Tortured Loneliness of Robert Lowell\'s

¶ … tortured loneliness of Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour"

Robert Lowell's poem "Skunk Hour" is set during the early morning, when skunks are often seen scavenging for food. The poem evokes a mood of desolation. The poet, awake at this lonely hour because of his depression, reflects upon his place in the universe as he gazes at the skunks. The unattractive, ostracized creatures become a symbol of the poet's tortured consciousness.

The poem begins with the poet 'setting the scene' of where he lives. He apparently dwells in Maine, in a place where many aristocratic people reside for vacation. Hyperbolically, he refers to a "hermit/heiress" who buys up all of the eyesore houses to merely let them fall into disrepair, and a "summer millionaire, who seemed to leap from an L.L. Bean catalogue" who has auctioned off his boat (Lowell 1-2; 13-15). The scene then shifts to the poet as he rides in a car at night, alone and feeling disconsolate, in contrast to the initial images of wasteful, decaying privilege conjured up in the first stanzas. As he plays music on his radio, he says he can "hear/my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,/as if my hand were at its throat," metaphorically imagining that his spirit resides in every cell of his body, and using a simile to describe himself strangling that spirit with his hands (26-28). This figurative language suggests a kind of complete yet hidden despair that is driving the poet into the night.

The most potent symbol of the poem is the skunks, which glory in the garbage, with fiery eyes. In the poet's state of alienation, they symbolize humanity -- cold, uncaring, and uncivilized as the mother skunk "jabs her wedge-head in a cup / of sour cream" (45-46). The skunks are a potent contrast between the gentility symbolized by the millionaire's casually auctioned-off yacht, yet like the auctioned boat, they are also a symbol of waste and decay. The skunks' willingness to eat anything is also a contrast with the poet's deeper sense of existential dread and sorrow about his plight, as he sadly listens to "Love, O careless Love...." On the radio, symbolizing his inability to find love in the world (30).

The themes of the poem are alienation, a lack of love, and the base nature of existence. The poet feels alienated from the WASPY, wealthy, and superficial world he describes yet also depressed about its decline. He cannot find love amongst the 'love cars' that lie together -- symbolizing the couples within the cars lying together. He is up at a time when few people are awake who besides teenagers in cars 'making out.' Only the skunks keep him company, and they are only interested in food. The fact that the poet only has skunks to be with symbolizes his isolation, but also the sorry state of humanity in general as the skunk -- like the rich people of Maine and the people making out in cars -- desperately searches for sustenance in an ugly world.