Ivas Pantoum
Read 'Ivas Pantoum' by 'Marilyn Hacker' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.
We pace each other for a long time.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the baby on the mountain. I am
in a cold stream where I led you.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the woman sticking her tongue out
in a cold stream where I led you.
You are the woman with spring water palms.
You are the woman sticking her tongue out.
I am the woman who matches sounds.
You are the woman with spring water palms.
I am the woman who copies.
You are the woman who matches sounds.
You are the woman who makes up words.
You are the woman who copies
her cupped palm with her fist in clay.
I am the woman who makes up words.
You are the woman who shapes
a drinking bowl with her fist in clay.
I am the woman with rocks in her pockets.
I am the woman who shapes.
I was a baby who knew names.
You are the child with rocks in her pockets.
You are the girl in a plaid dress.
You are the woman who knows names.
You are the baby who could fly.
You are the girl in a plaid dress
upside-down on the monkey bars.
You are the baby who could fly
over the moon from a swinging perch
upside-down on the monkey bars.
You are the baby who eats meat.
Over the moon from a swinging perch
the feathery goblin calls her sister.
You are the baby who eats meat
the bitch wolf hunts and chews for you.
The feathery goblin calls her sister:
"You are braver than your mother.
The bitch wolf hunts and chews for you.
What are you whining about now?"
You are braver than your mother
and I am not a timid woman:
what are you whining about now?
My palms itch with slick anger,
and I'm not a timid woman.
You are the woman I can't mention;
my palms itch with slick anger.
You are the heiress of scraped knees.
You are the woman I can't mention
to a woman I want to love.
You are the heiress of scaped knees:
scrub them in mountain water.
To a woman, I want to love
women you could turn into,
scrub them in mountain water,
stroke their astonishing faces.
Women you could turn into
the scare mask of Bad Mother
stroke their astonishing faces
in the silver-scratched sink mirror.
The scare mask of Bad Mother
crumbles to chunked, pinched clay,
sinks in the silver-scratched mirror.
You are the Little Robber Girl, who
crumbles the clay chunks, pinches
her friend, givers her a sharp knife.
You are the Little Robber Girl, who
was any witch's youngest daughter.
Our friend gives you a sharp knife,
shows how the useful blades open.
Was any witch's youngest daughter
golden and bold as you? You run and
show how the useful blades open.
You are the baby on the mountain. I am
golden and bold as you. You run and
we pace each other for a long time.
Ivas Pantoum Summary and Analysis
Marilyn Hacker builds the poem as a pantoum, letting repeated lines change color as they return. The movement is not forward in a straight line but circling: two women pace each other, trading identities, ages, and roles until the poem becomes a kind of verbal pursuit. One figure is at times child, daughter, girl, bold adventurer, and feared "Bad Mother"; the other is at times companion, lover, self, and imagined counterpart. The repeated naming and renaming suggest that memory, desire, and kinship are unstable, but also generative, as if the poem can keep making a self by re-seeing it.
At the center is a tense intimacy. The poem's voices seem to move between accusation and tenderness, between inheritance and invention, between the wish to protect and the wish to claim. The speaker resists simple blame or certainty: anger is carried, not resolved; the mother figure is both feared and transformed; the beloved is both a child and a woman to love. By the end, the repeated pacing feels less like conflict than an uneasy companionship, a shared motion that holds together attraction, rivalry, care, and the possibility of acceptance.
Tone in Ivas Pantoum
Hacker's tone is searching, intimate, and unsentimental, with flashes of teasing authority and guarded tenderness. The repeated addresses carry the voice of someone trying to name a loved person without simplifying her. The mood for the reader is charged and unsettled: playful on the surface, but undercut by anger, memory, and the ache of unfinished relation.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in Ivas Pantoum
- Identity as shifting roles - The poem keeps redefining the people it addresses, showing identity as fluid rather than fixed. The same figure can be child, woman, daughter, lover, and mythic child-goblin, suggesting that the self is made through repeated acts of naming.
