A turning point comes in the fifth sestet and, to signal it, Lowell takes as his first line the famous “Una noche oscura” of St. John of the Cross, another dour poet/mystic: “One dark night”. This line begins the first of two consecutive sestets that are concerned with corporal love, bracketing a middle line that announces, to no reader’s surprise, “My mind’s not right.” The second of these sestets moves from a maudlin song refrain to a frankly depressive, almost suicidal pose: “I hear / my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell, / as if my hand were at its throat. . . .” and ends with “I myself am hell; / nobody’s here –“, which is a quotation from Satan in Book IV of Paradise Lost.

Enter the titular skunks: as a parenthetical predicate to the final line of the preceding sestet (“nobody’s here –“), the poet corrects the apparently psychological meaning of “nobody’s here –” to refer to physical presence, noting that in fact there is someone here, namely a family of skunks.

The final two sestets are among the most visually powerful images in poetry with the paradoxically high drama one would not expect from skunks. The hungry skunks “march on their soles up Main Street” in search of food with fiery red eyes as the poet, in response to their upward march, stands “on top / of our back steps” and takes a deep breath of the “rich air”, watching the mother skunk jab her head into a cup of sour cream–a mother skunk who, in a fitting yet curiously ambiguous final line, “will not scare.”

This is one of my favorite poems for a number of reasons. The honesty that eventually surfaces–the poem is after all about the self-recognition of a mind that “is not right”–is stark. It confronts the reader with the admission and dares him or her to probe into the poet’s reading of the persons and events around him. The poet’s choice of skunks as an implied comparison of his affectual state, one that feels isolated, a pariah among fellow animals, is stunning. The last lines are assertive and, one hopes for the poet’s sake, encouraging, as though the narrator finds in the skunks’ indomitable nature a source of self-reliance. As opposed to the dark “red fox stain” covering Blue Hill in the third sestet, red now promises a more optimistic interpretation, describing as it does the skunks’ defiant eyes: “moonstruck eyes’ red fire”.

As gloomy as the tone is, the poet cannot refrain from puns, another trace of his reluctance to give up poetic creativity in the face of depression. Lowell describes the Ford as a Tudor (two door). The love cars “lay together, hull to hull,” enjoying the double entendre of “lay.” The skunks “march on their soles [read “souls”] up Main Street” under the Trinitarian Church.

The economy and denseness of this poem is remarkable. Within 48 lines one encounters many of the colors of the rainbow (we have white, blue, orange, red) with a clever use of red as a focal point for a possible mood shift, with the second instance subverting the meaning of the first, as mentioned above. The puns of course add semantic value. We also have references and implicit indictments of physical love and the church as organized religion (the poet’s Ford climbs “the hill’s skull,” i.e., Golgotha, when he begins his voyeuristic watch for “love-cars”; the skunks’ “white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire” contrast with “the chalk-dry and spar spire of the Trinitarian Church.”)

Much of the compressed effect derives from the force of the last lines–often spondaic–in the sestets, telegraphic lines that reinforce the gravity of the drear poetic commentary. The sequential staccato lines are: “she’s in her dotage”; “and lets them fall”; “A red fox stain covers Blue Hill”; “he’d rather marry”; “My mind’s not right”; “nobody’s here”; “of the Trinitarian Church”; “and will not scare.” The last line, “and will not scare” is reminiscent of the ending of the last line of Tennyson’s Ulysses: “[To strive to seek to find] and not to yield.” Strength and meaning are found within, in one’s self, not in the decadent civilization we see in the first four sestets.

This poem is dedicated to Lowell’s contemporary and friend, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), who wrote “The Armadillo” (1957), inscribed to Robert Lowell. Both are poems about animals outré even in the animal kingdom, quadriped analogies to dissident and isolated poets, and both poets depict them as defiant and insouciant rebels worthy of human attention.

Read the Poem Online

Source Life Studies
Publisher Random House/Vintage
Edition 1959
Place Published New York
Miscellaneous The book in which this poem appeared won the National Book Award.
A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. 
Web photo of Robert Lowell created from an original from Wiki Commons.

One of the most horrifying events of that year was the prisoner revolt at the Attica State Prison in upstate New York in early September. I did not live in New York at the time and have only a vague recollection of reading the newspaper reports of what happened. But ask anyone living in New York who was at least 15 years old at the time and they will tell you that they have vivid memories of what transpired over the five days from September 9-13. In this extraordinary book, Heather Ann Thompson recounts in all its gory detail the prisoner uprising, the bloody retaking of the prison by state troopers, and the nearly thirty years of investigation and legal wrangling that occurred in its wake.

By the late summer of 1971, there had been prisoner rebellions in state penitentiaries across the country including a nearby high security facility in Auburn NY. There was increasing tension and escalating prisoner protests against the inhumane conditions in all prisons including overcrowded cells, limited access to food and fresh air, and routine brutal treatment at the hands of the correction officers. Finally, Attica Prison erupted on September 9 after a minor skirmish between guards and prisoners. The prisoners took 38 hostages and over a thousand prisoners escaped their cells and crowded into the prison yard. They created a communal space to take care of each other that was equipped with meager resources. There was a central meeting area for the leaders of the uprising. They created a human shield around the hostages to protect them from harm.  

