“Instructions on Not Giving Up” begins with vivid imagery and personification used to describe the vibrance of the “fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree,” and the grandiosity of her neighbor’s “display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms,” the author saw as she strolled through her neighborhood following what she described as a “particularly hard winter”. Because of this vivid imagery, these details effectively help the reader understand how the author perceived the blossoms in her neighborhood and they also help to establish the poem’s setting.
As you continue to read the poem, the author professes that more than both the “fuchsia funnels” and the “cotton candy-colored blossoms”, it was the “greening of the trees” that really drew her in. This set the stage for the progression of the rest of the poem and it gave the reader a hint to the author’s true message behind the poem. With green being the color of nature, the specific emphasis on the “greening” is symbolic to the persistent renewal and growth of the natural world, even after being wrecked by extreme weather (the hard winter), and plays a key role in the author’s viewpoint.
The author’s inclusion of the phrase “When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come,” can be somewhat confusing for readers who don’t share the same experiences that the author might be alluding to when referring to “the shock of white and taffy”; The “world’s baubles and trinkets” may also be confusing to the reader but is slightly easier to understand using context clues (“baubles and trinkets” = flowers and blossoms).
Nonetheless, the poem’s obvious connection to nature and plants helps to provide the reader with an indication to what these phrases might mean and the effect the author intended them to have. The illustration of “the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath” from the “shock of white and taffy” and “the world’s baubles and trinkets”, further presents the possibility of confusion due to dissimilar experiences between the author and the reader. For people who have lived in areas where the vibrant blossoms fall from their branches onto the ground (pavement, grass, etc), this concept is easy to make sense of – “confetti of aftermath” represents the ground coated by fallen blossoms of various colors -, but the idea may be lost on others who’ve never experienced this phenomenon.
The last 2 phrases of the poem are my personal favorite and, I think, are most effective in establishing the idea of new beginnings and emphasizes the notion of resilience to life’s obstacles. Being somewhat difficult to fully understand, it took me some time to grasp the meaning of the poem’s end.
“Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all”
The reference to the idea of living “despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty,” shifts the poem’s tone from being somewhat light and upbeat to being more serious and relatable, and it helps draw connections between the poem’s overarching message and details from real life. Since earlier parts of the poem were less direct in expressing the concept of resilience, reading the last 2 sentences for the first time was a little confusing because it seemed unrelated, but upon further analysis, the meaning became clear and it provided an effective ending for relaying the author’s message.
This poem turns a common aspect of life (tree leaves falling during winter and growing back in spring) into an inspirational idea for all who feel hopeless or defeated, or who keep meeting challenges they feel they won’t be able to overcome. Readers of the poem can remember the tree in Ada Limón’s, “Instructions on Not Giving Up”, and how even after the worst winters, the tree continues to regrow and bounce back, saying “Fine then, I’ll take it, … I’ll take it all”. Now, thanks to this poem, everytime I see myself beginning to feel like everything is hopeless, I can think about the tree; its readiness to accept the challenges and continue to grow despite its past struggles.
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