Analyse af Robert Shaws digt 'In the Rear-view Mirror'

The Poem “In the Rear-view Mirror” written by Robert Shaw in 1999, can be twisted and understood in many different way. My interpretation of the poem is that the main theme is losing people, and finding a way or a memory which helps you remembering them. I also interpret it as myself in this poem, and there-for it would be a female narrator.

The poem is divided up in sections; it starts out by describing a memory “Thinking about them as you saw them last”. It’s a very effective starting line, because you place yourself in the narrator’s perspective. The first stanza is focusing on life in general and loosing people. It’s a very broad topic, but also very personal to the reader because everyone has tried loosing someone in their life. “Lingering even as growing speed and distance diminish them until they neatly fit head to foot in the mirror-strip you glance at” The way this sentence is written is as if the narrator, hasn’t realized herself that she is leaving people that she cares for, and maybe she doesn’t want to realize yet, that is why she describes it in such an impersonal way. The way mirror’s are used can also be understood both literally that she is looking in the mirror, seeing the people standing on the side walk waving at her, or it can be used figuratively, almost like a metaphor, she uses the mirror to look back, and remembering their faces. “They could be nameless people on a post card, too far away for you to make out faces” this shows that she still hasn’t understood her own situation yet. She is scared to show affection, and there-for blocks it out. Even though she doesn’t want to face it she still knows in the back of her mind, this can be seen when she writes “nameless people on a post card” Nameless people, meaning people she doesn’t know, and post card, is a metaphor, since she is travelling away from them.