Essay on "Explication Poem"

Essay 4 pages (1337 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Curse Against Elegies

Beginning with the title, the reader should know that this poem will not be a happy or joyous one. Curses are wishes, words, even spells that others cast upon people so that pain, misfortune, and general negative things will befall them. Elegies are typically poems of lament, of sadness, with a sort of song quality about them. "A Curse Against Elegies" then is a wish for harm to come upon this particular form of poetry.

The poem begins with a question by the author or narrator to the abstraction of love, as if love were a person with whom we could converse physically, but certainly, anyone who has been on the bad side of love has thought or spoken words or questions to love, wondering why or what. "Oh, love, why do we argue like this?" is the first line of this poem. The question implies a poor relationship with love in which there is constant arguing. The narrator does not converse with love, or even debate with love -- the narrator argues with love. The author is tired of love's "pious talk." Pious talk, or to be pious is to be devoted and to be conspicuously religious, including the act of worship. The narrator is sick of this kind of talk from love, but we do not know about what exactly -- about love itself? Is the narrator sick of the pious talk from love and about love? In any case, the narrator is done with the arguing and done with the piety. Perhaps the narrator expresses the need to be done with talk of love and love in general.

Moving on into the first stanza, the narrator claims that she is tired of dead people and tired of love trying to communicate with the dead. She claims that the dead do not listen, or rather refuse to listen, and that love should leave them alone. She urges love to move away from the dead, to get out of the graveyard because the dead are "busy being dead." (Sexton, line 7) The remainder of the stanza implies some of the author's/narrator's thoughts about life and about death. The death, apparently, are just as busy with death as the living are busy with life. In some way, life goes on, even during death, insofar there are things to keep the dead occupied and too busy to pay any attention to or listen to the voice of love; therefore, love's attempts to communicate to the dead or with the dead are futile because they are too busy whatever one does in the afterlife.

The author is telling love what to do, which goes against how many people perceive the nature of love to be like. People perceive love to be something that overwhelms and controls a person, something with which there is no reasoning. Love has a power all its own that people cannot tame or control, yet with these words, the author tries to do just that -- to exert power and control over a force that cannot be by its very nature. This is illuminating with respect to why the narrator and love are constantly arguing.

The second stanza begins with placing blame on others, on in fact, everyone else. The narrator blames alcohol, nails, feathers, even a stain of mud on the doorstep. It is unclear who she is blaming for what. It is possible she is not referring to herself, but reciting some common things that people issue blame on. The first stanza was clearly from her perspective and in her voice about herself, but this second stanza is unclear. She mentions that a preacher with thin lips is also to blame, "who refused to call/except once on a flea-ridden day/when he came scuffling in through the yard/looking for a scapegoat." (Sexton, lines 14 -- 17) When the preacher came, the narrator hid in the kitchen under a bag of rags. Is she blaming these objects and this person for… READ MORE

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