An Easy Passage- Julia Copus

This poem portrays an event in a young girl’s life, where she is desperate to be older
than she is. It is arguably about Julia Copus herself, but the poem is written in third
person narration so that the reader is disconnected from the story, but has an open
perspective of the story.

The structure of the poem is free verse, and written in one long stanza. This is done
to show the journey that Copus is trying to take the reader on through the young girl.
The poem also mimics a stream of consciousness in the lengthy description and
structure.
Because it is not broken up into stanzas, we will analyse line by line.

The first line has a lot to analyse in it:

‘Once she is halfway up there, crouched in her bikini’.

The way that the poem begins with the conjunction ‘once’ implies that there is a story
that comes before this narrative, but the reader just has to assume what the story
was. The use of the possessive pronoun ‘she’ does not definitely tell us that she is a
young girl, but the use of the attributive adjective ‘halfway’ represents that she is
‘halfway’ between childhood and adulthood. Her youth is furthermore represented in
the verb ‘crouched’, as this shrinks any height that she has, therefore becoming a
small person. We can see the girl’s desperation to be older than she is already as
she is wearing a ‘bikini’ – this shows that she trying to show off her body like an older
woman would do, but in reality there is nothing to “show off”, apart from her sheer
desperation to be older.
She is crouching on the ‘porch roof of her family’s house’, and the way that Copus
calls it her ‘family’s’ house, and not her own, implies that she does not feel as though
she belongs there. But, she does seem to know the house very well:

‘trembling, / she knows that the one thing she must not do is to think / of the narrow
windowsill, the sharp / drop of the stairwell;’

The verb ‘trembling’ represents that she is worrying about something, and this is
followed by the idea of the ‘sharp drop of the stairwell’. This implies that she is
worried about ‘dropping’, therefore is she jumping off of the porch roof, for instance?
The girl is evidently trying to put her mind off of whatever she is ‘trembling’ about as
Copus says:

‘she must keep her mind / on the friend with whom she is half in love / and who is
waiting for her on the blond / gravel somewhere beneath her, keep her mind / on
her’.

The imperatives of ‘must’ that Copus has used indicates the certainty of the actions
that the girl is going to take. It also represents that she ‘must’ be frightened and she
‘must’ keep her mind on other things. Copus again references to the idea of ‘half’
way through childhood and adulthood as the girl is ‘half in love’ with her friend. This
represents two things: the first is that she is at the pivotal point in childhood that
makes her want to be older, but through the desperation, it just highlights her youth
more. The second is that her emotions are still developing, as she is only ‘half in
An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
love’ instead of simply ‘in love’. The ‘half’ symbolism is reinforced by
the oxymoron ‘blond gravel’, as this represents a balance between two conversing
ideas, much like the balance that the girl is at between childhood and adulthood.
We are now getting the idea that the event being told is the girl is breaking into her
own house:

‘the open window, / the flimsy, hole-punched, aluminium lever / towards which in a
moment she will reach / with the length of her whole body, leaning in / to the warm
flank of the house.’

This quotation concludes the first sentence of the poem, which is thirteen lines into
the poem – “thirteen” becomes important further on in the poem. We can see the
stream of consciousness being shaped by the lack of sentence structure. In addition,
the full stop is a caesura which actually breaks up the flow of the poem, and the
stream of consciousness, that appeared unstoppable until this moment, has been
stopped. The asyndetic list, which in some ways adds to the stream of
consciousness, portrays the girl’s youth. The ‘flimsy, hole-punched, aluminium’
materials that Copus is representing suggests that the girl is flexible, and can easily
get into the house without any help. Had the girl been a little bit older, as she so
desired, this manoeuvre would have been much more difficult.
As she gets ready to go into the house, the girl is ‘still crouching’, and her ‘toes and
fingertips’ have ‘the grains of asphalt’ on them, which is a ‘square of petrified beach.’
The personification of ‘petrified beach’ has been used to represent the fear that the
girl feels about breaking into her own house, and what would happen if she got
caught. The ‘beach’ idea links to the fact that she is in a bikini, and maybe she is
pretending that she is still at the ‘beach’. In fact, earlier when Copus mentioned the
‘blond gravel’, perhaps the girl was seeing the gravel as sand on a beach.
The girl’s youth juxtaposed with her desire to grow up is reinforced with reference to
her body, and the way it is developing:
‘Her tiny breasts / rest lightly on her thighs.’

The way that her ‘tiny breasts’ are represented to be ‘on her thighs’ shows the
difference between her youth (the former) and her development into adulthood (the
latter). Her youth is furthermore represented in a pivotal interrogative sentence:
‘What can she know / of the way the world admits us less and less / the more we
grow?’

