"NOT BAD, DAD, NOT BAD " by Jan Heller Levi the writer is telling us about a father and daughter relationship.The writer uses "swimming" through out the poem to show metaphor of the relationship between the daughter and father. For instance " I think you are most yourself when you're swimming;"(1). This lines shows that using the word swimming means struggle and trying to be the best that you can for me.
I really like this poem because the speaker shows the struggle that one father can have when raising a daughter. " I think how different everything might have been / had I judged your loving / like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly, / your Australian crawl." I noticed this stanza out of all the stanzas because it talks about how the daughter thinks her father is doing everything wrong raising her "every stroke" was different and always wrong.
However, out of everything she understands what really matters. that effort is worth more than anything. Like in the last stanza, " But I always thought I was drowning / in that icy ocean between us, / I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me, / when you were moving as fast as you can." The writer explains that you can only do so much.