Section 1  Exercise 1 Anne Sexton"s "The Touch".
Many people feel they need special skills to read poetry. It is true that some poems are more difficult to understand than others. In responding to Anne Sexton's poem below, think about the general meaning. What is the poem about? Then think about the feeling. Poems often crystallize an intense emotion, using dynamic, visual images to bring the feeling to life. Try to find words that might convey the emotion(s) of this poem.
Answer the reflection questions below after reading the poem.
The Touch
Anne Sexton
For months my hand had been sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
But when I looked it lay there quietly.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
Like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.
The hand had collapsed,
a small wood pigeon
that had gone into seclusion.
I turned it over and the palm was old,
its lines traced like fine needlepoint
and stitched up into the fingers.
It was fat and soft and blind in places.
Nothing but vulnerable.
And all this is metaphor.
An ordinary hand—just lonely
for something to touch
that touches back.
The dog won't do it.
Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog.
I'm no better than a case of dog food.
She owns her own hunger.
My sisters won't do it.
They live in school except for buttons
and tears running down like lemonade.
My father won't do it.
He comes with the house and even at night
he lives in a machine made by my mother
and well oiled by his job, his job.
The trouble is
that I'd let my gestures freeze.
The trouble was not
in the kitchen or the tulips
but only in my head, my head.
Then all this became history.
Your hand found mine.
Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.
Oh, my carpenter,
the fingers are rebuilt.
They dance with yours.
They dance in the attic and in Vienna.
My hand is alive all over America.
Not even death will stop it,
death shedding her blood.
Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom
and the kingdom come.
From : The Complete Poems/Houghton Mifflin/Copyright permission requested/pending
Discussion questions
1. After describing her hand, the author states "All this is metaphor." In other words, her hand is almost like a person who is going through a hard time. What does looking at her hand reveal about the speaker's state of mind? What emotions or personal problems do her metaphors or images evoke?
2. Comment on the metaphor of the disembodied hand. Where, according to the poem, does the speaker's sense of disembodiment come from? Are there any clues in the poem as to why she has come to feel as she does? What makes people feel lonely and isolated?
3. What do you think the analogy with the clock means?
4. What saves the speaker from her predicament? Can people be 'rescued' in the way she describes? Comment on the intermeshed spiritual/religious imagery. Write any additional thoughts or reactions to this poem.
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