Thanks For Remembering Us.

Thanks for Remembering Us

By Dana Gioia

            Suspecting, suspicious, accusing.  Those were my first thoughts on the poem Thanks for Remembering Us.  How can such a lovely and thoughtful gift end up producing such guilt in a person? 

            The title is sarcastic.  At first, it might trick you, much like it did me.  I thought this poem would be happy and full of reflection.   As it turns out, this poem is about a couple who received a bunch of flowers on their doorstep.  The problem is that they don’t know who sent the flowers and start to become suspicious of each other.  Each one becomes guilty, in a sense, and all the flowers do is bring about silent accusations.  

In the first stanza, the speaker thinks the flowers were “sent here by mistake.”  At first, the speaker thinks the flowers are perhaps the neighbor’s, but the neighbor confirms they are not hers.   The speaker knows that there isn’t a birthday for anyone they know coming up, so that can’t be why the flowers have shown up.  So why have the flowers decided to show presence at the doorstep of the speaker’s house?  I wondered.  

The speaker of this poem is a spouse.  (S)he tells us this when they say, “Is one of us having an affair?  At first we laugh, and then we wonder.”   Not only does this line tell us that the flowers were sent to a couple, but it also tells us that the flowers could be an indication of one of the spouses cheating on the other. :O  The flowers are at first just a joke to the couple, something spontaneously sent to their house by mistake.  But then, the flowers become a possible act of betrayal.  Could one of them have a secret lover? It seems as if this is the very question the audience should be asking.  

By the second (and final) stanza of the poem, the speaker describes the flowers slowly dying.  (S)he refers to the room smelling “like a funeral” as all the flowers rot.  But, the speaker can’t seem to find a way to throw the flowers away.  I think this is because (s)he wants to know the truth.  Is his/her spouse having an affair, or is there some other explanation for the mysterious flowers?

I think the poem’s main purpose if to illustrate the tension that can be so easily created when between two people in a relationship.  While at first the flowers were just something sweet to the couple, they soon gave each spouse reason to doubt the dedication of the other.  I believe the theme of this poem is accusatory and slightly ridiculing.  While the speaker and his/her spouse don’t outright accuse one another of cheating, the tension of the possibility that they are cheating creates an invisible tension.  This poem is also slightly ridiculing because it is written in somewhat of a lyrical way.  There is no set rhyming structure, but some lines rhyme at different times.  I think this makes it seem like banter, like the author, Gioia, is making fun of the way a couple acts.  Paired with the sarcastic title, the Gioia seems to have written this poem with some humor.