The Summer I Was Sixteen

The motif of memory pervades the entire poem, as the poem itself is explicitly a memory, but Connelly crafts the motif with unusual complexity. The implicit presence of adult consciousness—the narration itself, the adult poet remembering her youth—uniquely dramatizes the recollection, and the double, adult-child consciousness magnifies both the naiveté of youth and the gravity of age. This dynamic emerges with distinct clarity in the poem’s final line, where the subtle sophistication of the phrase “improbable world” (Line 20) exudes the aged poet’s self-awareness and creates an irony; the poetic voice clearly speaks from a position of greater knowledge than her younger subject. It is also the most abstract phrase in a poem otherwise dominated by the concrete detail, marking a departure from the immediate sensuality of youth to the restraint and reflection of adulthood.

While a perspective on memory informs the poem itself, it also plays into the poetic act of creation. Connolly’s dual perspective—writing, as a knowing adult, about her teenage self—allows her to preserve some of the innocence that she lost as she grew older, placing value on both her innocent and knowledgeable experiences.