We can see a visual evolvement of the world in this interrogative through the lack of
punctuation. The way that this question is not broken up at all,
with enjambment helping the flow, we can see how the girl is growing alongside the
‘world’. However, when Copus says that the world admits us ‘less and less’
juxtaposes the growth and development of the world and of the girl, but the way they
admit us ‘less and less the more we grow’ implies that we are actually growing as the
world gets smaller, so we are outgrowing the world. But, the girl does not know of
this, otherwise Copus would not be questioning ‘what can she know’.
The two girls who are at the house are now ‘lit, as if from within’ and the ‘first one’s
ears’ has gold earring studs in them. This represents that she is trying to appear
older, and her earrings conjoined with the bikini that she is wearing overemphasises
her youth, rather than making her look older.
An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
The ‘grey / eye of the street’ cannot see the two young girls climbing into the house,
as it is too far away. The personification of the road here indicates that the street is a
hidden spy and can see everything people do while in eyeshot, but once out of shot,
they are free. They are also ‘far away from the mother / who does not trust her
daughter with a key,’. We now question why the mother does not allow her daughter
to have a key to her own house. The way that the mother has forbidden her daughter
to have a key to the house makes her have more of a motive to break into the house,
so we could infer that by ‘not trusting’ her daughter, for whatever reason, will provoke
and worsen her daughter’s behaviour because she will resent her mother for not
letting her have a key.
Copus uses alliteration of the letter ‘f’ to represent the repetitive desperation that the
girl has not only to get into the house, but perhaps to win her mother’s trust:

‘far too, most far, from the flush-faced secretary’.

The diacope ‘far too, most far’ does not make sense if it were to be said in an
everyday conversation, but perhaps Copus has used it to illustrate how the girl feels
about life: she is physically ‘far too’ from adulthood, but she is emotionally ‘most far’
from childhood, and she thinks that she deserves her mother’s trust. The ‘flush-faced
secretary’ could be the girl’s mother, and this person is also ‘head full of the evening
class / she plans to take, or the trip of a lifetime’. Perhaps the girl resents her mother
for not being around very much, and the ‘evening class’ and the ‘trip of a lifetime’ is a
metaphor for her mother’s absence. The ‘trip of a lifetime’ is a cliché, which perhaps
represents the idea that the girl’s mother is a cliché.
Superstition is now brought into the poem because, indeed, we are now told that the
girl is ‘thirteen if she’s a day’ – the ‘thirteen’ links back to the thirteen line sentence
earlier in the poem. This declarative sentence is also a parenthesis between two
hyphens; the sentence, including the parenthesis, reads ‘…the stirring omens of the
astrology column / at a girl – thirteen if she’s a day – standing / in next to nothing in
the driveway opposite,’. The way that Copus has included the superstitious ideas
such as omens, astrology and the unlucky number thirteen represents the idea that
the girl believes in luck and superstitions, and being thirteen has made her feel on
the fence about everything, and it provokes her more to want to grow up so that she
is no longer unlucky and ‘thirteen’. The way that she is wearing ‘next to nothing’ is
also a slight cliché, and one that parents may say to their children if they are
dressing inappropriately. Therefore, this reinforces the girl’s desperation to grow up
because when she is older, being in a bikini would no longer be ‘next to nothing’ or
inappropriate.
Copus uses imagery of the girls’ immaturity as the poem begins to come to a close,
for instance ‘pale calf’. The ‘calf’ is not only a body part, but it is a baby cow, which
represents the idea that the girl is a “baby” and young. Also, the connotations of the
attributive adjective ‘pale’ indicates that she is still growing and she has not
blossomed completely yet. However, her immaturity is contrasted by the ‘silver
anklet’ that she was wearing, as this suggests expense and maturity; the anklet is
‘shimmering‘ as she climbs into the house.
We can tell that the girl is not quite tall enough yet to be able to reach where she
needs to to elegantly get into the house. She has ‘an outstretched foot’ to help her
get into the house. Copus says that her foot did ‘catch the sunlight briefly like the /
An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
flash of armaments’, and the onomatopoeia of ‘flash’ is indicative of the sudden way
that Copus says that the girl was
‘dropping gracefully into the shade of the house.’

