'For My Daughter' - R. Abbott

The sonnet 'For My Daughter,' written by Weldon Kees, was written in 1940 and essentially describes a moment between a father and daughter. Kees was a very artistic person in general, and his poetry is especially noted for its bitterness apparent in this poem. 'For My Daughter' has a very interesting rhyme scheme going: ABABCCDEDEFFGG - rather unothordox. The poem begins with the speaker looking into his daughters eyes, looking past her innocence to all the darkness and sadness in life which she does not yet realize lingers in her future. Immediately the reader can see that the mood of this poem is gloomy at best. Kees uses a metaphor to describe his reading deeply beneath his daughter's skin - 'beneath the innocence of morning flesh concealed.' Kees uses symbols of cold winds and snarled seaweed to describe the bad things his daughter has encountered in her life, but that she seems to have not noticed or cared enough to notice. Kees then uses the metaphor of the 'night's slow poison' as a reference to what time can do to people - ruins innocence and bring the pain of adulthood. Kees does not want to see her turn into a cruel person or a person who has to suffer as the spouse to a person with some sort of STD/a moron. As Kees dwells more on all of the negative thoughts he associates with his daugher and her future, they continue to worsen. In the final line of the sonnet, he concedes that he actually has no daughter (most likely for all the reasons explained throughout the poem) and he does not desire to have one either.