Hate Poem
By Julie Sheehan
I chose this poem because I like the way it sounds. I like the way it flows in a free-verse. I like the way the author, Sheehan, is so specific in describing how much hate she holds. I think, though, that the main reason I like this poem so much is because it made me laugh out loud (literally!) the first time I read it. Not many poems are can be silly like this one.
Getting down to poetic devices, this poem has some alliteration – mainly in the third stanza. Examples include, “the goldfish of my genius,” and “aorta….ancestors”. There is only one simile that I could find, and that was the last sentence of the poem: “Breathlessly, likes two idealists in a broken submarine.” The speaker uses this simile to compare her need for whoever “you” is to the need of her lungs for air and the way an idealist would be optimistic in a fatal situation.
I found there to be two tones to this poem: choleric and forthright. The speaker seems to be extremely angry at whoever she is speaking to, exemplifying an angry mood and choleric tone. I feel like the speaker is also very forthright, as well. She doesn’t hesitate to express just how much hate she has.
The first stanza of the poem is much like an introduction. The speaker starts off by bluntly declaring her hate for “you.” Followed by this are descriptions of her specific body parts that demonstrate her hate to “you” even more. I believe the speaker uses minuscule movements as descriptions (such as the flick of a wrist and the sound of bones – things you wouldn’t think about) to emphasize the point that she hates “you.” The repetition in this poem is obviously the words “hate(s) you,” which occur in almost every line.
My favorite part of the poem is the second stanza that says, “Look out! Fore! I hate you!” As if the author didn’t already mention her hate enough in the first stanza! I think this line was meant to be funny, but I’m not sure….
The third stanza gives the reader more of an insight as to who “you” is. When I read the line, “My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases hates you,” I thought maybe “you” is a teacher or professor of some sort, and the speaker is a student.
The fourth stanza reminds me of a poem we read in class, called Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins. In Collins’ poem, the main point was that readers look too deep into poetry and miss the obvious meaning. In this one-line stanza, I feel like the speaker is saying that like a closed window is just a closed window, nothing more, there is no deeper feeling beyond hate for “you”. In other words, the speaker is trying very hard to get the point across that her only feeling towards “you” is hate.
The fifth and last stanza of the poem made me change my whole perspective of the entire poem. The situations the speaker describes as being hateful seem more like loving to me. For example, the speaker describes her snuggling with “you” as hate and her pleasant morning greeting to “you” as hate. The last line (which I described before as a simile) portrays a type of love that the speaker is portraying towards “you”, when the speaker says her hate, “can never have enough of you.”
I think this poem is about a husband and wife relationship. The wife really loves the husband, but he is also the most irritating thing in the world. Deep down, the wife loves the husband a LOT. She’s just covering it up with all this ‘hate’ nonsense. J
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