I Wanna Be A Skunk

It seems complicated, that line that Lowell continually seems to tote. He is not a classicist. He is not a hipster. He dips his toe in to both lakes but doesn’t dive. The uncertainty knocks him back in to the kiddie pool, where he drowns in disappointment. Seemingly in ‘Skunk Hour’, Lowell expresses a fear towards change in his work. Where one part of Lowell see’s the world mutating in to a new era, one that he partially desires to join, the other half of him is weaved in to the beliefs and strict structure of the past. From his upbringing it is of no surprise. A well-bred person is supposed to grow in to a copy of their well-bred forefathers. Higher society for centuries has remained an isolated, stiff statue as they all are taught to mold to the set idea of what makes a ‘classy’ person. However, Lowell in ‘Skunk Hour’ is aware of this and whilst fearing the change also wishes to embrace it.

Lowell then creates the Skunk, an image of the new, blazing with wild patterns and ‘red’ eyes. It’s passion and raw, wild in the world of controlled living. It lives off the scarps of the higher, disgusting to civilized views but unhindered by care. It scoffs at the conformity and trivial, aged ideals. The Skunk is free, rooting in the garbage and fearing nothing. It is the symbol of what Lowell longs to be, a man away from his upbringing, released in his art and revitalized in the new air. Thriving on the garbage, not afraid to get dirty and blasting the world with the realism of raw life.

However, it doesn’t seem like Lowell achieves this in his own head. While the ‘Skunk Hour’ appears free form to my eye, Lowell still ends the poem with a sense of longing. He ends it wishing to be the Skunk, not embodying it. There is a hint of sadness in this, as Lowell can not release the fear of leaving the old ways. Form is so deeply rooted in him, and he struggles through the meter and laws of poetry as he struggles through the upstanding laws of his status and family name. Lowell’s life in every aspect embodies the struggle, and he does not trust his own mind to leap in to the new uncharted land that is emerging around him.

Whether or not the entirety of ‘Life Studies’ is resolved in the end is then a mystery to me. The poem is ambiguous, as it shows what he longs to become and what he is, and although it hints at him changing it does not give us a definitive answer. Lowell might or might not embrace the free Skunk life he places before us. He longs to root in the garbage uncaring, but he cannot completely release the ideals of the statue world he’s grown up in. And it also seems that Lowell fears his mind if he were to take on such a wild life. Perhaps it is then the fear of what he will become if he embraces the Skunk and gets the stink on his coat tails.