Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton's poem "Old Dwarf Heart" navigates the tumultuous and often unsettling terrain of self-awareness and mortality. The poem opens with an epigraph from Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King," encapsulating a sense of alienation: "I have never been at home in life. All my decay has taken place upon a child." This quote sets the tone for the poem, introducing the idea that the speaker has always felt estranged from life, burdened by an inherent decay that manifests itself even in childhood.

In the first stanza, Sexton describes the act of lying down to love, an act that should be intimate and comforting but is instead fraught with discomfort. The "old dwarf heart" shakes her head in disapproval, a heart that has "never been at home in life" and is already burdened with the weariness of age, "Like an imbecile she was born old." This heart, a symbol of the speaker's emotional and physical core, is portrayed as prematurely aged, out of sync with the natural progression of life.

The imagery of the heart's "eyes wobble as thirty-one thick folds / of skin open to glare at me on my flickering bed" suggests a grotesque, almost surreal presence. The heart is personified as something separate from the speaker, a being with its own consciousness, aware of "the decay we're made of." This decay is not just physical but emotional and spiritual, a reflection of the speaker's internalized sense of deterioration.

The speaker's heart is described as "solid, like fat, / breathing in loops like a green hen / in the dust," an image that conjures a sense of stagnation and futility. The comparison of the heart to a "green hen in the dust" evokes a creature that is not just alive but weighed down by its environment, futilely cycling through its existence. This heart, despite its vitality, is trapped in a state of decay, incapable of the pure, untroubled love the speaker might yearn for.

The heart's dreams are "of snarling strangers," emphasizing its deep-seated corruption and mistrust. This corrupt nature of the heart suggests that it carries the weight of past traumas and experiences, which have distorted its capacity for love. The speaker acknowledges, "Good God, the things she knows! / And worse, the sores she holds," as if the heart is a repository for all the pain and suffering the speaker has endured. The "sores" are "gathered in like a nest / from an abandoned field," implying that these wounds are not fresh but have been long-festering, collected over time from a place of neglect and desolation.

In the final lines, the heart is described as "all red muscle, humming in and out, cajoled / by time." Despite its decay, the heart remains a living, functioning organ, driven by time's relentless march. The speaker's relationship with the heart is one of resignation and entanglement. The act of loving is described as awkward and laborious: "how awkwardly her arms undo, / how patiently I untangle her wrists / like knots." This imagery conveys the difficulty and complexity of love, particularly when one's emotional core is so burdened and scarred.

The final lines of the poem, "even if I put on seventy coats I could not cover you . . . / mother, father, I'm made of," reveal the heart's true nature as a reflection of the speaker's inherited traits and traumas. The heart's "old naked fist" is something that cannot be concealed or denied, no matter how many layers the speaker might try to use to hide it. The reference to "mother, father" underscores the idea that the heart, with all its flaws and wounds, is a product of the speaker's lineage, shaped by the generational transmission of pain and suffering.

"Old Dwarf Heart" is a meditation on the complexities of love and the ways in which our emotional selves are shaped by our experiences and inheritance. Sexton uses the metaphor of the heart as an ancient, weary creature to explore the burdens we carry within us, burdens that complicate our ability to connect with others and experience love in its purest form. The poem captures the tension between the desire for love and the reality of a heart that is old before its time, weighed down by the scars of life.

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