Charl Margaux Elcano 603-102-MQ Ms. Vivian Ralickas Baggage Screening: An Analysis of Wendy Cope’s Anecdotal Sonnet In Wendy Cope's English sonnet1“ Baggage," the speaker describes the luggage labels on her father's battered vintage leather suitcase stored in her garage. The speaker's response to the suitcase is of symbolic significance since it exhibits how objects possess sentimental value because they reveal insight into a loved one’s identity and past. In particular, her curiosity towards the fragmented luggage labels and her mental projection of her father’s character through the shabby suitcase make evident the emotional burden of a child longing for parental intimacy. In surveying the state of the luggage labels, Cope seeks to regain more knowledge of her father's identity. The poet's straightforward depictions of the luggage labels portray her superficial knowledge regarding her father. For instance, she only names the most conspicuous elements of the labels, such as "two smart porters" and a "fortress." The lack of vivid description of the labels renders an incomplete ekphrasis. The poet is incapable of expanding further nor make the reader envision the labels as described ("Ekphrasis"; Munsterberg). This literary tool is symbolic of her insufficient familiarity with her father. Her perusal also notes some luggage labels that are "stuck on the lid" while others that "are partly missing." The descriptions demonstrate an antithesis that contrasts the states of the luggage labels, suggesting that her memories of her father, although enduring across a considerable amount of time, are also subject Among many studies of the sonnet, see Stephen Adam’s poetic designs: an introduction to meters, verse forms, and figures of speech which defines an English sonnet, also known as a Shakespearean sonnet (p. 88-90). 1 to fragmentation. The utilization of aposiopesis2 further accentuates the fragmented status of the labels and, correspondingly, her memories. Here, the poet utters "and another Lac de Co…" confirming the overwhelming gap of her memory of her father. Following the previously said line, the poet employs personification in illustrating her memories of her father that she had forgotten: "Some scraps remain mysterious." In doing so, she posits the father as an alien figure to her. Airlines, railroads, and bellhops at hotels around the world had initially affixed luggage labels with gum such that if you were to remove them, they would be damaged (Alice). The "mysterious" unidentified labels, then, is a metaphorical statement of her impaired relationship with her father as well. While examining the state of the luggage labels allowed her to acquire fragments of her father's past, she fails to procure any substantial knowledge that would aid her to become more familiar with him. Cope's attempt to determine the origin of the luggage labels reveals her interest to discover her father in a different light as an individual human being. The sonnet begins with the poet conveying the locales printed on each of the labels on the suitcase, indicating that her primary curiosity is towards her father's past affairs. These locales, which are all located in Europe3, collectively embody a motif of affluent foreign travel. One label is "from Nacional Madrid," another "from the hotel in Carcassonne," "Vichy," and "Lac de Co…" The early-20th century marked the golden age of luggage labels. This period, corresponding with the Golden An aposiopesis is a rhetorical term for an unfinished statement of a speaker’s abrupt break thereby leaving a thought incomplete. For further details on aposiopesis, refer to ThoughtCo.’s article entitled “Aposiopesis: The Broken Figure of Speech” by Richard Nordquist. 3 According to online consultation, Nacional Madrid is a classic grand hotel located in Madrid, Spain built around the era of 1920s and remains in business to this day. Carcassonne is a hilltop town in southern France’s Languedoc area, and is famous for its medieval citadel. Vichy is a city in central France, although, the name is also “used to denote the government of France which operated from Vichy (1940–44) in collaboration with the Germans” (OED). Finally, Lac de Com…, which can be easily deduced to be Lac de Come (or Lake Como), is an Italian lake located in Northern Italy’s Lombardy region. 2 Age of Travel, coincides with the time Cope’s father obtained the labels—Wendy Cope was born in 1945 when her father was approximately sixty-years old (Cope Pieces of Me). Luggage labels proclaimed to all that the owner of the luggage was an adventurer at a time when travel was still inaccessible, a luxury, and a mystery (Alice). The act of travelling was a means to assert an aura of cultural sophistication, which was then portrayed as an inherent characteristic of the moneyed elite (Gemme 510). European travel, in particular, was used to "help construct and claim identities variously defined by gender, class, race, and nationality" (Gemme 509). Therefore, the label-plastered suitcase is a mark of Cope's father's worldliness. In his days of yore as a seasoned traveller, the luggage labels were vehicles he appropriates to proudly flaunt his character, exceptional taste and social status to whomever he encounters. This function of the labels transcends time, and they also become vehicles of which his daughter can access him. Cope's father passed away when she was twenty-six years of age (Brockes). Her father's death was a reminder that parents are susceptible to vulnerability and