Steven Gould Axelrod and James E. B. Breslin’s criticisms of Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” agree about the significance and meaning of the first four stanzas. However they start to veer away from each other in their analysis of stanza five where there is an obvious shift in tone and direction. Both give a completely different analysis of the second half of the poem from the other with one skipping the end altogether.
A slight deviation from commonality is apparent in Axelrod and Breslin’s interpretation of stanza five. Lowell himself admits the first 4 stanzas loiter about: “The composition drifts, its direction sinks out of sight into the casual, chancy arrangements of nature and decay. Then all comes alive in stanzas V and VI” (Lowell).
Therefore, not much can be disputed before line 25 where the fifth stanza makes its glorious entrance. Both criticisms begin by echoing the same rhetoric of a crumbling town, a loss of traditional or old-fashioned values, in whole: a significant societal conversion has taken place. Axelrod states, “He [Lowell] is describing more than scenery, he is describing the rotting of a whole social structure” (Axelrod).
Breslin agrees saying, “The poem begins with an eccentric heiress who prefers [the past]…to the present but who is powerless to halt temporal and social disintegration” (Breslin).
However, at the shift in the middle of the poem Axelrod and Breslin take different paths.
Axelrod, focusing on Lowell, interprets line 13, “The season’s ill–” as a foreshadowing for line 33 in stanza 6 “my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,” referring to the repetition of the word “ill” as first referring to the season as being ill which is only an innocent seasonal change, however by stanza six the full implication is clear: the earthly human existence is ill — corrupt and sullied (Axelrod).
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Continuing, Axelrod entertains the notion of latent content in the poem, referring to Lowell’s voyeuristic excursion on Skull Hill, “The self portrait Lowell has created calls to mind other sexually and emotionally withdrawn characters…preeminently those of Hawthorne and Henry James” (Axelrod).
At line 36 Axelrod stalls his criticism focusing once again on Lowell’s existentialism by quoting lines 35 and 36: “I myself am hell;/nobody’s here–” he then concludes without even a nominal mention of the title characters: the skunks.
Conversely Breslin gives the skunks their due respect, “The skunks seem to wander into the poem, seen out of the corner of the poet’s eye…they are viewed with a literal realism” (Breslin).
Contrary to Axelrod’s interpretation of sexual repression and angst Breslin states, “Lowell uncovers himself watching lovers in parked cars, Lowell uncovers his core self…a way of preserving self” (Breslin).
Interpreting the shift in stanza five as leading to a vital self-actualization (Breslin).
The transition from stanza six to seven “I myself am hell; / nobody’s here // only skunks, that search / in the moonlight for a bite to eat” is a continuation of a thought that “moves from easy projection, through inward ordeal, toward authentic connection with otherness” (Breslin).
That distinctiveness being, “The skunks, swilling sour cream from a garbage pail, manifest the persistence of a fiery life in a corrupt, disintegrating, ordinary world. The poet includes, but does not tame, them” (Breslin).
While there are a plethora of possible interpretations of a given poem there are a finite number of credible criticisms. Analysis of the entire poem or any body of work is critical so that is does not confuse, contort, or contrive erroneous conclusions about the poem’s intent and emotional evocation. Unfortunately Axelrod’s criticism of “Skunk Hour” does not interpret nor mention the skunks’ existence thus the critical reader most probe Axelrod’s analysis for accuracy.
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Works Cited
Axelrod, Steven Gould.
Breslin, James E.B.
Lowell, Robert.“On ‘Skunk Hour’”. n. pag. Online. Internet. October 15, 2001.
Available. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/skunk.htm
