The Blue Bowl

Jane Kenyon

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Ritual as a Manner of Processing Grief

Kenyon examines the human need for ritual, or a series of solemn, prescribed actions, while also highlighting its inadequacies in processing grief. In the first lines of the poem, the speaker and her partner enact a burial ritual, and the titular blue bowl becomes an object infused with meaning. The inclusion of a beloved or much-used object in the grave, a ritual common to many ancient and modern civilizations, suggests a belief or a faith that the deceased might need or find comfort in the object in the afterlife. The speaker, in a self-effacing move, calls herself primitive in these actions, suggesting that she does not fully buy into the concept of an afterlife, but her actions belie a certain degree of hope, if not in the afterlife itself, then in the possibility for the ritual to imbue meaning. This particular ritual gives the speaker a concrete thing to do during a time in which she feels overwhelmed by sadness. Though the speaker is unable to fully find comfort in the ritual, she still has the urge to participate in it.

The speaker and her partner enact ritual later in the poem when, post-burial, they “worked, ate, stared, and slept” (Lines 11-12). They perform these everyday actions, hewing close to the daily rituals they usually do in an attempt to maintain a sense of purpose and normalcy. Together, the two try to work through their sorrow and grief, hoping that the repetitive actions will allow them to emerge from the storm. The speaker finds a degree of comfort in the listing of the familiar actions, and the simplicity and ease of them mean she can enact them without too much thought.

The Natural World as a Mirror for Human Emotion

Kenyon often uses natural imagery in her poetry as a way to talk about complicated human experiences. In “The Blue Bowl,” she lets imagery do the work of conveying the emotional status of her speaker. Beginning with a description of the “sand and gravel [that falls] with a hiss / and thud” (Lines 3-5) as the two figures bury the cat, she establishes a discordant tone. She chooses harsh, gritty images of stone and sand to suggest the speaker’s frame of mind: She is not at peace in the wake of the cat’s death, but feels upset and unsatisfied with the burial ritual, which does not fully assuage her grief. The image allows the reader to understand this without the speaker having to say it outright. The verbs she selects, “hiss / and thud“ (Lines 4-5), also echo the speaker’s despair, conveying pain and prefiguring the emotional flatness she will feel after the burial.

Conversely, the image of the clearing storm and the robin who “burbles from a dripping bush” (Line 17) at the end of the poem shifts the tone and complicates the reader’s understanding of the speaker. The pastoral, hopeful images of new life after the storm suggest peace and resolution, but Kenyon undercuts and adds new layers to that feeling by comparing the robin to a neighbor who “says the wrong thing” (Line 16). The speaker desires to feel the hope and relief that the natural world suggests, but she hasn’t achieved this yet; the poem ends on her sense of ambivalence.

Human Experience of Depression and Grief

Kenyon devoted much of her poetry to examining and articulating her experience of depression, wanting to give voice and substance to a difficult topic. “The Blue Bowl” acknowledges the difficulty and ineffability of the topic by taking a banal, everyday occurrence—the death of a house cat—and using it to give shape and texture to the larger sorrow the speaker feels. By rooting the reader in specific images (the sand and gravel in the grave, the cat’s fur and nose), Kenyon gives the reader a concrete object upon which to fix her sorrow. She then moves beyond the burial, expanding the emotional scope of the poem to acknowledge “sorrows much keener than these” (Line 10), using the death of the cat as a metaphor for the larger human experience of grief, suggesting that some sorrows are beyond language. The only way she can talk about her current state of grief is to use the story of her cat’s death to describe it.

Kenyon notes that even with good intentions, humans will inevitably say “the wrong thing” (Line 16) when facing another grieving person, but the quiet tone of her poem suggests that there is still good in human relationships. The unnamed partner is steadfast throughout the poem, and the unity of this partnership, combined with the cautious hopefulness of the final lines, alludes to the possibility of healing.