- Motherhood and inheritance - The poem turns maternal memory into a site of fear, resistance, and transformation. The "Bad Mother" image hints at inherited emotional patterns, while the repeated attention to childhood suggests that adulthood still carries the marks of what was received.
- Desire and intimacy - The address to "a woman I want to love" gives the poem its emotional pressure. Love is present, but it is complicated by history, anger, and the difficulty of speaking directly.
- Anger held in reserve - The speaker's anger is not explosive; it is carried, packed, and revisited. That restraint makes the emotion feel durable, even embedded in memory and bodily sensation.
- Play and danger in childhood - Images of monkey bars, flying, sharp knives, and scraped knees make childhood feel lively but not innocent. The poem treats childhood as a place where courage, injury, and imagination are learned together.
- Transformation through language - Making up words, matching sounds, and copying suggest that language itself is a form of shaping. The poem implies that speaking can remake relation, identity, and even memory.
Literary Devices in Ivas Pantoum
- Pantoum form - The repeated-and-recycled lines create a looping structure that mirrors the poem's concern with memory, repetition, and the persistence of unresolved feeling.
- Anaphora - The repeated openings of lines with "You are" and "I am" create a chant-like pressure, emphasizing the unstable exchange of identities between the two figures.
- Repetition with variation - Key lines return in altered contexts, so their meanings shift each time. This technique makes the poem feel cumulative while also showing how language can reframe experience.
- Metaphor - The poem uses metaphor to turn emotional states into objects and actions, such as anger being packed away or a mother becoming a mask. These images give abstract feelings a physical presence.
- Direct address - Speaking repeatedly to "you" gives the poem its intimate, confrontational energy. The address suggests closeness, but it also keeps the other person elusive and difficult to define.
- Imagery - Water, clay, mirrors, knees, and monkey bars build a tactile world that grounds the poem's emotional complexity in sensory detail.
- Paradox - The poem often joins opposites, such as tenderness and sharpness, childhood and adulthood, or fear and affection. These contradictions are central to its emotional truth.
- Allusion to folk or fairy-tale figures - The "Little Robber Girl," witch's daughter, goblin, and wolf-like figures evoke a storybook atmosphere that enlarges personal conflict into mythic pattern.
Symbolism in Ivas Pantoum
- Mountain water - This image suggests cleansing, toughness, and a cold purity that may also be emotionally unsparing. It appears where the poem imagines washing and shaping the self or the other.
- Beef jerky - The packed food can symbolize carried anger and survival, something preserved for a journey rather than openly consumed in the moment.
- Clay - Clay represents malleability and making. The poem uses it to suggest that identity, memory, and even mothering can be shaped, pinched, or broken apart.
- Rocks in pockets - Rocks imply burden, weight, and perhaps a defensive readiness. They make the child figure feel both vulnerable and strangely armed.
- Silver-scratched sink mirror - The mirror stands for self-recognition, but the scratches suggest damage, distortion, and the difficulty of seeing oneself clearly.
- Sharp knife - The knife can symbolize knowledge, danger, independence, and initiation. It is presented as useful, not merely threatening, which complicates its meaning.
- Monkey bars - These playground bars symbolize childhood agility, risk, and the exhilaration of being briefly upside-down, a fitting image for the poem's unstable identities.
Historical Context of Ivas Pantoum
Marilyn Hacker is associated with formally disciplined, intellectually alert poetry that often engages feminist and lesbian experience. Her work frequently combines inherited poetic structures with contemporary themes, and this poem's use of the pantoum places personal, gendered experience inside a highly patterned form. The result reflects a broader late twentieth-century tendency in American poetry to reclaim traditional forms for new subjects and voices.
The pantoum itself comes from Malay literary tradition and was adapted into French verse before entering English-language poetry. Its overlapping lines make it especially suited to themes of recurrence, memory, and transformation. In that larger literary context, Hacker's poem uses form not as ornament but as a way to dramatize how identity and relationship are continually revised through repetition.
Poems Similar to Ivas Pantoum
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
