Persimmons

“Persimmons” features five characters with unique and idiosyncratic grasps on language; ranging from a rigid and clinical approach that isolates each word in its denotive context to a highly allusive and connected strategy that links words together through memory or imagery. The poem celebrates this more idiosyncratic reading—paradoxically, its intensely personal quality makes it a better tool for communicating than the more restrictive and punitive style. The speaker’s unique relationship with the word “persimmons,” for instance, brings forth a rich spring of associations and memories—one that allows him to connect with his mother, his father, and even a bird. Conversely, Mrs. Walker’s refusal to engage with the connotations of the word “persimmon” make her a terrible, abusive teacher, and deprive her and her students from being able to savor a ripe sample of this fruit.

“Persimmons” contrasts a series of botched and successful communications. Often, what the speaker at first perceives as his own failure, such as when he fails to know the “difference / between persimmon and precision” (Line 5), or when he confuses words like “fight and fright, wren and yarn” (Line 31). His teacher’s violent response to his misunderstanding seems to show that he will never learn to communicate effectively. However, when the speaker delves into what these words mean to him, exploring the precision involved in selecting and eating a persimmon, the terror that accompanies physical confrontation, and the soft birds his mother crafted, we see that Mrs. Walker’s reaction to the natural confusion of someone only just learning English is a marker of her deficiency, not his. The speaker’s assonance-aided words links allow him to enjoy persimmons on a deep level, whereas Mrs. Walker’s unempathic disconnection from linguistic nuance eventually gets a comeuppance. Her misidentification of a persimmon as a “Chinese apple” (Line 43) displays her ignorance and is the poem’s most extreme example of a failure to communicate. Language requires a shared cultural basis or a willingness to learn to communicate effectively—neither of which she is willing to do, unlike Donna, and eventually the speaker with his father. The poem points toward lived experience as the primary way of enlivening and enriching language so that communication becomes possible.