Between Here And Illinois

Between Here and Illinois

The poem Between Here and Illinois is about a young girl, who has moved away from her parents, and made her own life. It is about her busy life and how, even when her father died, her siblings could not reach her. Her life was too eventful, she went to the beach on sunny days, she had to go to work, there was just too much to do. When her sister finally reached her at work, "all the way from Michigan," she tells the narrator that the funeral is over, that they all missed her, and they wondered where she was. The narrator, somewhat regretful says, "If they had reached me / I could have flown from New York to Illinois - / all the way from here to Illinois - / over all the graves that lie between here and Illinois.

This poem truly appealed to me because it represents how often the younger generations become caught up in their lives, forgetting about the rest of their family, forgetting about those who raised them, and cared for them when they were small and weak. It speaks about how often one misses the important things doing other events that become only faded, relatively unimportant, memories. I believe that this truly represents the society today. The society where the youth no longer have to care for their parents, where seniors are often left to someone else and it becomes only a duty to visit them on Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthdays. The narrator appears to justify not being home when her sister called to give her the news with "it was sunny at the beach." The narrator speaks of "being home all the following Sunday / because it was too cold to go swimming." She seems to blame her siblings for not calling her that day, when she was home, when she wasn't so absorbed in her own life. However, I think the question is, why didn't she call them? Was the fee to call long distance too great? Has today's society made money more