I Like A Se Girl Poem Analysis

The first nine lines of Bass’s poem talk about an adult woman’s younger self and she seems to have plenty of youthful optimism. The speaker talks about starting her period and how she had been wanting that so badly. “I looked like a woman. I’d begun / to bleed, something I’d wanted with a fervor,” (ll 1-2). A period is a girl’s step into starting her journey into being a woman. She wanted to rush in and take this step and start her journey, but they don’t talk about the consequences that could come along with this journey. However, she had the optimism that she would start this and everything would be great from now on because she is an adult and can do things on her own. The speaker also talks about wanting to get intimate with a boy and girls are not the first people to typically talk about …show more content…
With her making this statement, it seems like she wants to move faster into both her relationships with boys and with adult responsibilities, both of which she doesn’t seem ready for. The speaker says, “like the fervor with which I burned / to kiss Earl Freeman, to smell his man sweat / and finger the hollow at his breastbone / when we lay in the hot sand in Atlantic City, / the white sky arched over us.” (ll 3-7). Sex is for someone who is mature and now that the speaker has taken the first step into women hood they believe that they are ready to have a relationship with Earl. This shows that she has a good amount of youthful optimism because she now thinks that she can kiss Earl and finger the hollow of his breast bone. The speaker is ready to jump into Earl’s arms and do some intimate things even though she has not taken the time to spend some time in her first step of womanhood. The speaker has a great deal of optimism in this section, she is ready to jump full force into womanhood without knowing anything about