Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Lynda Hull?s “The Window” is a haunting, labyrinthine journey through memory, longing, and urban decay. The poem’s speaker navigates a cityscape filled with dilapidation and beauty, crafting a narrative that intertwines past and present, the physical and the spectral. Hull’s masterful use of imagery and sound evokes a fragmented, almost kaleidoscopic portrait of a life lived at the edges of society, in spaces imbued with both despair and fleeting transcendence.

The window itself becomes a potent symbol, representing both a literal frame and a metaphysical threshold. Hull begins with the “streak of world blurred charcoal & scarlet,” an image of transience as the El train slows at Little Chinatown. This moment of pause introduces the recurring theme of movement juxtaposed with stillness, where glimpses through the peeling frame and “split” screen hint at a deeper story waiting to unfold. The window becomes a portal to memory, compelling the speaker to revisit a place “to which I keep returning,” both physically and emotionally.

The urban setting is vividly drawn, with Hull’s characteristic attention to texture and detail. The “sooty block of old law tenements,” “chipped tubs,” and “small gray animals” evoke a decaying yet animate environment. These images ground the speaker’s recollections in a specific geography, one where the visceral realities of poverty and survival coexist with moments of lyric beauty. The “copper dormer window,” “fire escapes burdened by doves’ insatiable mourning,” and “ravening embraces” suggest a world both broken and teeming with life. This duality—the coexistence of ruin and vitality—underscores the poem’s exploration of human resilience and desire.

Hull’s language is lush and sensuous, even as it describes desolation. The speaker’s longing is palpable, expressed through images of bodies and touch: “making love was a way of saying yes, / I am here, these are my borders, hold me down a little while.” In these lines, intimacy becomes a way of asserting existence, of momentarily anchoring oneself in a disorienting world. Yet, even these moments are transient, “gone after in the night that disappeared with morning.” The poem captures the fragility of such connections, reflecting a life lived in pursuit of fleeting affirmations.

The poem’s structure mirrors its themes of fragmentation and multiplicity. Hull moves seamlessly between scenes of memory and present reflection, creating a disorienting yet immersive experience. This non-linear narrative reflects the workings of memory itself, where past and present blur, and certain images recur with obsessive intensity. The “purple those lids, the lips as we did then” and “the sequinned gowns, martini glasses pouring their potions” conjure a world of artifice and transformation, where identity is fluid and performative. The speaker’s memories are populated by “phantoms” and “wraiths,” figures who both haunt and define her.

The cityscape becomes a character in its own right, a living entity marked by its “elaborate winged buildings,” “bitten snow,” and “shabby public hospital?s endless waiting rooms.” Hull’s descriptions are cinematic, her use of light and shadow creating a chiaroscuro effect that heightens the tension between beauty and decay. The “rude armfuls of orchids” in the florist’s window stand in stark contrast to the “flammable” bridesmaids’ gowns and the “gasoline poured from the can to flame the alley.” These juxtapositions capture the paradoxical nature of urban life, where opulence and destitution exist side by side.

At its core, “The Window” is a meditation on the search for meaning and connection in a fragmented world. The speaker’s repeated return to the window and its surroundings suggests an unresolved yearning, a desire to reclaim something lost or to understand the self through the lens of the past. The closing lines—“we shall seek that thing which shines & doth so much torment us”—encapsulate this quest. The “thing which shines” may be beauty, transcendence, or simply the act of bearing witness to one’s own life amid the ruins.

Hull’s poem is a testament to her ability to render the ephemeral in vivid, enduring detail. The Window invites readers to step into its layered, evocative world, where the personal and the universal converge in a tapestry of memory, longing, and the relentless passage of time. Through its intricate imagery and emotional depth, the poem illuminates the fragile beauty of human existence, even—or especially—in its most fractured moments.

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