Thirty? Again - Speaker

Thirty? Again By Elizabeth Lewis (page 133)

Oh to be thirty
To be thirty
To be young and fit
With a head of dark hair
My skin soft and smooth
With no wrinkles there
To be light on my feet
To remember with ease
The things I've forgotten
No pain in my knees
To feel I'm attractive
To even one man
To work for a living
To go back again?

Oh, come off it, people
Do you think I am crazy
To go back sixty years
To live them again
The work and the diet,
The grind and the pain?

Thank God I am ninety
Not thirty again.

I really liked this poem because I love how the speaker isn't reminiscing and wishing she were thirty again, she is reminiscing and realizing that she is much better off on the side of life she is on, rather than going back sixty years and doing it all over again.

The speaker is the poet in this poem, and she describes what it is to be ninety by talking about what it is to be thirty. Instead of complaining about having grey hair and wrinkles, pain in her knees and feeling unattractive, she wistfully remembers what is was to not have wrinkles, pain, and to be attractive "To even one man" (12).  This element of having the speaker be the poet herself really works to get across her point that it is better to be happier with yourself as you are, rather than wishing and hoping you could go back in time and be the person you were a long time ago (because that just isn't going to happen, is it?). Describing herself in this poem instead of talking about a different person gives the poem authenticity and credibility. The reader also feels a relationship to the poet - we get a sense of who the poet is as a person, a person who is seemingly very satisfied and settled with herself. She conveys a very likable character, someone I feel I could sit and have tea with and a great conversation.

This ability to build a relationship with a reader in a short, 22 line poem ensures that her poem will be remembered, and she has managed to leave her print on the world long after she has left it. She divulges intimate details of her life - her wish to feel attractive, for instance, is so slyly inserted in the poem it would be easy to gloss over. But it is there, in that small detail, where Lewis reveals a personal insecurity and desire to be wanted by another person. I feel sorry that she feels unattractive and unwanted just because she is old, but I can see that out of everything it is to be thirty, this is the only thing that she perhaps wishes she could get back.

I remember a movie quote that said something about age, and feeling worn out and in pain is because you used your body, and you earned the age you feel. Age is a thing which has to be experienced for yourself, it isn't something one can describe to another. And even though Lewis sees the benefits of being thirty over ninety, she realizes that to go back would be to do over her life for sixty years, and she's rather satisfied with how it went the first time around.