Sixth Grade

Howe, Marie

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa
  • Date of entry: Nov-25-1998


This narrative poem relates the speaker's memory of neighborhood boys tying her and a friend "spread-eagled" to a garage door and teasing them in a way that borders on being sexually threatening. The speaker tried (and eventually succeeded) in convincing the boys to let her and her friend go. The poem subtly explores the shifting relations between girls and boys--and between girls and themselves--on the border of childhood and adulthood, focusing on the tensions of girls moving from seeming sexlessness to sexuality and womanhood, and the prices that might entail.


What is especially interesting about this poem is the speaker's description of her attempts to convince the boys to stop tormenting her and her friend. First, after they pull up her friend's dress, making her cry, the speaker says she "became a boy again, and shouted Stop." When that doesn't work, she becomes "a girl-boy," appealing specifically to her best-friend's brother, Charlie. When that too fails, she looks directly at Charlie and speaking "more softly" says his name. This "feminine" appeal works, and Charlie orders the boys to untie the girls.

Primary Source

What the Living Do


W. W. Norton

Place Published

New York