The Magician Suspends the Children by : Carole Oles?

Question

I need help understanding the poem...help?

With this charm I keep the boy at six
and the girl fast at five
almost safe behind the four
walls of family. We three
are a feathery totem I tattoo
against time: I'll be one

again. Joy here is hard-won
but possible. Protector of six
found toads, son, you feel too
much, my Halloween mouse. Your five
finger exercises predict no three
quarter time gliding for

you.

Symphonic storms are the fore-
cast, nothing unruffled for my wun-
derkind. Have two children: make three
journeys upstream. Son, at six
you run into angles where five
lets you curve, let me hold onto

your fingers in drugstores. Too
intent on them, you're before
or behind me five
paces at least. Let no one
tie the sturdy boat of your six
years to me the grotesque, the three

headed mother. More than three
times you'll deny me. And my cockatoo,
my crested girl, how you cry to be six.
Age gathers on your fore-
head with that striving. Everyone
draws your lines and five

breaks out like a rash, five
crouches, pariah of the three
o'clock male rendezvous. Oh won-
derful girl, my impromptu
rainbow, believe it: you'll be four-
teen before you're six.

This is the one abracadabra I know to
keep us three. keep you five and six.
Grow now. Sing. Fly. Do what you're here for.

Answer 1

It is indeed a symphonic abracadabra!! The whole phantasmagoric poem resists simple grasp though it can be cracked with some effort.

It is about illogicality of aging - The magician-speaker trying to play mother to the boy aged six and the girl aged five but this girl is told bluntly: " you'll be four-
teen before you're six." It uses biblical allusions to comment on the stupidity of ascribing years to one's age. Of course Jesus warning that Peter would deny him three times before the fowl crows is evident in:

"More than three
times you'll deny me. And my cockatoo,
my crested girl, how you cry to be six."

What about the boy-son? He is the magician's Halloween mouse:

"Joy here is hard-won
but possible. Protector of six
found toads, son, you feel too
much, my Halloween mouse. Your five
finger exercises predict no three
quarter time gliding for you."

The boy is Protector of six toads, I presume. . . . yes because he is aged six. Think about your age and annual birthdays. Suppose you are twenty. What about veiwing yourself as protector of twenty toads or twenty anything!!

A rose, by another name still smells sweet!
That was what Juliet told Romeo. What's in a name?
That's more-ore-less similar to what Carole's asking about aging and attendant social conventions.

It's not easy though playing hide-and-seek with such a poem which advises the boy as well as the reader, "Let no one/tie the sturdy boat of your six/years to me the grotesque."

The poem eventually is basically about exactly what it says it is about, "the three/headed mother." The symbolic magician-mother, the boy-son aged six and the girl aged five.

It begins tomake sense if you approach it within the context of other witchcraft paraphernalia like the Reagan bag and the flower basket shawl.


Good luck

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

ok , the woman is talking about her family, she has little locket showing them at the ages the still remembers them as.

then she talks about her son, she remembers when he "saved" six frogs and how he was at halloween

She makes some metaphora i don't understan before describing her daughter. how the daughter want to let her know how she's growing up hand has her first date but even though she'll be 14 she's still six in her mother's mind.


atleast thats what i got out of it....