Over the next four days, there were intense negotiations between prison officials and the prisoners. A team of observers including Tom Wicker was  brought in at the request of the prisoners to serve as witnesses and act as potential mediators. Finally, after negotiations fell apart over the prisoner demand for amnesty, the troopers, without warning, dropped tear gas cannisters from helicopters and stormed the yard. Tragically, when the dust had settled, 32 prisoners and 11 hostages had been killed by bullets fired by the troopers. This terrifying sequence of events is described in the first third of the book. The remaining part details how prison wardens destroyed critical forensic evidence and collaborated with state politicians up the chain to Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s office to portray the events as a successful suppression of a radical-supported attack against the state. They solicited false testimony and pursued a one-sided prosecution of the prisoners for the murder of one guard and several prisoners. There are too many villains in the story but also some true heroes – a coroner who refused to back down from his post-mortem examination showing that all the victims were killed by gunfire, knowing that only the state troopers had firearms. The prisoners who confronted the legal system, defense lawyers willing to take up the cause of the prisoners, a brave state lawyer who was an essential whistleblower, all were vital in the pursuit of truth. At the end, the justice system failed nearly everyone involved, and Attica Prison remained an important part of the New York State correction system. The only monument is a stone at the entrance to the prison memorializing the hostages who died. 

This book is over 500 pages long. Along with another thick book, titled A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, it sat on a shelf in our apartment forever. For some reason that I cannot explain, I picked the book up recently and could not pull myself away from this intense and horrifying story. For more than a decade, Heather Thompson immersed herself in the archives and interviews with key actors in the Attica uprising story. She unearthed the bloody shirt that had been removed from two victims of the siege. Her research is evident on every page.

There are two deeply disturbing underlying themes in the book. The impact of politics and the sheer desire to retain power had a distorting influence on how the uprising was handled and how it was investigated. After watching Nixon get elected as the law-and-order candidate, Rockefeller felt compelled to take the same stance. Consequently, he refused to get involved in the negotiations or visit the prison, something that may have lowered the temperature and enabled a peaceful resolution of the siege. It is disquieting to read how many politicians and officials put self-interest and survival ahead of the pursuit of truth.   

In the immediate aftermath of the uprising, systemic changes were made to improve the well-being of the prisoners such as limits on the amount of time they could be put in solitary confinement, more time outside each day, better food, and access to legal resources. But over time, things slowly began to revert and look more like 1971 than 2021. There has been a continued growth in the number of prisons and a prison population that is larger than in any other Western country. There is disproportionate incarceration of Black and Hispanic men, often for mild offenses that would not warrant detention in a high security prison. Mistreatment of prisoners, unfortunately, is more the rule than the exception. Many explanations are offered – political positions, self-interest, and institutional inertia. But it does underscore how hard it is to make change real.  

As the country as a whole and the medical profession in particular undergo scrutiny about racist attitudes and practices, this book is a reminder that it will take an extended and concerted effort to achieve equal treatment for citizens in the penal system and in the health system. It may be easy for some to justify harsh treatment of criminals in prison or poor people living in squalid conditions. But we need to remind ourselves that a society can only be judged based on how it treats the most unfortunate within it. This applies across the board, housing, education, and healthcare.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy 
Heather Ann Thompson 
Miscellaneous Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History 
Publisher Pantheon Books 
Place Published New York 
Edition 2016 
Page Count 724 

Web image by Larry Farr 

Soto explores his uncertain status in relation to his family, and to the larger society in “You’ve Gone Too Far.” Detailing the “evolution” of his siblings and cousins, who “were no longer Mexican rednecks,” but “held down jobs” and “stopped jamming parking meters for free time,” Soto describes how his family nevertheless feels uncomfortable about him. “My family feared that I had evolved too far.” Drunken Christmas horseplay with his brothers reveals their distaste and distrust of his intellectualism and sophisticated clothes. “They tore my book in half, / and stripped me of my Italian belt.” Only when they have succeeded in making him sick/drunk do they accept him (at least temporarily) back into the family fold. The poem illustrates well the difficulties that can arise when one member of a family elects to live life differently from the rest yet wants to maintain a relationship with its members. The situation has resonance for the children of immigrants, for children who are more educated than their parents, or for anyone who has chosen a life unfamiliar to family or friends.  

“TV in Black and White” focuses on the role of television (in the 1950s/1960s) in shaping, reflecting, and failing to reflect American society. Soto remembers his childhood in which “[we] were sentenced to watch / the rich on TV …”. Sitcom characters played golf, ate steak, and dressed fashionably (the Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet). “While he swung / we hoed / Fields flagged with cotton . . .”  

Now life is for many relatively luxurious, “Piano lessons for this child, / Braces for that one — “ “But if the electricity / fails in this town, / a storefront might / be smashed /” “and if someone steps out / with a black-and-white TV, / it’s because we love you Donna, / we miss you Ozzie.”  

Soto’s critique is still relevant today. The ubiquity of television and streaming, even in low-income households, confers enormous power on the images and narratives presented. Now there are many more options for viewers of different cultural and economic backgrounds. Yet the dominant culture still exerts a major influence. The gap between representation and reality continues to be an important source of social dissatisfaction and unrest. 

Gary Soto 
https://garysoto.com/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gary-soto#tab-poems

Mexicans Begin Jogging
Online: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/by-gary-soto/  
New and Selected Poems, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995, p. 51

You’ve Gone Too Far 
Published in Junior College, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1997, p.24

TV in Black and White 
New and Selected Poems, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995, p.50

Web image by Jr Korpa