Triggered by the hope-filled thrill of a new lover, the structure of the poem correspondingly reflects the galvanized transformation of the speaker 's body. Anatomically, the poem is divided into four stanzas with five lines in each stanza, establishing a sense of uniformity within the poem 's structure. Each quintet concludes in an end-stopped line, two of the four final lines including an exclamation point that energizes the poem and, subsequently, the audience. The end of one stanza denotes a transition, as exemplified by the final lines of the stanzas that succeed the first stanza: "Before today my body was useless / ... Once it was a boat, quite wooden / ...But... / ... [now, my] nerves are turned on" ("Kiss" 6-16). The visual setup of
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The speaker reveals their rejection, disclosing "[their] dog won 't do it ... / [their] sisters won 't do it ... / ... [and their] father won 't do it" ("Touch" 23-30). The poem shifts from a bitter flavor to a more tender aura as the grateful speaker speaks passionately to her reviver, her carpenter, to signify a transition from abandonment to attachment, narrating: "Then all this became history / Your hand found mine. / Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. / Oh, my carpenter, / the fingers are rebuilt" ("Touch" 39-43). The poem is a sorrowful testimony of what desertion feels like and just how incredible the healing that follows can be. The speaker essentially proclaims that her family 's neglect and her loneliness are trivial are suddenly weightless, trivial pains that no longer burden her as a result of a lover 's sexual attraction towards her. With unbridled optimism, the speaker 's newfound confidence sharply contrasts her previous sense of self-worth. While she initially viewed herself, as a hand, to be "bruised /...like an unconscious woman // ...gone into seclusion[,] / ...fat[,] soft[,] and blind[,] / ...nothing but vulnerable" ("Touch" 3-17), at the end of the poem, she blazoned, "My hand is alive all over America. / Not even death will stop it, / death …show more content…
"The Touch" is followed by "The Kiss". Because the two are chronological, the poems may "yield [a story of] romance or tragedy, but [these] love poems, taken together, tell another kind of story, complex and ambiguous" ("Middlebrook"). "Mr. Mine" acts as the adhesive between the two poems, making their similarities more recognizable and demonstrating the prominence of their analogous meanings. Akin to the description of a "composer" ("Kiss" 19) in "The Kiss", "The Touch" describes a disembodied hand, which represents the speaker, being made "alive" ("Touch" 46) by a carpenter that assumes the role of a lover. The "industrialist" in "Mr. Mine" ("Mr. Mine" 5) has the same function as the "carpenter" ("Touch" 41). In "The Touch" and the "composer" ("Kiss" 19) in "The Kiss". According to Professor of Twentieth-Century and American Literature Jo Gill, "the circular, perpetual, and repetitive nature of these metaphors suggests...[that the speaker] is subject to particular...pressures". Historian Juliet Gardiner remarks that women "were still regarded as submissive and inferior beings" (Gardiner) and that members of society during Sexton 's era "had narrow expectations for" (Gardiner) them. Gardiner 's research evinces the idea that Sexton 's speaker, as a manifestation of Sexton herself, felt as if she owed her existence to men: industrialists, carpenters, and
The speaker reveals their rejection, disclosing "[their] dog won 't do it ... / [their] sisters won 't do it ... / ... [and their] father won 't do it" ("Touch" 23-30). The poem shifts from a bitter flavor to a more tender aura as the grateful speaker speaks passionately to her reviver, her carpenter, to signify a transition from abandonment to attachment, narrating: "Then all this became history / Your hand found mine. / Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. / Oh, my carpenter, / the fingers are rebuilt" ("Touch" 39-43). The poem is a sorrowful testimony of what desertion feels like and just how incredible the healing that follows can be. The speaker essentially proclaims that her family 's neglect and her loneliness are trivial are suddenly weightless, trivial pains that no longer burden her as a result of a lover 's sexual attraction towards her. With unbridled optimism, the speaker 's newfound confidence sharply contrasts her previous sense of self-worth. While she initially viewed herself, as a hand, to be "bruised /...like an unconscious woman // ...gone into seclusion[,] / ...fat[,] soft[,] and blind[,] / ...nothing but vulnerable" ("Touch" 3-17), at the end of the poem, she blazoned, "My hand is alive all over America. / Not even death will stop it, / death …show more content…
"The Touch" is followed by "The Kiss". Because the two are chronological, the poems may "yield [a story of] romance or tragedy, but [these] love poems, taken together, tell another kind of story, complex and ambiguous" ("Middlebrook"). "Mr. Mine" acts as the adhesive between the two poems, making their similarities more recognizable and demonstrating the prominence of their analogous meanings. Akin to the description of a "composer" ("Kiss" 19) in "The Kiss", "The Touch" describes a disembodied hand, which represents the speaker, being made "alive" ("Touch" 46) by a carpenter that assumes the role of a lover. The "industrialist" in "Mr. Mine" ("Mr. Mine" 5) has the same function as the "carpenter" ("Touch" 41). In "The Touch" and the "composer" ("Kiss" 19) in "The Kiss". According to Professor of Twentieth-Century and American Literature Jo Gill, "the circular, perpetual, and repetitive nature of these metaphors suggests...[that the speaker] is subject to particular...pressures". Historian Juliet Gardiner remarks that women "were still regarded as submissive and inferior beings" (Gardiner) and that members of society during Sexton 's era "had narrow expectations for" (Gardiner) them. Gardiner 's research evinces the idea that Sexton 's speaker, as a manifestation of Sexton herself, felt as if she owed her existence to men: industrialists, carpenters, and