helplessness early in life when she realized that she still depends upon older people to teach her and do things for her. It tells us of how big people modify a child's view of the world and how adults influence their way of thinking.

The overshoes on the other hand symbolize security and protection from the cold, which when placed in the context of the poem may signify that the child's parents or the adults around her treat her with coldness and apathy and that she needs warmth and care from them. The fury of the overshoes then reflects the anger of the speaker for those who left him out in the cold, so to speak. On the line where she is looking for the "big people", maybe she is looking for someone who can help her make sense out of this confusing world but then she has observed that big people do not realize how meaningful each step they take in the journey of their lives.