Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell: Summary and Critical Analysis

Skunk Hour is a confessional poem. In it, the poet reveals his personal secret confesses that he is living meaninglessly and suffering from the loss of faith, courage and even desire for life. The poem is dedicated to his friend and junior poetess Elizabeth Bishop, who also wrote poetry about the necessity of simple powers of the mind and spirit to live a meaningful and happy life.

The title of the poem means “disgusting period”: the word ‘skunk’ denotes to a small and badly smelling rat like animal, but as an adjective (before the noun ‘hour’) it means ‘extremely hateful’; the word ‘hour’ must mean ‘period’, ‘time’ or ‘phase’. The title points to the disgusting phase of life that the poet was living when he had lost the courage, desire and purpose of living life. The first part of the poem is pessimistic: stanzas 1 to 6 express frustrations, doubt and failures. But the poem ends with a deep realization about why his life was becoming meaningless and painful: he sees a dirty small animal enjoying life, having the physical, mental and spiritual strength to live on. He realizes by looking at the simple skunk that he was not having the fertile mind, spirit and body to bring up the energies to live actively.

The poem can be divided into four main parts or stages of development of images. The first part presents an old woman in a lonely island trying to maintain her old ways by buying cultural antiques. But she fails. The second part begins with “the season is ill”, an expression of frustration. The speaker mentions how a “summer millionaire” has gone bankrupt and auctioned his yacht. Another businessman fails to attract customers by decorating his shop, and so he’d rather marry”. Besides, there is also a hint of violence: A red fox stain covers ‘Blue Hill’. The third part of the poem shows how the persona wanders in intense agony and spiritual crisis. He climbs a hill and finds the degraded modern condition. His spirit cries. His mind is not right. He echoes the sayings of Saint John, King Lear and Satan, all of which express emotional crisis. In the last two stanzas, we find the speaker looking at a skunk and its kittens fearlessly coming to a city street and eating garbage. The skunks’ passion or strong desire for life, their fertility and naturalness and their originality makes the speaker feel that he doesn’t have these powers and qualities of living a meaningful life. He learns a lesson, and a new life begins for him. This is the therapy for an ill soul, of modern man. He must be physically, mentally, psychologically and spiritually fertile, or creative. He must have the determination and spirit to live. He must fight and struggle against degradation and artificiality.

Each part is in two stanzas. The process seems to represent a journey back to health through art, imagination or creative experience. What couldn’t be healed by anything is revealed to the sufferer in a simple incident. The revelation or epiphany at the end is unbelievable. Modern life’s corrupting influences have led men to express frustration and despair: “I myself am hell”. Solitude, trivialization, psychic problem, drug, and moral corruption are the causes. Only the resolution (decision) to use the individual’s own potential will help, as in this poem.

The skunk serves as a symbol of fertility (creativity), the persistence of life, independence, naturalness and the like. Only the realization and use of these potentials for revitalization of the inner energy will rescue modern man from his suicidal frustration. The poem is creating a general symbol of the modern human condition. The language is simple, but suggestive, too. The poem is essentially obscure like the thought and express of a mental patient. But the observation of the shifting context helps us generalize about the development and meaning.

The theme of the poem is the loss and gain of spiritual powers by the poet, or his speaker, representing the modern American or modern man. The speaker was almost giving up life and extinguishing his powers due to self-disgust. His mind was getting more and more disordered. He was losing hope and faith. When he saw the others, he only generalized that all of them were railing to maintain their old values, and failing to live. But when he himself reached the climax of frustration and depression, he one day, fortunately, learn the right lesson by looking at a skunk that is still living with full zeal an active and meaningful life, in its original and natural way. Thus, we see that the theme of the poem is the quest of the speaker, his journey through failure to success. The speaker has moved from depression to the spiritual rebirth of his natural energies, from a decadent world to individual revitalization. That process is also suggested by the pattern of the poem that moves from a dying old human mother who is failing to maintain her values to a young animal mother which is able to live so fully and actively.

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Shrestha, Roma. "Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell: Summary and Critical Analysis." BachelorandMaster, 17 Nov. 2013, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/skunk-hour.html.