Summary

“On Reading a Newspaper for the First Time as an Adult” describes the speaker reading the newspaper as she remembers the daily ritual of her ex-husband doing the same. Rooted in sensory, tactile imagery, the speaker personifies the paper in her husband’s hands, gesturing towards the eroticism of reading, “undressing its layers” (71). The memories culminate in a the speaker’s sensory empathy for her husband while reading separately: “I taste what he tastes each morning / without moving my lips” (71).

“Maritime” recalls another lost morning routine, the frigid ocean swims with her ex, taking place daily throughout the duration of their thirty-year relationship. The poem describes the earth and sea with anthropomorphic language, returning to themes of consumption as when, at dawn, “the half world...swallowed, / and opened, again its wet, long / mouths, and drank itself” (73).

“Slowly He Starts” depicts the increasing sense...