PRESENTATION OUTLINE
My four-year-old daughter handed me a card.
To Daddy written on the front
and inside a rough field
of five-pointed lights, and the words
You’re my favorite Daddy in the stars.
In this western night we all light the sky
like Vega, Deneb, Altair, Albireo,
the Summer Triangle,
Cygnus the Swan, our hair,
tangled with wood and gravel,
our eyes like vacant docks
that beckon every boat.
Tell me about the word
stars, I said.
Oh, she said. Sorry.
I didn’t know
how to spell world.
In the poem, a girl gives her father a letter which says 'You're the best daddy in the stars' (line 5). The father then goes on and names a large group of constellations in the western sky. He asks her what she means by stars, and she replays saying that she said stars because she can't spell world.
The theme of the poem is that as adults we tend to overthink things, and it would be beneficial to us to instead take a step back and look at life from a simpler perspective (a child's perspective)
The literal meaning of the title Hesperus is the Greek god Hesperus, which means "Evening Star", which is Venus. The poem focuses largely on stars, so it seems natural to name it after the brightest star or planet in the night sky.
The figurative meaning of the title Hesperus relates to Venus. Venus is the brightest point in our night sky (next to the moon), and in the poem, the girl is the brightest thing in her father's life.
An example of a literary devices in the poem are the allusions to stars in the western sky in lines seven through nine.
A second example of a literary device in the poem is a simile on line eleven and twelve, when the speaker says, "our eyes like vacant docks
that beacon every boat."
The speaker in this poem is a father with a four year old daughter. The tone of voice is very deep and reflective during the second stanza, however it changes to joking and lighthearted in the third.
