whats your interpretation of this poem?

Question

What do you think this poem is trying to say? no monkey bussiness here people i need real answers

Lament for the Littlest Fellow
by Edith Tiempo

The littlest fellow was a marmoset.
He held the bars and blinked his old man's eyes.
You said he knew us and took my arm and set
My fingers around the bars, with coaxing mimicries
Of squeak and twitter. "Now he thinks you are
Another marmoset in a cage." A proud denial
Set you to laughing, shutting back a question far
Into my mind, something enormous and final.

The question was unasked but there is an answer.
Sometimes in your sleeping face upon the pillow,
I would catch our own little truant unaware;
He had fled from our pain and the dark room of our rage,
But I would snatch him back from yesterday and tomorrow.
You wake, and I bruise my hands on the living cage.

no maddie z this poem is definitely not about masterbating... hardy har you are so funny... AND LONELY!!!

Answer 1

Although I congratulate Marilyn A on escaping from an abusive relationship, I can't agree with everything she says about this sonnet. I think she may be, on the basis of personal experience, reading in meanings that the text does not support. For example, I see no evidence in the poem that the marmoset is anything but a marmoset. The first few lines seem to me to be quite literal. They describe a human couple visiting the primate exhibit at a zoo. Marmosets are much smaller than many other animals one would see in such an exhibit, so the first line is purely a statement of literal reality.

At the start of the poem, we don't know the relationship between the speaker and the other human, although later (in line 10) we learn that they sleep together, so they could be spouses or lovers. Whoever the companion is, he or she wraps the speaker's fingers around one of the bars of the marmoset's cage. Now the marmoset and the speaker are both holding onto the cage and the companion suggests jokingly that the speaker, seen through the bars by the marmoset, must look like a fellow imprisoned primate. The speaker dismisses that suggestion and the companion laughs.

For me, this is the point at which the poem stops dealing just in literal reality. The last line and a half of the octave and all of the sestet are about some figurative "littlest fellow" or "little truant," some issue or concern in the couple's relationship that can be compared metaphorically to an animal locked in a cage. Marilyn A may be right that that issue has to do with physical or psychological abuse, although the poem doesn't make that explicit. There is some indication in lines 3-7 of the companion's controlling nature and fondness for teasing with a hint of cruelty. On the other hand, the sestet speaks of "our pain" and "our rage," not "my pain" and "your rage."

Answer 2

"The littlest fellow was a marmoset.
He held the bars and blinked his old man's eyes."

I feel this is a child that sees the world through his father's eyes. His world is one of oppression, hence the bars. The child is referenced as a marmoset: monkey see, monkey do.

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"You said he knew us and took my arm and set
My fingers around the bars, with coaxing mimicries
Of squeak and twitter."

The child is "teaching" the mother how to be. Again - monkey see, monkey do.

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"Now he thinks you are
Another marmoset in a cage,"....

says the father to the mother.

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"A proud denial
Set you to laughing, shutting back a question
far
Into my mind, something enormous and final."

The father, boastfully laughing, sees himself in the child and has no desire for the child to be any different than himself. The desire of the mother for things to be different are quelched by the father's arrogance.

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"The question was unasked but there is an answer."

She dare not attempt to change life as it is, but can only look to the future for a hopeful, yet seemingly hopeless change. The answer is out there, but not in her reach.

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"I would catch our own little truant unaware;
He had fled from our pain and the dark room of our rage,"

Looking back, she sees her husband sleeping, oblivious to his opessive ways, able to rest peacefully. She cannot sleep thinking about the situation, yet he peacefully does.

...or....

While observing her husband sleeping, she would think of her own son...seeing the son sleeping peacefully after fleeing a scene of the father's abuse on his mother...I think her "snatching" her son means she would grab him up in a mother's loving arms, hugging and loving on her little boy letting him know that mommy loves him deeply.

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"But I would snatch him back from yesterday and tomorrow."

(I am not sure of this verse.)

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"You wake, and I bruise my hands on the living cage."

Another day of living hell for the wife.

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This is just my take on the poem. I lived the abusive life with a tyrannical husband, and saw the same traits developing in my boys. My hope came in a divorce and a new life for my boys and me living away from the jerk. My boys are nothing like their father, thank God. Kinda like a generational curse thingy. HOPEfully, I broke that curse for my children.

Answer 3

How primitive we still are. I live my life trying to be the most important person I can be and when I have time I revel in the fact of how far I've come to be. But when I look across the room and I watch the one I love I think "My how ordinarily painful our lives have become." In order to deal with the pain we must become marmosets. Sorry for that last line but I just couldn't resist.

Answer 4

It sounds to me as despite the fact that there is a darkness, a few despair and resulting anger that has end up the norm in this humans existence. Even whilst the intense gentle comes she pushes the life preserver of wish away in anger, and is exact that she shouldn't be going to be pain from all of this. Her vision is blurred by way of utilizing the murky/turbid dust of satisfaction that turns out to weigh her down. But finally irrespective of how far she is going down through the load , there is that "sunken treasure" of wish that reaches out and all will also be salvaged.

Answer 5

It sounds like the poet is talking about masterbating or something.