Written in 2000

Do you believe that a persons

character is always formed at
least in part by where he or she
was born?
To learn the background of Elizabeth Brewster
To read Where I Come From
To analyse stanza 1


Elizabeth Brewster was born in 1922 in the small
logging community of Chipman, New Brunswick, Canada.
Brewster began writing poetry at the age of nine or ten, but it
wasnt until she attended the University of New Brunswick
that she started to develop a unique voice and style.
Her first collection of poetry, appropriately titled East Coast,
was published in 1951.
She continued to write poetry, prose and short stories, but it
wasnt until the 1980s that she achieved mainstream critical
acclaim.
Embraced a variety of styles.
Her early poetry is clearly modernist.
Avoids extravagant metaphors and erudite vocabulary
Favours a colloquial voice that seems on the surface to be
almost prosaic.
Beneath her straightforward diction dwells great
intelligence and a shrewd eye for powerful, if subdued,
details.
Meditations on place and tradition are a common concern
in her work, as can be seen in the iconic first lines of her
poem Where I Come From: People are made of places.
They carry with them / hints of jungles or mountains, a
tropic grace / or the cool eyes of sea gazers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_EGCS
b6q0
Nostalgia?
Looking back?
Nature?
This stanza deals with the organised and fast-
paced life of the city.
In the city everything is precise and
controlled; everything runs like clockwork.
People are made of places. They carry with them
Hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
Or the cool eyes of sea-gazers.
The first two lines of the poem
summarise the main theme of
the poem perfectly
=
People are made of places
As the theme
suggests, people will
never be able to
forget their past, or
where they come
from.
People will always be
able to tell where you
come from
How has the place where you were
born moulded you?
Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring
The author is trying to show that the
atmosphere of the place you live in can
affect the way that you live, throughout the
year as nature progresses through its
seasons, atmospherically city life changes
greatly.
nature tidily plotted in little squares
with a fountain in the centre;
The idea of the city being
organised and tidily planned
out is introduced in these
lines
Telling us that within the city
life, nature still exists in public
parks, which have been
plotted around the city in
small areas to provide the
reassurance of sanity with the
community, that nature still
exists within the city
environment
But it is scarce and nature cannot
go about its business how intended
to because of the interruptions of
city life and pollution
museum smell,
art also tidily plotted with a guidebook
Compares the tidily
plotted countryside to
tidily plotted art in an art
museum, with a
guidebook.
Could be a
metaphor for life?
We try to control
everything, to guide
ourselves through life
instead of taking one
step at a time

or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices;
The city is full of sky-scraping
office buildings built of steel
and other sharp precise
materials to give a uniform
look and feel to the
atmosphere
Also, with great complexes
comes great amounts of
pollution, which Brewster is
relating to with the smell of
work, glue factories maybe
smell of subways
crowded at rush hours.
Shows the
congestion that is
caused by
overpopulation of
the city.
Also shows how
rushed life in the
city is.
No matter where you come from, if you
work in chromium-plated offices or
glue factories, everyone has the same
goal and that is to get home
The second stanza introduces an idea change
in the poem. The focus of the poem now shifts
more to country and rural life; similar to that
in which Brewster herself grew up in.

Where I come from, people
carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods
Coming from New
Brunswick 80% forested!
So the forest or woods
will always be in peoples
minds as it is the centre of
the little community
Title of the poem
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush
People here care about things
that people in the city would
laugh at, like
To the people in the community,
this is relatively significant as it
is the growing of something new
where before there was
nothing.
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint
This is in direct contrast to
the first stanza where
everything was new and
attractive.
The old farmhouses are there to serve
a purpose. Until they stop serving that
purpose they will be kept, regardless of
looks.
with yards where hens and chickens circle about
clucking aimlessly
Brewster portrays a
farming life, with the
ideas of chickens and
hens kept in yards
Generally used to
provide a source of
food in the form of
eggs, or the chickens
themselves!
Also, the chickens and hens
are being kept in yards.
What does this show?
In the country there is
room to spare to be able
to keep these chickens and
hens, whereas in
comparison with the first
stanza, the chickens would
not be kept as there is no
room nor is there any need
to keep chickens or hens
battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow.
Places emphasis on it being an old
building remaining only for
practical purposes and not being
replaced for a more attractive
building
Reiterates the earlier line of
blueberry patches in the
burned-out bush
Shows how nature
can create a
picture of beauty
anywhere, out of
anything
Spring and winter
are the minds chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.
Spring and winter
are two opposing
seasons.
Why did Brewster
choose this
comparison?
Maybe winter could
represent the cold,
city life and spring the
colourful country life?
ice and breaking of ice
could refer to something in
the mind that is broken
when one makes the
transition from the city to
the country
A door in the wind blows open, and there blows
A frosty wind from fields of snow.
Hmmmm.these last two
lines (or rhyming couplet)
are puzzling.
The door blowing open is
just another gateway
opening in the mind to the
memories that she holds of
her childhood.
and there blows / a frosty wind from
fields of snow is there to give a feel to the
picture that she has been describing and it
gives the reader a cold feeling.
The frosty wind
from fields of
snow is relevant
because in
Canada the
winter is very
frosty with lots of
snow and wind.
Another idea to ponder on the last
two lines
The "door" could be the memory opening in a blast of
nostalgia, but the association of winter and the "frosty
wind" suggest something less pleasant, like a
realisation that the past, her place, is not so good after
all. This is supported by the content of the second
stanza, where things may seem superficially attractive
in a rustic way, but are burned out, old, in need of
paint, where the chickins cluck aimlessly and
buildings are battered. So the suggestion is that it is
easy to remember formative places all to positively, but
their legacy can be negative; a frosty wind in the
mind?
Structure
If you look at the lines in the poem every single line
with the exception of 5 out of the 21 lines has
some sort of a comma, full stop, colon or semi-
colon splitting the lines into two sections. This
technique used is a great way to show the reader
that the poem is meant to be read slow and
appreciatively, taking in what is being said and
thinking about it more, and not meant to be
quickly read and feeling bewildered afterwards
when you are confused about the poem to which
you have just rushed