Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Fanny Howe’s "Unday" is a brief but enigmatic poem that plays with negation, absence, and existential uncertainty. The title itself, "Unday," suggests a disruption of time—a day that is unmade, undone, or outside the conventional calendar. This theme of erasure and liminality runs throughout the poem, creating a space where identity, sustenance, and even the structure of reality seem to waver.

The opening line, "From no nowhere not near the sea," is a tangle of negations, dislocating the speaker from any identifiable place. The phrase "no nowhere" emphasizes a void, a place so undefined that even negation seems redundant. This sense of spatial ambiguity continues with "on blue field flax," which juxtaposes an image of natural beauty with the surreal detachment of the previous phrase. Flax is a plant used for linen and linseed oil, but here it appears almost abstract, a field of color rather than a concrete place.

The next lines introduce a cemetery, "absolutely solitary," reinforcing the theme of isolation. The use of "you and you and a third" introduces a fragmented presence—perhaps an allusion to the Holy Trinity or an indication that identities blur and multiply in this undefined landscape. The mention of a "third" complicates the sense of self and other, suggesting an elusive presence that remains unnamed.

The poem then moves into a setting of deprivation: "of a pound of bread / for supper in the refectory." The refectory—a communal dining hall, often in religious institutions—evokes monastic discipline, suggesting asceticism or spiritual hunger. Bread, a staple of both physical and religious nourishment, appears diminished here, measured in fractions rather than abundance. The scarcity of food underscores a deeper existential hunger, one that borders on despair: "where I would die of hunger / if you--if soon--if on this unday--one." The repetition of "if" creates a sense of suspended action, as though the speaker is caught in an unresolved moment, waiting for an unspecified event or salvation.

The final line, "undoing would be undone," loops back to the title’s theme of reversal. The phrase suggests the hope—or impossibility—of erasing past actions, of reclaiming something lost. The ambiguity of whether "undoing" refers to death, suffering, time, or identity itself remains unresolved. The poem’s structure, with its fractured syntax and cascading conditionals, leaves the reader in a state of uncertainty, mirroring the speaker’s own liminal existence.

In "Unday," Howe crafts a meditation on absence, hunger, and the desire for erasure. The poem resists clear interpretation, instead evoking a space where time dissolves and the self is unmoored. The repetition of negation and uncertainty reflects a struggle to grasp meaning in a void—whether spiritual, existential, or personal. The poem’s brevity and sparseness reinforce its themes, leaving the reader suspended in its haunting sense of unfulfilled longing.

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