Poetry explication and textual analysis

¶ … 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 the lack of love in her life? Is she blaming everyone else for not listening to love, as the dead do not? It is again, not totally clear.

The imagery is very clear and stark; the objects and people she recalls in this stanza are not pleasant or beautiful, much of it is ugly and disgusting, such as a worm that lived in a cat's ear, presumably ringworm, or some other type of disease. Perhaps, she is comparing love to all of these awful, drab things. In the places we could find love, such as in the everyday objects we enjoy, or the people who are supposed to bring us spiritual clarity or advice, such as the preacher, are disgusting, dangerous, and full of death. She certainly does not have a positive view of religion, or the representative of religion, as she describes the preacher with thin lips, who scuffles, and looks for scapegoats. She did not describe him as pious and sweet, as we might think the average preacher is, and for him to be coming by only to locate a scapegoat is not a positive image at all. Thus, though the topic of the second stanza has shifted slightly from the first, the overall tone of the poem is maintained.

The third stanza returns to the direct conversation or argument to love. She begins with a refusal of her own. Just as the dead refuse to listen, she refuses to remember the dead. The narrator believes that the dead are bored with everything. Are the dead bored with love? Are the dead bored with death? How can the dead be bored if they are dead? Is that not a feeling that only the living have? Most poems, particularly those that are written well and are studied long after the poet is dead, offer more questions than answers, and this poem does just that. Perhaps the author forewarned us of this aspect of questioning, as the poem does begin with a question, so it can follow that the poem will leave us with questions, too.

She returns to her argument to love and attempts to tell love what to do. She, sarcastically and perhaps passive aggressively, tells love to go back and return to the dead in the graveyard, to lie with them wherever their faces might be, and to return to dreams -- bad ones. Love has bad dreams? Love lies with the dead? Perhaps because she does not have love in her life she feels that love is only something that is for the dead, who are also bored with everything. Perhaps it is she who feels dead and feels bored, and that by telling love to go to them, she is telling love to come to her.