Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Over Coffee" is a poem about interpretation—of art, of politics, of human emotion—and the tension between intellectual analysis and deeply felt experience. It captures a moment of dissonance at a social gathering, where the speaker wrestles with their own understanding of a film, feeling at odds with the detached, academic discussion around them. The poem moves through layers of thought and hesitation, culminating in an unguarded expression of belief in memory, sentiment, and love as acts of defiance against loss.

The poem opens mid-thought: “What you mean to say about the film is that / it moved you.” The phrase “What you mean to say” sets up an immediate contrast between internal feeling and external expression. There is an impulse to communicate, but it is already complicated by self-awareness. The speaker does not simply say what they mean; they mean to say it, indicating a hesitation, an uncertainty about whether or how to articulate their response.

The imagery that follows is intensely visual, cinematic: “the woman alone at the end / beside a burning field of cane, her brother / carried off in a covered truck to be tortured / shot.” The starkness of this scene reflects the raw emotional weight the speaker feels. The horror of political violence is presented without elaboration, the fate of the brother assumed but not confirmed—“tortured / shot.” The slash, rather than “and” or “or,” emphasizes the inevitability, the brutality, the way such things happen so routinely that distinguishing between them feels unnecessary.

Yet, the speaker immediately complicates this reading: “That you’re not sure but think / it wasn’t about politics but bedrooms / and kitchens. Hands and eyes.” This is a crucial moment. The film, though centered on violence, is not about violence for the speaker—it is about intimacy, about how personal and political trauma merge in domestic spaces. "Bedrooms / and kitchens" evoke not just ordinary life but the places where relationships are most deeply felt, where tenderness and grief unfold away from grand historical narratives. The details—“Hands and eyes”—suggest an embodied experience, one that is communicated through touch and gaze rather than discourse.

The next lines offer an almost mystical observation: “The light of dusk / because it stops us on the stairs and makes us / bless a child earnestly chiding her doll / or cherish a crow lifting from an oak.” Dusk is a liminal time, a moment of transition that invites reflection. The examples that follow—a child absorbed in play, a crow’s movement through the sky—are small but profound, instances where beauty, fragility, and significance merge. The connection between these moments and the film is emotional rather than intellectual; they share a capacity to stop us, to momentarily pull us out of ourselves.

The speaker then articulates something deeper: “when we feel tender and vast / and brittle because the emotions that are hybrids / of anguish and elation are the mediums for spirit’s / binding to flesh.” This passage suggests that such moments—whether watching a film or witnessing a fleeting, ordinary beauty—create a bridge between the physical and the spiritual. The phrase “hybrids / of anguish and elation” describes a complex emotional state, one where joy and sorrow are intertwined, where grief and love coexist. The idea that these feelings bind spirit to flesh speaks to the necessity of emotional depth, of fully inhabiting experience.

Then the contrast: “But your husband and friends, / up on genres and the lineage of dictators, / wielding jargon like the clipped / phrases of birds who know what the trills signify.” The “but” is significant—while the speaker has been absorbed in the personal and poetic, their companions have taken a more academic approach. Their knowledge of “genres and the lineage of dictators” suggests that they have contextualized the film in terms of its political and artistic influences, reducing it to a kind of intellectual exercise. The comparison to birds—“who know what the trills signify”—adds a layer of irony. Birds communicate instinctively, without reflection, whereas these people speak with the assurance of expertise but without emotional connection.

Their interpretation follows: “They speak of fades, Marxist insinuations, / the opening scene’s allegory of whore as El Salvador, / fought over, pierced, beaten by men.” This reading of the film is detached, analytical, even cynical. It is not incorrect—certainly, a political reading is valid—but it moves away from sentiment, away from the visceral human loss that the speaker feels. The language is almost clinical, reducing the suffering of the film’s characters to symbols.

The speaker notes this shift: “They travel / staunchly in the other direction, away from sentiment, / from the image of the woman on her knees / at the edge of a field turning orange, into history.” The phrase “staunchly” suggests a kind of determination, a deliberate rejection of feeling in favor of theory. The speaker, by contrast, is fixated on the woman herself—not as an allegory, but as a person left behind. The others have moved “into history”—into a broader, intellectualized framework—but the speaker cannot let go of “the facts of smoke, the muslin dress / given by her husband, her stare.” These are intimate details, small and specific, weighted with personal loss. The “truck / zippers-up horizon” is a devastating image, reducing the act of disappearance to something mechanical, inevitable.

The shift to dialogue is abrupt: “By the time / they ask your opinion you don’t want to talk.” This is a crucial moment—the speaker, so absorbed in emotion, recognizes the futility of expressing it in this context. The reason: “knowing faith dissipates through words.” This statement is profound—faith, whether in love, memory, or art, is weakened by too much explanation. Yet, despite this awareness, the speaker tries: “sure you’ll passionately refer to our indebtedness / to memory.” What follows is a flood of ideas, as if they have been dammed up and can no longer be contained: “suggest that by imagining / the vanished flower, repeating the name / of the lost cat, we retain our lives.” The small, personal gestures of remembrance become acts of resistance. The “persistence of love despite death” is framed as “an act / of vengeance, a refusal to diminish.” This final assertion is crucial—love and memory are not just sentimental; they are defiant.

The speaker tries not to say these things, but ultimately does, “in a clumsy rush / as if the words are falling down.” The phrase “falling down” underscores the loss of control, the difficulty of articulating something that is deeply felt. Afterward, there is a pause—a moment where the social world reasserts itself: “the surrounding chatter coming in like the slurrings / of waves as you hold your breath on a seawall.” The image of holding one’s breath captures both anticipation and isolation, the feeling of being momentarily apart from the group.

Then comes the turn: “then the shift, their eyes dilating in recognition / of conviction.” The recognition here is key—it suggests that, despite their analytical stance, the others are moved by the speaker’s sincerity. There is a sudden awareness of something beyond theory. The final lines depict their response: “finally the stammers, the rush to be / the first to address this exhilarating stranger.” This ending suggests transformation—through the act of expressing what was difficult, the speaker has become new in their eyes. They are no longer just another participant in a discussion, but someone who has reminded them, however briefly, of what is at stake: the human capacity to love, to grieve, to refuse to forget.

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