mortality. Likewise, the labels become a reminder that her father was just like any other human adult who had his passions and aspirations. On that account, Cope says, "It calls to mind the handsome, young /And happy man I'd like to think he was." The luggage labels are representative of the diverging interests between a father and his daughter. While the father sought the mysteries of global travel, the poet intends to pursue the mystery of who her father is. The sonnet reflects her intention to compensate for her minimal memory and knowledge of him not just as a person whom she, biologically, came into this world, but also as an individual who had his own journey. The poet's false nostalgic portrayals of faraway lands and her father's past further underscore the lack of quality time she had with her father. Cope had suffered mentally as a child since both of her parents sent her to boarding school at the age of seven and all throughout her adolescent years (Alice). With this in mind, there is a grim satirical undertone to Cope's (sub)conscious choice of entitling the sonnet 'Baggage,' revealing an allusion to her own experience of how her parents dealt with her like "property packed up for carriage" ("baggage"). Hence, the 'Baggage' from the sonnet's title connotes not only the burdensome grief of her father's passing but also being "tied" ("baggage") to her mental struggles induced by her strained relationship with her parents (Benson; Brockes). Nonetheless, according to Cope, the shabby leather suitcase "still looks glamorous to me" despite being "left too long" in a "damp garage." Leather loses its supple quality and turns brittle after prolonged exposure in a humid environment (Leather). In postulating the leather's condition as a metaphorical analogy of the poet's relationship with her father, her compliment towards the suitcase is a form of verbal irony reaffirming her attachment towards her father despite the detached affection she felt from him growing up. Additionally, her attachment gives way to her idyllic, conjectural conceptualization of her father: "It calls to mind the handsome, young /And happy man I'd like to think he was." In envisioning her father in a way that does not reflect the father whom she grew up with, she has come to terms with her internal burden and wishes nothing more than to be able to spend time with him. Accordingly, in the poem's volta, we witness her shift in thought away from (Holbrook) her father's luggage revealing two critical pieces of information. First is that the poet wishes to "join him under sunny foreign skies." She aspires to a specific kind of relationship with him—one in which she accompanies her father in his travels overseas to experience a parental bond that centres around togetherness. Secondly, Cope remarks herself as "the child of his old age," an allegory that implies Cope making peace with the fact that her father's old age was one of the factors which had forcibly kept her away from him in her youth (Alice). Discovering the vintage leather luggage helped the poet alleviate her past grievances and make allowances for her father. Wendy Cope's anecdotal sonnet "Baggage" chronicles the poet's depictive commentary of her father's old travelling suitcase, providing her with a vehicle to re-establish an emotional connection with him. The sonnet illuminates the therapeutic value of a cherished item which allows for introspection. In remarking the condition and the origins of the luggage labels followed by envisaging her father’s halcyon days of travel, Cope celebrates the half-forgotten figures in our lives. Works Cited Adams, Stephen J. “Some Standard Verse Forms: Fixed and Not So Fixed.” poetic designs: an introduction to meters, verse forms, and figures of speech, Broadview Press, 2003, pp. 88–91. Alice, Michele. “Collectors Corner: Luggage Labels and Baggage Tags.” EcommerceBytes, 9 Aug. 2015, www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abu/y215/m08/abu0381/s04. "baggage, n. and adj." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2021, www.oed.com/view/Entry/14622. Accessed 1 May 2021. Benson, Amanda. “Poet Wendy Cope Grew up Depressed in the Shadow of Evangelical Mother.” Belfast Telegraph, 27 Jan. 2019, www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/poet-wendy-cope-grew-up-depressed-in- the-shadow-of-evangelical-mother-37752818.html. Brockes, Emma. “Laughter in the Dark.” The Guardian, 25 May 2001, www.theguardian.com/books/2001/may/26/poetry.books. Cope, Wendy. “Wendy Cope, Poet: Pieces of Me.” Edited by Anita Sethi, The Guardian, 6 July 2008, www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/07/poetry. Cope, Wendy. “Baggage.” Essay #2: The Sonnet List of Assigned Poems, compiled by Vivian Ralickas, pp. 3. “Ekphrasis.” Glossary of Poetic Terms, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis. Accessed 23 April 2021. Gemme, Paola. Review of Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture, by William W. Stowe. The New England Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 3, 1995, pp. 509– 511. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/366176. Accessed 27 Apr. 2021. Holbrook, Susan. “How to Read (and Write About) Poetry.” Poetry: 603-102-MQ, Marianopolis College, 18 January 2021. Class Handout. Leather. “Did You Know? Humidity Can Affect Leather.” LeatherCult, 8 Apr. 2015, www.leathercult.com/blog/did-you-know-humidity-can-affect-leather/. Munsterberg, Marjorie. “Ekphrasis.” Writing About Art, writingaboutart.org/pages/ekphrasis.html.
