The beginning of the poem can be seen as nostalgic, as it seems as though the author is looking back on past experiences and the relationships that he had with his various cousins; it's overall very friendly/loving in its tone, and it certainly seems like he is affectionate towards these cousins, as his descriptions for his cousins is especially nice, even the one where his cousin Jarvis broke his toys. This does seem to take on a tinge of resignation later in the poem, or possibly is simply a more begrudging affection than before, as he talks about how "the steady hum/of cuz...gathers/like the wasps who left returning," which to me seems begrudging at best, as comparing anything to wasps would not generally be a good thing.
The tone seems shift through the use of the scene of his cousin Keith's suicide. "This is for Keith/in that unsunned room he hanged/himself like the paintings he masterpieced,"; this is a change from the nostalgic but definitely happy reminiscing throughout the beginning of the poem. The use of the term "unsunned" gives the feeling of having no windows and therefore being much darker and more closed off than the rest of the scenes in the poem, and equating his suicide to the paintings that he had done makes it seem tragically beautiful, in a way, almost as if he was a martyr (the scene definitely paints him as a victim in this case), and the inclusion of the phrase "& my grandmother's wood-paneled/walls still keep up," can be extended to not just be referring to the walls of the house, but also to the family and how they still manage to go on after Keith's death.
The splits between the stanzas also serve to be transitions, whether from scene to scene or as transitions in meaning. This is used when Keith commits suicide; one stanza simply says "he hanged" and then there is the space between the the stanzas - at this point there is no reason to see this as a negative change - but the next stanza starts with "himself" and goes into talking about his suicide and continues to do so until it moves on to talking about Keith's sister Jamie, and with the talk about Jamie it shifts into a another stanza, this one generally happier and no longer dwelling on Keith. This cycle could mirror the ups and downs that the family encounters, but could also be another way of showing how the family moves on even after Keith's death - they begin to focus on other things, happy and everything starts to move again.
Young makes sure to refer to all of his cousins by name, the repetition of the names actually making it seem more personal, as he refers to "Tonia," "Angela," "Big Red," "Keith," "Jamie," and many others, all of whom are more humanized through the mentions of a name, and make it seem more realistic to the readers. When reading these descriptions with the names attached to them they seem more like real people.
I chose this poem not because I have a ton of cousins with whom I am really good friends, or even because I have cousins I talk to. My family (on my mom's mom's side) has a family reunion once a year, and I pretty much never see anyone from my dad's family. My knowledge of the cousins I do have comes from facebook and family stories - and even then, both of my parents are only children, so I don't have any first cousins. That said, this does seem similar to how my parents' families would have been. They were much closer to each other, in the way that only small town kids can be, and have more stories of this sort than I could ever have. I kind of miss it, even though I'm not a big fan of most of my extended family, because I wish I knew what that bond was like. As it is, this poem depicts the type of extended family I kind of wish I had and yet don't at the same time (not with my family, anyway) because the affection is something that I miss, even never really had it myself.
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