Until the mother enters the concluding stanzas, it’s a narrative of inevitability, though the regretful tone in the reiteration of “all those girls” seems to invite a feminist interpretation. The poem, in spare, unpunctuated tercets, seems to “fall” floatingly down the page, its many present participles (“folding”, “running”, “waiting”, “pulling”, “crumpling”, “waiting” etc) evoking slow but continuous movement. No apple is eaten, although there is a significant tree. They lack that big allegorical role of stand-in for fallible humanity: their falling is specific to a vision of simple girlhood. The girls don’t seem to be mythological figures. The focus is on “all those girls”, the phrase being repeated like a sigh. In this week’s poem, Laura Scott begins a story whose title might seem to point towards Genesis and a retelling of the myth of the Fall. Personal micro-myths, stories of the self and its significant encounters, are favoured over the big, foundational mythologies, although there are also many revisionist treatments of the classic stories, letting in new light from new social and political contexts. Contemporary lyric poetry is replete with myth.
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