Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Prayer" is a meditation on loss, longing, and the relentless nature of memory. The poem opens with an intimate yet unsettling assertion: "Someone or something is leaning close to me now / trying to tell me the one true story of my life." The ambiguity of this presence—whether it is divine, ghostly, or internal—sets the tone for a reflection that feels both urgent and deeply personal. The "one true story" is not a narrative of triumph or revelation, but rather a repeated, insistent "note, low as a bass drum, beaten over and over." This repetition evokes an unrelenting truth, something elemental and inescapable.

The speaker situates the poem in "beginning summer," a season of growth and abundance, but her emotional state contrasts starkly with the world’s natural renewal. She recalls a love that has faded, a man who has "forgotten my smell / the cries I made when he touched me." The loss here is not just physical but existential—her sensual and emotional imprint on another has been erased. Even the moment of passion she remembers so vividly—being "carried... and laid... among the scattered daffodils on the dining room table"—has become only hers to remember. The past is fixed, immutable, and yet it aches because it has lost its mutuality.

The grief deepens as the poem shifts to the losses of Jane and her brother, figures often referenced in Howe’s poetry as anchors of pain and love. The speaker admits, "I want to go where she went, where my brother went," suggesting a yearning for death, for reunion, for escape. This is not merely a passive mourning but an active desire to follow them. The past is not simply remembered; it exerts a gravitational pull.

Then, a more haunting memory resurfaces: "whoever it is that whispered to me when I was a child in my father’s bed is come back now." The line is disturbing in its ambiguity—who whispered to her? Was it a protective presence, a voice of comfort, or something more troubling? The way it "comes back now" suggests that trauma, like grief, does not dissipate but cycles through time, returning unbidden. This voice now pounds in her mind: "This is the way it is, the way it always was and will be—beaten over and over." The weight of inevitability is crushing, rendering her panic-stricken and lost. The image of being "panicking on street corners, or crouched in the back of taxicabs" underscores a sense of isolation—she is physically in the world but spiritually displaced, terrified that no one will recognize her or know how to save her.

Yet, the poem hints at another possible reality: "There is, I almost remember, another story." This alternative story exists "like a brook beside a train," running parallel but separate from her grief. The natural world—the sparrows, the grass, the wind—knows this other story, one of continuity and endurance rather than loss. This contrast between the mechanical, inescapable train and the fluid, organic brook suggests that another way of living, of perceiving, is possible.

The poem closes with a plea: "Tell me. Who was I when I used to call your name?" The identity she once held—defined by love, faith, and connection—feels lost. Whether addressing God, a lost loved one, or even herself, this final question is a desperate search for grounding, for a self that existed before loss overwhelmed her.

"Prayer" is a deeply affecting poem that captures the experience of grief as something cyclical and inescapable, yet also suggests the presence of another, more enduring truth. It is a plea for meaning, for recognition, for a story that is not just pain repeated, but something like grace.

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