Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton’s "45 Mercy Street" is a deeply personal and evocative poem that delves into themes of memory, loss, identity, and the elusive nature of the past. The poem reads like a stream of consciousness, blending reality with dream-like imagery, as the speaker embarks on a symbolic and literal search for something that remains tantalizingly out of reach.

The poem opens with the speaker’s "real dream," an intense and consuming search for "45 Mercy Street." This place is described with vivid specificity: the "stained-glass window of the foyer," the "parquet floors," and the "big mahogany table" adorned with silver and Spode. These details evoke a sense of nostalgia and a longing for a lost or imagined past. However, despite the clarity of these memories, the physical location of "45 Mercy Street" remains elusive—"Not there." This refrain underscores the central tension of the poem: the speaker's desperate search for a place that exists only in memory or imagination, not in the physical world.

As the speaker continues her search, the poem becomes increasingly fragmented and surreal. The narrative shifts between past and present, blending memories of family members—like the great-grandmother "kneeling in her whale-bone corset"—with images of the speaker herself, walking through the streets in a "yellow dress" and "white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes." The pocketbook, a traditionally feminine symbol, becomes a repository of the speaker’s life—its contents reflecting her internal state and the burdens she carries.

The poem’s exploration of time and identity is particularly poignant. The speaker grapples with the disjunction between who she was and who she has become, asking, "being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?" This blurring of ages reflects the confusion and disorientation that come with trying to reconcile past experiences with present realities. The speaker is searching for something—perhaps a sense of self, a connection to her past, or a resolution to her pain—but the search only leads to further disillusionment.

As the poem progresses, the tone shifts from yearning to despair. The speaker’s realization that "this is no dream / just my oily life" suggests a resignation to the harshness of reality, where the idealized past is unattainable and the present is filled with loss. The imagery of "two little kids / sucked up like pollen by the bee in me" and a husband who "has wiped off his eyes / in order not to see my inside out" captures the profound sense of alienation and disconnection that the speaker feels from those around her, as well as from herself.

The final stanzas of the poem are marked by a sense of futility and anger. The speaker's plea to "pull the shades down" and "bolt the door" reflects her frustration with the impossibility of reclaiming the past. The act of throwing fish from her pocketbook at street signs and then hurling the pocketbook into the Charles River is both a rejection of the symbols of her past and a symbolic cleansing or purging of her burdens. Yet, this act of defiance is followed by a collision with "the cement wall / of the clumsy calendar I live in," suggesting that, despite her efforts to break free, she remains trapped in the constraints of time and reality.

"45 Mercy Street" ultimately captures the profound human experience of searching for meaning and connection in a world that often feels disjointed and unforgiving. Sexton’s use of vivid, surreal imagery and fragmented narrative structure reflects the complexity of memory and the difficulty of reconciling the idealized past with the present. The poem’s conclusion, with its emphasis on the inescapable "clumsy calendar" and the "hauled up notebooks" of the speaker’s life, leaves the reader with a sense of unresolved tension—a reminder that the past, no matter how vividly remembered, is forever out of reach.

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