A Room in the Past

In "A Room in the Past", Kooser talks about specific memories of his grandmother in a kitchen that he has grown very fond of. He talks of "a morning light so bright you can't see beyond its windows in the afternoon" (3-4), and of "dishes jingling up in the cupboard" (6-7). He remembers specific details of the kitchen, because it was directly related to his grandmother. Kooser then fills the second half of the poem with contrasting images, creating almost a duality in the poem. "No one's at home in this room, its counter is wiped, and the dishrag hangs from its nail, a dry leaf" (10-13). He fills the reader's heads with another image, one of emptiness and no life. This image is cleverly used in contrast to the happy-go-lucky image in the beginning, to show Kooser's sort-of depression that his grandmother has passed away. "..she put them all back in their places and wiped out the sink, turning her back on the rest of us, forever" (17-19). He is obviously bitter and unaccepting of his grandma's death. Even though he sees that the kitchen is empty, he believes that she had a presence that she left there, but she abandoned it through her death. I believe Kooser is trying to show how hard it is to overcome death and its effects on family members. Kooser sees a gap where something lively and caring once was.