Amorphous Time

Most of the poem takes place in an amorphous, non-linear representation of time. The end of the poem is signed “(2003-2006),” so the reader knows the years between which all of the propositions were written. However, references to specific landmark events alert the reader to the wider time period discussed, including one proposition that takes place on the eve of the new millennium, and another that references September 11th, 2001. These references to an earlier interest in blue undercut the reader’s assumption that the love of blue began with the speaker’s current heartbreak.

The amorphous time in the poem has two thematic functions, which are closely related to each other: it supports the motif of eternal cycles, and it mimics the speaker’s experience of time during her long period of depression. An important and often misunderstood feature of depression is that it is impossible to...