Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Small Purchase" is an intimate and meditative exploration of mortality, familial bonds, and the small rituals that shape our understanding of loss. The poem is built on the mundane act of buying lettuce, yet within this seemingly trivial moment, it layers memory, anxiety, and an understated sense of grief. Hicok’s conversational tone, fragmented thoughts, and movement between past and present create a reflective space where the weight of what is unspoken becomes as significant as what is said.

The poem opens with a sense of immediacy and tension: "I drove my father for lettuce on the day his wife didn’t die but that was reasonably his fear." The phrasing here is striking—the emphasis is not on the fact that she lived, but on the anticipation of death that lingers over the moment. His wife, the speaker notes, is also his mother, but this clarification feels almost bureaucratic, as if acknowledging the role of facts in the face of overwhelming emotion. This detachment—stating the obvious in an almost clinical way—mirrors the way people cope with fear by holding onto details, however trivial.

The next lines reveal a quiet realization: "I often forget whole parts of my parents’ lives have nothing to do with me." This moment of self-awareness speaks to the common, often unconscious assumption that our parents exist primarily in relation to us. But as the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that the father’s grief is his own, his memories and burdens separate from the speaker’s. This detachment continues as they both watch the "mountains of breath and pulse rise and fall from left to right on the machine beside her bed." The imagery of mountains transforms the medical monitors into a landscape of life and death, but while both observe, their thoughts diverge—the father is consumed by the fear of being alone, while the speaker is still distant from that reality.

The father’s exhaustion is expressed in simple, physical terms: "he walked to my car through the potpourri of lilac and redbud, shoulder-slumped but expressing gratitude for the trees that make a seductress of air." The contrast between the lush, fragrant environment and his slumped posture encapsulates the strange juxtaposition of beauty and suffering, of life continuing even in the presence of possible loss.

The poem then shifts into a meditation on time and habit: "I took the stupid route if speed is valued above history, that’s my usual disease, the wish to shave seconds from shortcut so I’ll have more time to worry about my need to slow down." This moment of self-critique hints at a larger existential anxiety—the paradox of always rushing through life while simultaneously longing for stillness. The father, however, is anchored in memory. Passing a baseball field triggers recollections of childhood labor, "a bat cost 50 cents when he was a kid and that equaled two lawns." The precision of these details—the 50 cents, the two lawns—suggests a life measured in work, responsibility, and quiet endurance. The image of the wealthy sisters who "called his mother even then" reinforces this idea of class and perception; no matter how much time passes, some people remain fixed in others' minds as servants, as boys who push whispering blades.

The father’s recollections take a darker turn: "Not long after that his father died and not long after his father his brother died, whose wordless body the nurses had tended for six years like a garden." Death becomes an inescapable presence, each loss following another in quick succession. The comparison of the brother’s body to a garden is especially poignant—something tended to, cared for, but ultimately beyond control. And yet, in the face of these profound losses, the father’s lesson is simple: "The day of each death my father had to work… no matter what happens you have to punch in." The line is almost brutal in its bluntness, a reflection of both necessity and emotional suppression. The speaker recognizes that this is the lesson he is meant to extract—that life goes on, that responsibility overrides grief.

The moment in the store—the literal small purchase of the poem’s title—becomes symbolic: "After searching the rack he found one head hard enough, then to the cookies where everything sweet was wrong, around the back of the store and up to check out, where for 99 cents he became the owner of one more thing that’s mostly water." The choice of lettuce—a fragile, perishable item made mostly of water—mirrors the fragility of life itself. The father's rejection of sweetness suggests an inability to indulge, to allow himself comfort while standing so close to the possibility of loss.

In the closing lines, the speaker attempts to connect, reaching toward something unspoken: "In the way we touch by loosening up, I tried to shape sounds around the nights that I look at my wife asleep and think I’m hearing with every breath her last." Here, the poem expands beyond the father’s immediate grief—introducing the speaker’s own private fear, his realization that mortality is universal, that love itself carries the weight of inevitable loss. The phrase "in the dark there’s no quibbling how readily the world shrugs us off" conveys a stark, unavoidable truth: life is indifferent, and death comes without sentiment.

The poem ends in quiet resignation: "We were in his drive by then and I was saying splintered, was saying how unbearable, how clean those moments are of the doubt about what I want, what is right and what the difference is between the two. To which he nodded and went inside to make for one a simple green meal." The word "splintered" suggests fragmentation, an inability to fully articulate what the speaker feels. He reaches for meaning—trying to express the unbearable certainty of loss, the clarity that death provides about life’s uncertainties—but his father simply nods and moves on. The act of preparing a meal, an ordinary continuation of routine, becomes a final, understated response to grief: life continues, and even in the face of loss, one must still eat.

Hicok’s "Small Purchase" is a deeply introspective poem that captures the quiet, often unspoken negotiations of grief between generations. The poem moves seamlessly between past and present, between personal anxiety and familial duty, using small details—the price of a baseball bat, a head of lettuce, a shortcut taken or not taken—to illustrate the larger existential truths beneath them. In the end, it is not a poem about a grand loss, but about the looming presence of loss, the ways it shapes our daily actions, and the simple, almost mechanical ways we move forward in its wake.

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