Summary
The speaker of "The End of Poetry" lists off things that she has had "enough" of. She starts with biological and nature images: she's tired of flowery poetic language for things like birds and plants, and she's had enough of dramatic darkness in art. She then says "enough" to old-fashioned religious and patriotic language, mentioning a farmer who doesn't show any emotion—she is done with keeping feelings hidden. Then her language gets even stranger, saying "enough" to poetic ways we describe our bodies, and birds that are frozen.
The speaker is tired of the back-and-forth of feeling unable to persevere in life, and again expresses that she's tired of pretentious descriptions of art. She says "enough" to the tedious rhythm of resting and getting up, always having to examine herself and the world around her. Then she mentions a gun and the suicide of someone she knows, and a letter from a long time ago. She's tired of this feeling of longing and distance, and of trying to control her ego.
She's tired of archetypes of parents and children being discussed, and tired of having to exhaustedly point out tragedies in the world. She's tired of the brutality of the border. Then she says "enough" to the difficulty of videoconferencing.
The speaker finally shifts to using the first-person "I," saying that she feels human, alone, and desperate. She's tired of depending on her pet, and tired of hearing about climate crisis and sorrow even while the fresh air feels deceptively light and easy.
In the last line, having listed all these things she's tired of, she asks to be touched.
Analysis
"The End of Poetry" is a lyric poem rather than a narrative poem, meaning it moves by free association from image to image rather than through a linear flow of events. The result is an often-surprising flow of ideas and images, sometimes ambiguous in their meaning and left to the reader's imagination.
Overall, "The End of Poetry" is an outpouring of exhaustion and disillusionment with life. It touches on art, religion, despair, tragedy, politics, and more. As it was written during the isolation of the COVID pandemic, the speaker's disillusionment especially focuses on everything that creates separation among us, each other, and real life. "Poetry" is one of these things: despite being a poet, Limón ironically uses this poem to lament the ways that poetry acts as a filter between the reader and the real thing being described. The poem builds as a litany of things she is saying "enough" to and culminates suddenly in a request for touch. Whether this touch is erotic or simply caring is left ambiguous, but it is clear that the speaker is desperate to break through her isolation and the separation she feels from the world, even if this means abandoning poetry, her usual means of understanding the world.
Below, we will go through the poem line by line to understand the possible reasons for each word and phrase being included in the speaker's list of things she's saying "enough" to.
Line one's "osseous" means "bony," and could refer to: 1) an overly poetic way to say something, 2) the need to stay strong like bone, or 3) medical terminology.
"Chickadee," "sunflower," "maple and seeds, samara and shoot" are nature images—all plants except for the chickadee. Samara, like osseous, is an obscure word: it refers to a specific kind of winged seed (like maple seeds). Limón is known for her nature poetry, and it's a common cliché that poets describe nature in ornate, convoluted ways. In these lines, the speaker criticizes that style of poetry.
"Snowshoes" are the only man-made thing in the first two lines: perhaps they just refer to the means by which the speaker is walking outside to view the plants and birds. It's possible that this poem is a real list of things in Limón's surroundings.
Line 3 shifts topics with "chiaroscuro," a term for strong contrast of light and dark in art. Again, like the ornate poetic language, the speaker is saying she's tired of art being melodramatic.
"Thus" is simply a formal and old-fashioned word, and "prophecy" refers to religious prediction. So far, this poem is a critique of stereotypical "poetry" as pretentious and stuffy.
The religious theme continues in lines 4-5 with "faith," and "our father" refers to the Lord's Prayer. It also touches on American patriotism with the song lyric "'tis of thee." The "stoic farmer" may be an archetype who represents the stereotypical American—probably male (hinted by "father"), probably Christian, and probably taught as a man to hide his emotions (hence "stoic"). Ada Limón as a poet is the opposite of this: she is a Mexican-American woman, not religious, known for her emotionally honest writing. Because there is no repetition of "enough" in line 4, the farmer, his Christian faith, and the patriotic lyric all flow together as one unit: the speaker is rejecting this old-fashioned archetype of America as it does not suit her. Historically, the art of "poetry" and the literary canon were disproportionately represented by white men, so perhaps this line calls for an end to that idea of poetry, replaced by the new poetry of diverse authors and emotional honesty.
"Bosom and bud" are more of the "poetic" language of lines 1-2. Bosom is the first word for a human body part, but in an abstract, euphemistic way, far from the intimate "touch" the speaker craves in line 21. "Bud" echoes "seed" and "shoot." Previously, Limón has used new spring growth as a symbol of hope, but here the speaker has no patience for that slow kind of hope.
"Skin and god / not forgetting" may refer to the cumulative weight of memory. Skin remembers the body's wounds and hardships, evoking scars or, in the pandemic context, chronic COVID symptoms experienced by some people post-infection. On the other hand, a god may remember all of a person's mistakes or misdeeds. The speaker is worn out by this weight of physical and emotional struggle.
"Star bodies" evoke distance in some way: perhaps constellations, which are "bodies" of stars we cannot touch, or celebrities ("stars") whom we view from afar. "Frozen birds" is also ambiguous: perhaps they represent sudden tragedy, or life held in suspended animation (like pandemic isolation).
