Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Now and Then I Am Direct" is an intimate meditation on longing, memory, and the peculiar ways the mind wanders in the absence of a loved one. The poem unfolds as a stream of consciousness, shifting between mundane observations and philosophical musings, capturing the speaker’s restless state of mind in the wake of someone’s absence. Hicok’s style—casual, meandering, yet precise—allows the poem to move seamlessly between humor, nostalgia, and existential reflection, mirroring the way thoughts drift in solitude.

The opening line, "It’s late and I’ve stayed up to miss you," sets the tone for the poem’s quiet ache. This is not just an accidental bout of insomnia; the speaker has chosen to linger in this space of longing, as if prolonging wakefulness might bridge the gap between presence and absence. What follows is a series of scattered observations that, at first glance, seem disconnected: "A man on TV’s playing lute with dirty fingernails. I hear a car and understand it would be more useful if taught to fetch." These images suggest a mind searching for meaning in everything, grasping at trivial details to fill the empty space left by the missing person. The humor in the second sentence—imagining a car as a fetchable object—adds levity, but also subtly underscores a desire for control, for the ability to summon things (or people) at will.

The speaker then pivots to a series of simple wants: "I want hot chocolate. I want to remember the first time I heard music and knew I was hearing music, and the first time I heard music and had no idea what it was." The juxtaposition of a basic physical craving with a profound existential yearning exemplifies Hicok’s ability to blend the ordinary with the metaphysical. The two memories of music suggest a contrast between knowledge and innocence, between the moment when sound became recognizable as art and an earlier, purer experience of sound as something mysterious and unclassified. This desire to recover a first, unmediated encounter with beauty reflects a deeper longing—not just for the absent loved one, but for a return to something essential, something unfiltered by expectation or experience.

The poem’s conversational tone continues as the speaker declares, "I don’t ever want to use the word hype again." This abrupt shift serves as a moment of self-awareness, a rejection of superficiality in favor of something more genuine. The next statement—"I’m also trying to be, if not a cup half full, at least not a cup smashed into a thousand pieces on the floor kind of person."—is characteristic of Hicok’s wry humor. It acknowledges the struggle of maintaining optimism without resorting to cliché, offering instead an image of resilience that is fragile yet determined.

The speaker’s mind continues to wander, landing on a simple gratitude: "I’m grateful we have a shopping list for starters, a simple ode to bread, to milk." This line brings the poem back to the physical world, grounding it in the domestic, in the small but reassuring acts of everyday life. The list, in its own way, is a form of continuity, a tangible thread tying the speaker and the absent person together. The meditation on money—"It occurs to me I could be standing in line one day with money and completely forget what it’s for."—introduces an element of existential dislocation, a moment of absurdity that suggests how easily the structures of daily life can become strange and unfamiliar.

The shift to Athens introduces a more overtly surreal and unsettling atmosphere. "I was in Athens and people were shooting up along the path to the Acropolis. This was not beautiful, not Greek." The expectation of ancient grandeur is disrupted by a modern scene of despair, reinforcing the poem’s ongoing tension between nostalgia and reality. The next image—"There was sex in the bushes that made flesh sound like a calamity of gears."—transforms intimacy into something mechanical, emphasizing the contrast between romanticized history and the harsh, unfiltered present.

Yet, even in this bleak setting, the speaker finds a moment of beauty: "At the top a woman was explaining Nike to her daughter, who only cared to know where our wings went." This moment of innocence and curiosity—the child’s genuine wonder about the missing wings—offers a quiet counterpoint to the earlier images of addiction and disillusionment. The speaker’s self-awareness returns with a sharp, humorous aside: "Don’t repeat that, it could become a t-shirt." This line breaks the reverie, acknowledging how easily even profound moments can be commodified.

The poem circles back to the absent loved one with a tender, whimsical worry: "I’m worried our bed can’t sleep without us." This personification of the bed reinforces the theme of longing, suggesting that even inanimate objects suffer in separation. The closing lines—"When you come back, if the spoons are missing, would you look in the backyard to see if I’ve built a river? I haven’t, but a boat. Not a boat but a sail. At least the cloth. At least the wind on which the sail feeds."—are among the poem’s most evocative. The progression from river to boat to sail to wind mirrors the way thoughts evolve in solitude, how absence generates a need to create, to build something symbolic in response to loss. The final shift—acknowledging that even if the speaker hasn’t built something tangible, at least the idea of movement and return exists—suggests a kind of quiet hope.

Hicok’s form in this poem is fluid, reflecting the natural rhythms of thought. There is no rigid structure, no punctuation-heavy breaks, allowing the poem to read as an internal monologue, a private musing that the reader happens to overhear. The shifts in tone—from humorous to melancholic, from philosophical to domestic—mirror the way emotions fluctuate in solitude. His use of simple language, short declarative sentences, and abrupt transitions creates an immediacy, making the poem feel like a genuine expression of late-night longing rather than a carefully constructed artifact.

Ultimately, "Now and Then I Am Direct" is about absence—not just of a specific person, but of certainty, of meaning, of a stable place in the world. The speaker’s thoughts dart from the trivial to the profound, from Athens to the grocery store, from nostalgia to humor, all in an attempt to make sense of the empty space left behind. Hicok’s gift lies in his ability to capture this mental drift with honesty and warmth, making the poem less about answers and more about the experience of reaching for them.

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