Hate Poem

In “Hate Poem,” Sheehan explores the complex dynamic of the long-term romantic relationship. Set in the hours following their “latest row” (Line 21), the poem features two characters: the speaker, who revels in the hate she feels for her partner, and the partner, with whom she seems to have a long history. Though the poem at first seems aggressively angry, readers can see through the petty silliness of the speaker’s descriptions and the humor with which she approaches her overwhelming annoyance with her partner that the relationship thrives on the pair’s mismatch.

The opening stanza seems to open in seriousness, curtly asserting “I hate you truly. Truly I do” (Line 1), confidently and getting right to the point. However, that assertion is slightly destabilized by the back-to-back repetition of the word “truly,” which gives some indication that the speaker is perhaps trying to convince herself of the intensity and reality of this hatred. In the following lines, Sheehan introduces humor into the poem. As the speaker lists all the different ways her body hates her partner, the absurdity of these images acts against the seeming uncompromising meaning of the word “hate.” By personifying gestures like “the flick of my wrist” (Line 3) and “the way I hold my pencil” (Line 4) as things capable of hating someone, the poem uses hyperbolic humor, tinged with childish obstinacy, to undercut the severity of the opening lines. The sense of immature and unreasonable complaint continues in the next image: that the speaker’s hate flows from the hypothetical sound her bones would make “were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel” (Line 5). This hypothetical event is such a random reference that sounds like an inside joke between the pair—why would a moray attack her smallest bones and what relevance does this nonexistent event have in a poem that is otherwise fixated on real and factual details? The jokey feeling reaches its apotheosis in the second stanza, whose only line again directly addresses the partner—this time to warn him, “Look out! Fore! I hate you” (Line 7), a play on words that could be read as “look out for [because] I hate you” or, more humorously, as if her hate is coming at him like a stray golf ball.

Throughout the poem, Sheehan uses very specific, highly detailed biological imagery such as red blood cells floating in a tiny vein (Line 6), her “third toenail, left foot” (Line 8), her “aorta” (Line 12), and the “whites of my target-eyes” (Line 18), and the way her breasts are positioned inside her bra (Line 19). This language has several effects. First, by describing her body in such minute and often clinical terms, the speaker underscores the intense and often unpleasant level of intimacy created when partners live together. Second, the precision of the descriptions evokes the hyper focus the speaker feels about her environment and herself—she is just as aware of her body in space as she is of her partner’s.

Finally, the biological references shift from the speaker to the partner, as she describes figuratively dissecting him “cell by cell” (Line 22), holding his flaws under a microscope. The practice is not illuminating—despite the specificity of the imagery about herself, she never explains in any detail what exactly her partner does that is so hateful. Instead, it is the steady and unrelenting dissection that is the point: she wants to cut the partner apart into tiny pieces to “hate each one individually and at leisure” (Line 22). The speaker is reveling in this leisurely activity, which has no goal beyond being a self-indulgent internal monologue. In fact, the reader never hears about why the partner is to blame, or why he is the target of such hate, or even what their latest fight was about. The poem instead centers on this process of picking apart the other, and the complex negotiation between loving a partner and “truly. Truly” (Line 1) hating them during and after a disagreement. The poem is less about the flaws of the partner, and focuses on the way adults can, like children, dig in their heels and fixate on being right.

Despite the fact that the poem is laced with biting humor and sassy insults, the speaker’s partner seems oblivious to her hate. The partner might hear her “sigh in the background” (Line 10), register her curt voice (Line 14), sense some “hesitation” when he suggests a drive (Line 15), but they are never really made aware of the speaker’s seething hate. As such, “Hate” reads more like a self-indictment. The speaker is keenly aware of the obsessive, childish, and irrational joy she takes in silently picking apart her oblivious partner. At the same time, this knowledge is coupled with the introspective wisdom of a grown woman who is aware of how unhealthy (if normal) this behavior is. Indeed, there is a deep honesty to the poem – Sheehan’s short lines allow the reader to see how insecure, immature, and self-righteous most adults can be when arguing with a partner, and how easy it is to get caught up in that process of criticism, forgetting one’s own imperfections.

In the final stanza, the poem’s language and imagery turns more severe and even violent. The speaker’s eyes are no longer simply organs of seeing: they are “target-eyes” (Line 18), a hyphenated phrase with several possible meanings. One interpretation is that her eyes are so wide with disbelief at the partner’s annoying actions that her irises appear like bulls-eye rings against the sclera. In a darker reading, the speaker’s eyes have turned into gun sights capable of targeting the person she is looking at—an interpretation that jibes with the next lines, which invoke weapon imagery, describing her breasts sitting “in their holster” like guns (Line 19) and her glee as something “sharp” that she can “brandish” like a knife (Line 21). The final lines of the poem do not back off from the violence; however, they now turn the destruction onto the speaker, who is now a victim of her streak of viciousness. The speaker’s body is like a broken submarine that is no longer capable of sustaining life; though her lungs are breathing in as much hate as they can—it is air to them—they cannot actually catch their breath. The speaker is suffocating, too fixated on documenting the many ways her partner doesn’t measure up to her standards to escape. At last, the speaker explicitly acknowledges the effect this hate has had on her when it is bottled up and indulged in to the point of obsession.

While “Hate Poem” playfully explores the hate one sometimes feels in a relationship, its subtext is full of how much love is present as well. As Sheehan remarked in an interview, hate and love sometimes closely resemble each other, and one could easily replace the word “hate” with “love” throughout the poem and have a “Love Poem.” In “Hate Poem” those lines are blurred, as the speaker obsesses more and more over the partner, leading the reader to question whether its truly hate or love driving this internal monologue.