Line seven gets more explicit: "enough of the will to go on and not go on." The speaker is tired of persevering, tired of the willpower it takes to go on or even the willpower it takes to rest. The following phrase, "how / a certain light does a certain thing," brings "chiaroscuro" back to mind and may refer again to highbrow ways of talking about art.
The "kneeling and the rising and the looking / inward and the looking up" continues the blunt tone of line 7, describing the tedious rhythm of daily life (kneeling and rising), introspection (looking inward) and trying to find hope (looking up). During COVID lockdown, life became extremely monotonous for many people, and the monotony itself is tiring. "Kneeling" also echoes religious devotion: again, religion is not helpful for the speaker, just another abstraction she wants to get rid of.
Lines 10-12 together form a tragic picture: "the gun... the acquaintance's suicide, the long-lost / letter on the dresser." The gun and suicide may be linked, though the line break after "gun" also allows this image to stand on its own as a reference to gun violence in general. Tragedy turns personal in these lines, poignantly depicting loss and distance. If the suicide and letter are connected, perhaps the speaker wishes that she had sent or responded to this acquaintance's letter while they were alive. But the word "acquaintance," rather than "friend," only worsens the feeling of uncomfortable distance between the speaker and the world.
"Longing" in line 12 adequately summarizes the feeling of the previous lines.
Line 13's "ego and the obliteration of the ego" contains two opposites, much like lines 7 and 9. It echoes the fatigue with life's monotonous rhythms, and the speaker's uncertainty of how to regulate her own mind and emotions during this time of separation and tragedy. Do you focus only on the self (ego), or only on others?
Line 14 mentions more characters, but only vaguely: "the mother and the child and the father and the child." Like the "stoic farmer," these aren't flesh-and-blood people so much as archetypes—generic examples used to make a point. They may be religious: "Mother and Child" could be Mary and Jesus, of course. They could refer to the ways that children and parents are used as political talking points for the issues mentioned in this poem like religion, gun violence, or immigration ("the border" in line 16). The speaker laments that these archetypes, like poetry, can obscure the real bodies underneath.
Lines 15-16 emphasize the theme of overall exhaustion with world events. The "brutal and the border" most likely refers to the contentious U.S.–Mexico border, given Ada Limón's Mexican heritage and immigration's prominence in 2010s-2020s U.S. politics. The speaker sees brutality in this conflict, but like gun violence or pandemic deaths, it is most often a tragedy that we witness through a screen or newspaper, worsening the feeling of powerlessness and burnout that this poem addresses.
Line 17 brings in a specific detail of pandemic life: "can you see me, can you hear me" are common refrains at the start of video calls. Videoconferencing is another example of distance, abstraction, and alienation in the poem. The speaker is starved for real human connection, frustrated by barriers and technological difficulties.
Line 18 uses "I" for the first time, and it's ambiguous whether this are truly the speaker's words or still an implied quotation (see detailed analysis). The poem's emotional core is clearest in these lines: aloneness and isolation, desperation (repeated for the second time in three lines). The phrase "I am human" stands out. It should be obvious, but bears repeating, since everything in the poem so far has been separated from humanity by at least a layer of abstraction or artificiality. Even the people—the farmer, acquaintance, family—feel unreal and distant. The speaker needs desperately to reassert and confirm her humanity.
The "animal saving me" in line 19 may refer to Limón's dog, Lily Bean, who has featured in her writing. Many people adopted pets during COVID lockdown, or found new comfort in their pets, to make up for the loss of so much human connection. While this relationship is immensely valuable, the speaker is mourning how necessary it is.
"High / water" may refer to climate crisis, like rising tides or storms—one more tragedy that remains impersonal and hard to manage—and "sorrow" echoes the whole poem's tone. In contrast, "the air and its ease" may indicate how liberating the fresh air may feel: during pandemic lockdown and constant mask-wearing, a walk outside could be a rare reprieve, but to the speaker, this "ease" feels bittersweet due to the contrast.
All of the poem's images, filled with the tragedy of distance and isolation, culminate with one simple request: "I am asking you to touch me." The run-on sentence form lends the poem breathlessness to match its subject of exhaustion, making this ending period all the more satisfying. By far, this is the shortest line of the poem, indicating as well that what the speaker needs is a simple, basic, raw connection: not ornate, artificial language.
The "you" is ambiguous—see analysis in Characters—and reaches out equally to the poet's lover as to the general audience of readers. Skin-to-skin touch appears in the poem's last line as the antithesis of poetic and religious abstraction, of the pandemic's isolation, of the exhaustion of tragedy seen from afar. Touch, unlike video calling, is immediate and unfiltered. "The End of Poetry," for Limón's speaker, is found in human connection, when words cease to be an adequate substitute.
The closing line is a request, not a command, and less self-assured than the flirtatious shirt-lifting in her poem "How to Triumph Like a Girl." The reader is left with the task of making this intimacy a reality: after all, "The End of Poetry" is only a poem, and the real work of connecting must be done off the page.