We were so engrossed in the idea of her childhood versus adulthood, with the
juxtaposition of her ‘outstretched foot’ and her ‘silver anklet’, to notice that she was
actually succeeding in ‘dropping gracefully’ into the house. The use of the noun
‘shade’ represents the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the house, but this is the
girl’s home, so she deserved to ‘drop gracefully’ into ‘the shade’. However, the fact
that she had to ‘drop gracefully into the shade’ instead of using a key implies that her
mother does not believe that she belongs there, and the oxymoron of ‘dropping
gracefully’ implies that neither does the girl think she belongs.

Themes:
 Childhood.
 Feeling Lost.
 Lack of Trust.
 Balance.
 Rebellion.
 Immaturity versus Maturity.
 Confusion.
 Age.

Analysis of An Easy Passage 

Lines 1-9 
In the first lines of ‘An Easy Passage’ enter into the narrative in media res, or at the mid-point
of an action. One of the main characters of this piece, who is immediately revelled to be a
girl, was on the porch roof of her house. She was only wearing her bikini. These two
elements together speaker to a vulnerability. It represents what was then her current mental
state and allows the reader to see into her mind. 
It is clear that she was not immune to the risk inherent in her actions. The speaker who is
telling the story of this girl, informs the listener that the girl was “trembling.” She was afraid
and doing her best to remain focused on what she was trying to do. The speaker knows that
the girl was trying not to,
[…] think
of the narrow windowsill, the sharp
drop of the stairwell;
The young girl was trying her best to achieve whatever vague goal she had in mind while on
the roof. Part of the interest of this initial scenario is the fact that it is hard to tell what
An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
exactly she was trying to do. Is she climbing back in the house? Or trying to get out?
Whichever it may be, it’s a struggle. This is seen through her attempts to block out any fears
associated with being on the roof and focus on the task, and the friend “whom she is half in
love” who is still on the ground. 
The fact that this detail, the girl’s possible romantic interest in her female friend, is
mentioned so quickly and without any fanfare, speaks to the overall complexity of the
situation. This attachment is just one part of life the girl has to deal with. 
 

Lines 10-19 
In the next lines the speaker continues to describe the roof and the girl’s attempts to reach
the “aluminum lever.” This statement is followed by a few more sensory moments in which
the reader is meant to empathize with this girl’s struggle. There is mention of the “warm
flank of the house” and it is impossible to forget the fact that the girls were in bikinis. The
heat was an integral part of the scene, continually blazing down on them as another point of
pressure. There is a moment in the thirteenth line in which the speaker, 
steadies herself, still crouching, the grains of the asphalt
hot beneath her toes and fingertips,
a square of petrified beach.
This is very vivid writing and brings up any number of physical associations. It is
uncomfortable, but at the same time it references the beach, even if the beach is “petrified.”
A close reader should not ignore the references to sand and the fact that this poem focuses
heavily on the passage of time. The same heat that was radiating down from the sky was
also coming up into her feet and hands as an additional separate point of tension. 
The girl was crouched down on the roof, readying herself to grab onto that “aluminum lever.”
The line referring to the girl’s “tiny breasts” is immediately followed by a question that gets
to the root of the poem’s theme. The speaker asks what the girl could possibly know about
the “way the world admits us less and less / the more we grow?” She is speaking on the
ways that the world becomes harder to understand and more difficult to contend with as one
ages. 
 

Lines 20-30 
In the next lines it seems that the two girls have yet to reach a stage where they are
confronted by the truth of the world. They were still illuminated with some of that childish
light that is soon to dissipate. It could be seen in their “hair and the gold stud / earrings in
the first one’s ears” 
After a semi-colon, the speaker dives into the adult world. It is much drabber and quite gray.
She moves from the workers in the factory to the “flush-faced secretary” A reader should
take note of the use of alliteration in lines six and seven. 
electroplating factory over the road,
far too, most far, from the flush-faced secretary
An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
The consonant sound “f” is repeated five times in this short span. There is also another
interesting moment of repetition with the word “far” while the speaker is describing the day
to day life of the factory workers and the secretary. This is not an appealing future, but it is a
part of the one all young people are headed towards. 
 

Lines 31-38 
In the next lines the secretary becomes part of the larger narrative. She looked up from
where she was working and dreaming of a trip and saw the girl standing in “the driveway
opposite. The secretary was able to see a large amount of detail from her position. She
could tell that the girl was hardly wearing anything. She had one hand on her stomach and
another shielding her eyes from the sun. 
The fact that the girl on the driveway struggled to see the girl on the roof is quite symbolic,
as is the light itself. The difficulty represents the general struggle these young women are
about to go through. With her sight blocked, it was hard for her to see what was going on. It
was also hard for her to make out everything her friend was doing on the roof. She remained
below while the other girl climbed.

