Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Oath to My Former Life" is a reflection on transformation, nostalgia, and the contrast between youthful recklessness and settled contentment. The poem reads as both a eulogy and a tribute to a past self, acknowledging the wild, self-destructive impulses of youth while affirming a quieter, more intentional present. It is structured around a tension between excess and simplicity, between risk and stability, ultimately exploring what it means to evolve without losing connection to who one used to be.

The poem opens with a declaration of past vitality: "It used to be enough to be bigger in soul by any means." The phrasing implies a hunger for expansion, an urgency to push beyond the ordinary, whether through physical daring ("climbing the water tower drunk or coked") or drug-induced transcendence ("driving to the frozen lake on mushrooms to throw up as the ice breathed my skin in and out"). The imagery is both visceral and poetic—the body’s limits tested through intoxication, with the frozen lake serving as both a literal and metaphorical landscape of exposure, purification, and rebirth. The ice "breathing" suggests a merging of self with the environment, an openness to experience that is at once exhilarating and perilous.

The speaker then deepens this notion of extremity as revelation: "I can offer no more literal description of pilgrimage than seven black pills and holding my hand over fire when pain as the extent of the world was perfect clarity." The word "pilgrimage" frames these acts of excess as spiritual journeys, though they are undertaken through self-inflicted pain rather than sacred devotion. The juxtaposition of "seven black pills"—evoking both drug use and a kind of ritual numbering—with "holding my hand over fire" underscores the relationship between suffering and enlightenment. In youth, pain was not merely something to endure but a means of attaining "perfect clarity." The phrase suggests a belief in suffering as revelatory, a raw, immediate understanding of existence that requires no interpretation.

The poem then shifts dramatically to the present: "If now my overturned dog moaning at the wanderings of my fingers across her teats and just a beer shared with my wife as two girls across the street in t-shirts etch their thoughts with sparklers into the air is the life I want of all possible miracles." Here, the scale of experience has shrunk—not in importance, but in intensity. The profound is found in domesticity, in the small, tactile moments of care, companionship, and observation. The contrast between "seven black pills" and "just a beer shared with my wife" marks a fundamental shift: the need for destruction has given way to the ability to appreciate the mundane. The "two girls across the street" serve as a reminder of fleeting youth, their sparklers briefly illuminating the night, as ephemeral as the speaker’s own past recklessness.

However, the speaker does not reject his former self outright. Instead, he makes an "oath" to remember. "I promise to remember how to roll a joint while steering with my thighs." The skill itself is both dangerous and comical, a symbol of past recklessness that the speaker treats with nostalgia rather than regret. "How to stand in one corner of a room while looking at myself waving back at me." This line introduces an eerie dissociation, a reference to the altered states of consciousness that once defined his sense of self. The phrasing suggests both hallucination and self-awareness, as if the speaker once lived in multiple versions of himself simultaneously.

The poem continues cataloging memories of impulsive and irrational youth: "How to have a mouth but no brain, to sell oregano to men with guns, to fall asleep in the middle of a room like babies do, with my ass in the air and face on the floor." The phrase "a mouth but no brain" signals a time when thinking was secondary to action, when existence was purely instinctual, lived moment to moment. The detail of "selling oregano to men with guns" introduces danger, the speaker’s past entanglement with deception and violence. Yet, this moment is not dramatized—there is no moral reckoning, only the recognition that this was once part of his experience.

The closing lines solidify the speaker’s acceptance of change: "to wake in this posture with sunlight washing my skin and go out for coffee and a slower life." The image of waking up in the absurd, childish position of "ass in the air and face on the floor" is softened by the gentle transition to "a slower life." There is no declaration of regret or guilt—only an acknowledgment that life moves differently now, that the need for speed, danger, and obliteration has been replaced by a desire for steadiness.

The final line—"How to say yes like a river jumping off a cliff."—is both a remembrance of youthful abandon and a statement of enduring openness. The river, an ongoing force, does not hesitate before falling; it simply follows gravity. This could suggest that the speaker is still willing to take risks, still embraces passion, but with a greater understanding of consequence. It also implies that, despite the shift in lifestyle, there is still continuity between past and present—his capacity for immersion, for surrendering to experience, remains intact.

Hicok’s "Oath to My Former Life" is not a rejection of the past but a reconciliation with it. The speaker does not romanticize his recklessness, nor does he renounce it. Instead, he acknowledges that those experiences were necessary to arrive at the life he now values. The poem navigates the space between nostalgia and acceptance, between the wild pursuit of intensity and the quiet grace of contentment. It is a testament to the ways we carry our former selves, even as we choose different paths, making peace with both who we were and who we have become.

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