17 pages • 34 minutes read
Julie SheehanHate Poem
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Complexity of the Long-Term Relationship
One of the major themes of “Hate Poem” is the complex nature of a long-term relationship after the honeymoon period has ended. After the blind love of early romance has been replaced by the day-to-day reality of living in physical and emotional intimacy with another human being, the speaker notices all the little minutia of daily interaction and domestic predictability—much of which secretly drives her up the wall. The couple depicted in the poem has likely been together for months, if not years. Confirming this are details like “The history of this keychain” (Line 9), word choice that implies a long-enough relationship to merit having a “history” of significant shared moments. Their life together has settled into routines like going for a drive (Line 15), exchanging pleasant “good mornings” (Line 16), and developing familiar habits like sleepily nuzzling her head under his arm (Line 17). The few annoying habits of her partner that the speaker describes are mundane and only obvious to someone who spends a lot of time with another person: picking out cashews (Line 10) or arguing over whether a window should be closed or open (Line 13).
“Hate Poem” takes on the paradox that just as a long-term relationship can deepen love, it necessarily also reveals the other’s flaws—so much so that the intensity of love can transform periodically into feelings of hatred. In Sheehan’s poem, conflicts with a partner bring out the worst in the speaker, who takes pleasure in fixating on her partner’s negative qualities to wallow in her anger rather than letting the fight go. The poem mocks the speaker for childishly indulging in mental dissecting all the ways her partner is wrong, revealing her own immaturity in the aftermath of their argument through obsessive, petty, and irrational imagery of hate.
For all the energy the speaker spends listing the ways she hates her partner, the poem‘s subtext undercuts her anger and clearly indicates her love, though the speaker’s keen attention to the small moments of their life together, through her ability to see the humor in her insisting that she hates her partner, and through the repetition of the word “hate” until it loses its meaning so much that the reader cannot help but transpose the word “love” for it. While some poets prefer to write about idealized love, Sheehan’s poem takes on the reality of love as it transforms in a long-term relationship.
The Internal and External Woman
Sheehan’s poem focuses on a woman’s experience in both body and mind. While the speaker understands that hate (and love) is primarily an emotional reaction, the speaker of “Hate Poem” expresses the hate she feels physically, the intensity of emotion registering its presence by permeating and inhabiting her female body. This intersection of the psychic and the corporeal is a consistent theme throughout the poem, as body and imagination become intertwined.
From the first stanza, the speaker projects her hate physically: Her hate is mapped across the speaker’s body, inside and out. From the wrist (Line 3) to her hand (Line 4), to her “tiniest bones” (Line 5), the smallest corpuscle and capillaries (Line 6), and the largest vein in her body, the aorta (Line 12), the speaker’s hate in this moment is literally bone deep. As she continues, hate hides under the “third toenail, left foot” (Line 8), it’s found in her eyes (Line 18) and her breasts (Line 19), and finally her lungs (Line 23), which seem to breathe her hate like air. Her woman’s body becomes the living embodiment of her hate for her partner, just as that same body expresses tenderness and affection at the same time, snuggling under his arm (Line 17).
Her hate grows in her imagination as well: She pictures her “ancestors” (Line 12) sharing the hatred; finds hate in “the goldfish of her genius” (Line 11), a paradox that compares unbounded intellect with a proverbially small-brained animal; places hate into the hypothetical sound bones in her body would make “were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel” (Line 5); and even declares that her sense of humor is now dedicated to hate, as her “wit practices it” (Line 18). The speaker is so densely saturated with hate that it expands beyond the boundaries of reality and begins to occupy fictional spaces that verge on fantasy.
However, the hate is never spoken aloud, perhaps in the interest of keeping the peace, or possibly because the speaker is aware that the nonsensical intensity of her feelings doesn’t match the reality of the argument that triggered this reaction. Her partner seems oblivious to her seething. Instead, she only expresses her hate as a monologue for the reader and for herself, so that it never leaves the page (or the body).
Connection, or Lack Thereof
“Hate Poem” feels like an angry note dashed off in the “hours after [their] latest row” (Line 21), a time when the speaker has internalized this conflict and is still dwelling on the disagreement. Superficially, the life she shares with her partner has resumed normality, but inside her mind and body, Sheehan’s speaker seethes with hate for the partner who picks out cashews, puts the window in the wrong state of openness, and invites her for a drive. The argument is one of many—it is their “latest” (Line 21) tangle, which could be worrisome, or could imply that the relationship has weathered previous fights without dissolving the speaker’s desire to “nuzzle my head under your arm” (Line 17). This desire to connect and live peacefully with one’s partner, while very often failing to connect, is a major theme of “Hate Poem.”
On one hand, the couple in the poem has likely been together for a long time. They’ve developed a familiarity, share a sense of humor seemingly filled with inside jokes, and have intimate memories. On the other hand, there is a divide between the two that is indicated by the regular disagreements that give rise to the speaker’s angry hyperbolic assertion that “Everything about me hates everything about you” (Line 2), as well as the glee with which she picks apart her partner in her mind (Lines 21-22). Where most relationships rely on openness and honesty, the author’s deep-dive into hate has created a wall, where she duplicitously gives her partner a loving morning greeting while secretly seething inside.
While the speaker seems almost obsessed with her hate for her partner, the partner is completely oblivious to her frustration. There is a lack of communication between the two—she never voices her feelings to the partner, though hate permeates her body and mind. Despite their years together, she does not make him aware of her feelings, which underscores a sense of isolation and resentment that can develop in a partnership.
