Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Tony Hoagland’s "Doing This" is a raw meditation on unspent emotion, regret, and the self-inflicted wounds of longing. The poem’s speaker is caught in an obsessive, circular act—driving past the house of a lost love, witnessing her intimacy with another, and knowing, with painful clarity, that his presence there is both futile and self-destructive. Through precise imagery and an unflinching look at pride and its consequences, Hoagland explores the way unexpressed feelings can become a torment, not only in the present but in the imagined afterlife of the soul.

The poem opens with an immediate sense of repetition and fixation: “I?m driving back and forth on the gravel lane before the two-room, stucco house of the woman I love.” The phrase “back and forth” suggests both literal motion and emotional paralysis, a cycle he cannot escape. The small details—the “two-room, stucco house”—emphasize the intimacy of the space he is orbiting, a home now closed to him. The scene is not grand or cinematic but achingly specific, highlighting the ordinary setting in which extraordinary heartbreak unfolds.

The revelation follows with brutal directness: “She?s inside, making love with a woman whose white car is parked in the driveway / and it, this car, disturbs me more than anything.” The phrasing here is crucial. The speaker does not focus directly on the woman his lover is with, or even the act itself, but on the car—a concrete, undeniable presence. The car is an object that exists outside of bodies, outside of passion, yet it symbolizes everything he cannot avoid. The phrasing “and it, this car, disturbs me more than anything” emphasizes his fixation, as if the car itself is the most tangible proof of his loss.

The next admission deepens his self-awareness: “It sticks out of itself so far into my life.” This image suggests that the car has a presence larger than itself, intruding into his consciousness in a way that makes it impossible to ignore. The fact that he chooses to focus on the vehicle rather than the women inside suggests a psychological defense mechanism—his mind latches onto an external detail rather than fully confronting the pain of intimacy happening beyond his reach.

The poem turns inward as the speaker acknowledges the weight of his self-inflicted suffering: “Each time I pass, I know, with a ten-pound sadness in my chest, that I can?t keep doing this.” The phrase “ten-pound sadness” gives the emotion a physical heft, an unbearable weight pressing on him. The repetition of “doing this” reflects his awareness that his actions are self-destructive, yet he continues them nonetheless. The compulsion to return to the scene of his pain is stronger than reason, and in this, the poem captures a universal experience of heartbreak—the irrational urge to revisit loss, to confirm the worst, to bear witness to one?s own exclusion.

A deeper regret emerges as he realizes: “And now I realize, far too late, I should have fought for her, / should have wept and begged and made the full, hair-extracting spectacle of what I felt.” The speaker confronts what he did not do—express his love fully, without restraint or pride. The phrase “hair-extracting spectacle” is almost comic in its exaggeration, yet it underscores the raw desperation he now believes was necessary. His regret is not just that he lost her, but that he did not give himself the chance to fight for her, to make his vulnerability known. The poem suggests that it is not simply loss that haunts him, but the unspent emotion, the pride that kept him from begging, from making his love undeniable.

The reflection deepens into existential territory: “I should have shed my pride. What good is pride? / When you die, I know they turn you inside out, / to see what portion of your god-allotted guts you failed to spend on earth.” Here, pride is not merely a personal failing but a cosmic error, something that affects not just this life but the next. The idea that in the afterlife, one’s insides are examined for what was left unexpressed turns emotional regret into a form of moral judgment. This suggests a belief that love, or at least the willingness to express it fully, is what gives life its meaning—and failing to do so leaves a kind of spiritual deficit.

The vision of the afterlife Hoagland presents is both humorous and damning: “The ones who arrive in heaven without a kopek of their fortune left / are welcomed, cheered, embraced. / The rest are chastised and reborn as salesmen and librarians.” The implication is that those who give everything of themselves—who love without restraint—are rewarded, while those who hold back are sentenced to a mundane, unenlightened existence. The mention of salesmen and librarians is darkly comic, suggesting that withholding passion results in a reincarnation devoid of vitality. The speaker imagines that his failure to express love will not just mark this life but will reverberate into eternity, compounding his suffering.

Despite this realization, he remains trapped in the cycle of obsession: “It’s so simple, and that’s what gets me—that every time I drive up and down this street, looking at that white Toyota in the drive, / it messes up not just this life, but my eternity as well.” The phrase “it’s so simple” suggests that the answer was always obvious—he should have fought, he should have given everything—but the simplicity of the truth does not make it easier to bear. The white Toyota remains an unbearable symbol, its presence disrupting not just his day but his very sense of self across time.

The poem ends with a devastating image of self-inflicted suffering: “But I keep doing it, dragging myself back and forth / over this corner of the world which scrapes and grinds against me, / like a rock on the bow of a ship. / Etching the errors in my surface deeper, and deeper. / And less forgiven.” The rock on the bow of a ship is a powerful metaphor—he is not merely brushing against his pain but actively eroding himself on it. Every pass down the street deepens his wounds, etching the errors in my surface deeper and deeper, reinforcing his own history of failure. The final line, “And less forgiven,” leaves the poem in a place of unresolved torment. Whether he means he is less forgiven by himself, by his lost lover, or by the universe is left ambiguous, but the effect is clear: the more he repeats this ritual, the further he moves from redemption.

"Doing This" is a stark and unsparing exploration of heartbreak, regret, and the psychological cycles we trap ourselves in. Hoagland captures the obsessive nature of loss—how grief and self-recrimination can become rituals that deepen rather than heal wounds. The speaker’s awareness of his own futility makes the poem even more tragic; he knows he cannot continue this, yet he does. By the end, the poem suggests that failing to fully express love is a mistake that does not just haunt the present but reverberates into eternity, making it clear that the true suffering is not just in losing love, but in knowing that it was never truly spent.

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