Can anyone give a critical analysis of the the poem "the Abortion" by Anne Sexton?

Answer 1

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This is an outstanding poem. There are no real flaws, and the language is poignant and abrupt. One could argue that the italics are a bit much and that the line Somebody who should have been born/ is gone is a bit melodramatic. I probably would not have included it, (3x no less) had I written the poem, but the line itself is not so bad that it detracts from what’s good. Keeping that in mind, look at this line-by-line. The title works well. It is direct & plays off the description. Had this poem been just a graphic description of an abortion itself, (which you will see in the SO poem) this title would not have worked. But because there are no graphics, and are instead hit in the face with the subtlety, the title is memorable & highly effective. We begin with the melodramatic line of Somebody who should have been born/ is gone. Well duh. It’s an abortion. You think this is going to be just another piece of doggerel, but wait…
The next stanza is an invitation into the living- we get the sense of feeling, of breathing. Just as the earth puckered its mouth,/each bud puffing out from its knot, This must be springtime- a good contrast against the title. I changed my shoes, and then drove south. The next line is often a Sextonian characteristic- an ‘in’ to the character given by a simple act. The rhyme is nice and is not forced. Then we get:

Up past the Blue Mountains, where///
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,

The use of the word “humps” is obviously sexual, not to mention the image of humping green hills being a metaphor for life, birth, breath, etc. Also the line break at “where” seems to exist for the purpose of the rhyme alone because in & of itself, the break is weak. *(Dan’s proofreading mark to indicate bad enjambment ///)

wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,

Again we get the nice rhymes, and the sense that the speaker is growing more anticipation as she is approaching the clinic. The only cliché would be “dark socket”.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

In this stanza, the 1st line is nice description, also works with the rhyme. We get a sense of the speaker’s hopelessness for life itself, wondering how anything fragile survives; Another important point is that the speaker is not being preachy in her views. Obviously she isn’t against abortion, or else she wouldn’t be having one. We cannot say that she views abortion as “murder” or “unjust”, but it is more matter of fact, and her wondering is more of a curiosity. Next we get the core of the poem, the prime example that saying something well is what makes a poem:

he took the fullness that love began.

One line people! What better way to describe an abortion than the former? “To take the fullness that love begins” is much more memorable than talking about sticking coat hangers up one’s snatch: the pools of blood, ouch, ouch, my underpants ripped, I am being raped…

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Notice how the earth is no longer “puckering from it’s mouth, but The road was as flat as a sheet of tin. The speaker does not need to tell us that she is sad, possibly having mixed feelings, regret, etc, because it is shown to us by her observations. This is what poetry does. Now the grand finale:

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.

Now we get a sense of how the speaker feels- possibly remorse, but acknowledging that it was something that needed to be done (the logic). Then she talks herself out of it and admits to being a coward for this decision, and accepting the “logic” as the means for why it had to be. This is probably an argument that will continue for years. AS probably wanted her readers to know how she truly felt, hence the repetition of the phrase Somebody…I would have preferred to leave it up to the reader to decide what the speaker is feeling, but AS wanted us to KNOW how she felt about it. But overall, this is an outstanding piece of work from Annie in her better days.

Source(s):

http://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP35-JAS3.htm