19 pages • 38 minutes read
Home After Three Months Away
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Themes
Coming, Going, and the Movement of Time
The title broadcasts three of the poem's interrelated themes, as it contains arrivals, departures, and time. Lowell is coming home, which means that he left. Time, too, is a factor because three months have gone by between Lowell’s leaving for the hospital and gaining the ability to return home.
Lowell is back, but the “baby’s nurse” is “[g]one” (Line 1). Right away, the theme of coming and going collide. Lowell’s arrival coincides with the nurse’s departure. The nurse also connects to the theme of time since her “gobbets of porkrind” (Line 5) hung in the magnolia tree for three months. The food helps the sparrows “weather a Boston winter” (Line 9) or make it through a rough time.
The chant “Three months, three months!” (Line 10) reinforces the importance of time. The repetition reminds the reader that Lowell was gone for three months. Someone (his wife, presumably, since they’re her words) then asks, “Is Richard now himself again?” (Line 11). The question suggests Lowell had gone away from who he was. He was acting like someone else and needed treatment to come back to his true personality.
The birthday also moves time; between going away and coming home, Lowell ages from 40 to 41. Lowell then gives a different measurement of time when he says, “After thirteen weeks” (Line 19). Now, it’s not three months but three months plus an extra week. In Stanza 3, Lowell moves to a different time altogether. He goes back to “twelve months ago” (Line 32) when the flowers were beautiful. Time “[b]ushed” (36) or exhausted their luster, so their beauty has gone, and, presently, no one can “distinguish them from weed” (Line 35). The movement of time correlates to both inner and outer turmoil, both mental and physical returns and departures.
How Humans Link to Nature and Animals
Lowell compares people to animals and supplies intricate images of nature. The first person Lowell likens to an animal is the nurse—“a lioness who ruled the roost” (Line 2). Lowell turns the nurse into a female lion and the home into a nest or place for birds or bats. The ferocity of the nurse “made the Mother cry” (Line 3). The mom lacks a connection to animals, which might be why she’s vulnerable and subject to the force of the lioness nurse.
The nurse’s bond with animals continues as the “gobbets of porkrind” (Line 5) connect her to pigs and “the English sparrows” (Line 8). The nurse may not be an ally to the mom, but she is a friend to the birds as she helps them survive the harsh Boston winter, which brings in the theme of nature. Like the Boston winter, the nurse appears stringent.
The speaker and their daughter act like animals when their “noses rub” (Line 14). The idea of nature briefly occurs when Lowell says, “[M]y daughter holds her levee in the tub” (Line 13). The notes in Lowell’s Selected Poems suggest levee means an eminent reception. Yet the word also relates to nature, as a levee is a wall built to prevent an overflowing river or body of water. As the daughter is in the tub, Lowell, as a Postmodernist, might be playing with the idea that the drain stopper is a levee, which turns the bathtub into a natural body of water and connects the daughter to nature. The daughter’s disregard for Lowell’s shaving items turns him into a “polar bear” (Line 27), so Lowell, the daughter, and the nurse all have links to animals and nature.
Stanza 3 zooms in on nature with the image of the “pedigreed / imported Dutchmen” (Lines 33-34). Once again, Lowell shows the severity of nature, as nature turns the beautiful flowers into weeds. Unlike the English sparrows in Stanza 1, the distinguished flowers fall victim to winter and nature.
The Peculiar Distribution of Power
Power is a pressing theme in the poem, as Lowell arguably assigns authority in ways that counter established norms. Although the nurse works for the family and is their employee, she possesses more power since she “made the Mother cry” (Line 3). Lowell flips the power dynamic between employer and worker, as the latter is less precarious than the former. Lowell furthers the nurse’s forcefulness by calling her a “lioness” (Line 2) and giving her the strength to help the sparrows endure the Boston winter. The nurse is dominant and capable, which might be why she’s “gone” (Line 1)—she’s too powerful for the Lowell household.
Lowell also disrupts the child/parent dynamic, as he gives his daughter more power and status than himself. The daughter “holds her levee in the tub” (Line 13), so, returning to the definition supplied in Selected Poems, it’s the girl who receives the exquisite reception, not the 41-year-old man. The daughter ranks above her dad. She also has the power to disrupt her dad as she tosses his “shaving brush / and washcloth in the flush” (Lines 24-25).
Lowell reinforces his lowly state as he speaks to his daughter in supplicating tones, “Dearest I cannot loiter here” (Line 26). He then makes his lack of status and authority explicit when he announces, “I keep no rank nor station” (Line 39), and describes himself as “frizzled, stale and small” (Line 40). In Lowell’s poem, the proverbial man of the house is a person of no stature.
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By Robert Lowell
