After a Death :)

The imagery in this poem is great! It was set up in such a simple poem, short and sweet. The poem portrayed deep feelings of sadness and loneliness in only eight lines. I loved how the speaker used the chair for a metaphor of the loved one she lost,” I turn his absence into a chair”. Throughout the poem you can really see the “chair” is the important symbol in the poem.  I think the speaker of the poem, I assume its a woman, is talking about the loss of a male who was very important to her like a father or maybe a lover. The poem seems very unclear about that, however the way the poem is written each reader can interpret the poem uniquely. If the woman meant the “chair” to symbolize her father, the chair I think symbolized the support of a parental figure and the chair shows that she still needs that structure and support. The chair is the woman’s stability, “because the chair is there” whenever she returns. The poem can also easily be about a lover or her husband as well, as she takes her “useless love“. I think maybe she’s not ready to go back out into the social world and that’s why she returns to the chair, “And then I can return then with my useless love”. When the speaker says “I can sit in it, gaze out through the window” I saw the window as a distraction. I think she uses the window as a way to try to forget about her sadness and loneliness. I saw the setting of the poem as the speaker in a room by herself looking out through the window. I saw the city lonely and depressing through the speaker’s eyes every time she looked out. There’s many ways to analyze this poem and I loved that because everyone can see different sides to it.