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Unread 05-12-2014, 12:17 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I think the turn is in the couplet. I know the cats were introduced in the first line, but they're not spoken of again until the couplet, and by then you almost forget about the cats as the poem becomes a lecture about the infirmities and indignities of old age -- and one can't really know where it's heading or what it has to do with cats. For me, at least, the return of the cats at the end came as a happy surprise, enough to constitute a turn.

I don't think the move to the second person is much of a turn, though, because the switch to "your" may seem, on first reading, to be a general "your," meaning much the same as "one," and it's only when we finish reading that we see that the poet was addressing the children directly. But even if it were clear from the start, I think of a turn as being more a turn in logic and thought, not just a shift in address.
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