Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Two or Three Times" is a quiet, poignant reflection on addiction, fragility, and hope. The poem moves between past and present, juxtaposing the speaker’s father’s attempts to quit drinking with a moment shared with James, a man who seems to embody a similar vulnerability.

The opening lines—"The two or three times my father tried to quit drinking, for a few days maybe a week, he would walk carefully around the house, feeling his way through the kitchen and the pantry."—convey the tentative nature of his sobriety. The hesitancy in "two or three times" already suggests failure, as does the short-lived duration of each attempt. The father is described as "feeling his way," an image of blindness, uncertainty, and unfamiliarity, as if navigating an alien world. His hands—"fingers trembled like a girl’s"—suggest a delicate, almost childlike weakness, an inversion of traditional masculine strength.

There is a heartbreaking image of "a light around him, fragile and already cracked we could see clear through." This "light" represents his hope, but it is already "cracked," already failing before it can fully take hold. The family witnesses his hope, but it remains unspoken, "which he shared with no one." This secrecy highlights the loneliness of addiction and the personal nature of his struggle. Even as he tries to recover, there is a sense of inevitability in his failure, a fate the family has learned to recognize but not disrupt.

The poem then shifts to the present moment with James, who stands "outside on the step, the cardboard deli tray in his hands." The bright, cold morning suggests clarity, a sharp contrast to the haze of the father’s drinking. James, like the father, appears fragile but hopeful. His "eyes clear and blue" emphasize a moment of sobriety, an attempt at renewal. The detail of his bringing coffee just as the speaker likes it—with a straw—is tender, an intimate gesture. The raspberry Danish is placed "with ceremony," elevating an ordinary act into something significant, almost sacred. The "red-seeded center sticky within the little swirly circle" draws attention to the details of the Danish, mirroring the careful attention to small rituals that sustain both hope and connection.

In this brief meditation, Howe captures the tenuousness of recovery—the father’s repeated but doomed efforts, the delicate light of hope, and James’s quiet act of kindness. The past and present intertwine, suggesting that cycles of addiction, fragility, and care echo across generations. Though the poem does not explicitly state what happens to James, the parallel to the father suggests an uncertainty—will he, too, falter? Or does his simple, careful gesture hold more promise than the father’s unshared hope? In "Two or Three Times," Howe masterfully evokes the weight of addiction and the small, almost imperceptible ways in which love attempts to sustain what is fragile.

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