Lines 34-38
The speaker also says that the secretary was able to see the “silver anklet” on the ankle of
the girl on the roof. It also reflected light. Here again is another moment in which the young
girls are connected to a glowing or general luminescence. It is also interesting to consider
the historical symbolism connected with silver. It is associated with things considered to be
precious and is sometimes connected with femininity. 
Another part of the scene the secretary was able to see was the girl on the ground watching
the, 
[…] five neat shimmering
oyster-painted toenails of an outstretched foot
These were the toes of her friend climbing on the house. They “shimmer[ed],” continuing the
allusions to light, youth, beauty and hope. She saw them catch the sunlight and then, fitting
in perfectly with the allegory that has been running through the text, disappear. They were at
once like a “flash of armaments,” or a final defence against the coming decades of
adulthood. But soon that was gone too and the girl “drop[ed] gracefully into the shade of the
house.” 
‘An Easy Passage’ does not end as depressingly as it might. The fact that she moved
gracefully and was still sporting the painted nails indicates that there might be some part of
adulthood that isn’t as dreary as the factory described in the middle of the poem. That being
said, it is impossible to ignore that dark image and the unstoppable progression of time.
Even if the girls do not end up in a similar place, but are happier, leading fuller lives,
something will still be lost. The light of youth and freedom will dim until it is completely out. 
 An Easy Passage- Julia Copus

‘An Easy Passage’ by Julia Copus explores the contrast between an innocent and naive,
young girl and an older woman who works as a secretary. The poem’s central concern is
the exploration of the fleeting period between girlhood and womanhood.

STRUCTURE

 One continual stanza – gives the poem a flow feel suggesting freedom. Life is continuous and
has no said structure and this relates to how the girl sees her life ahead of her.
 The use of tenses also informs the poem’s structure: it’s written in the present tense, but the
reference to astrology, and the presence of the older secretary, as well as the mention of the girl’s
mother, are reminders of what the future might hold in store.
LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES

 Repetition – ‘for now’

 Rhetorical question – narrative voice
 Juxtaposition – with the “flush-faced secretary” suggests what is ahead for the girl, it hints at
the dullness of adult life
 Rites of passage and this link to the title
 Transitional stage – “halfway”, “for now” – halfway between child and adult, it could also be
suggestive of a step forward in life
 Contrasts – up and down, indoors and outdoors. The use of opposites creates a sense of things
being on the cusp: Sun is contrasted with shade, the freedom of the young girl with the adult world
of work, while the girl is described as being ‘half in love’ with her friend
 Narrative voice – the narrator remains unobtrusive for most of the poem, her point of view is
important. The scene is viewed through her eyes as if through a movie camera, zooming in for
close-ups on different characters and allowing us breif glimpses into their lives
 Simile – “like the flash of armaments” – this is another word for military weapons so could
suggest that the girls are destructive or harmful (perhaps to themselves because they are so naive)
or that they are unpredictable and ‘electric’
IMAGERY

 The poem is one of balance and poise with the girl’s physical situation – with the contrasting
imagery. It symbolises her stage in life
 This balance is further informed by the single question which comes almost exactly halfway
through the poem in which the narrator, for one time only, comments directly on the action
 Subtle patterns of imagery which help bind the poem together
 Light – “catch the sunlight briefly like the flash of armaments before dropping gracefully into
the shade of the house”, “shimmering-oyster painted toenails”
 Colour – “gold stud”, “long, grey eye of the street”. Both the light and colour imagery
describes the girls. It helps to convey both their delicate physical presence and the fragility of this
particular moment in time
TONE

 Conversational – the long, enjambed lines provide a naturally easy flow

CONCLUSION
 An Easy Passage- Julia Copus
 After taking the poem away from the girl and concentrating on the woman who works in the
factory, the narrative voice brings the poem back to the young girl and describes her as as an
almost mermaid like figure; she shimmers like the scales of a fish and then retreats back inside –
representative of how this girl who has such innocence is not always present and it foreshadows
how she will eventually disappear. The silver will turn grey.
The poem could be said to be almost sexual, with mentions of “tiny breasts”. However
because it is about such a young girl, it is more innocent than sexualising her body. It’s
more appreciating of her youthful beauty which disappears as she grows older until
she’ll be stuck in a laborious job with an evening class as her only excitement –
scheduled freedom.

Poems that would be good to link to this would be…

 To My Nine-Year Old Self – ideas of the utopia of childhood compared to adult life
 History – perspective
 The Map Woman – reminiscent, looking back at childhood through older eyes
 The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled – making journeys (from youth to adult life)
 A Leisure Centre is a Temple of Learning – sensual imagery, young and naive girl