Next Day (1965). Detailed description

As many of Jarrell’s poems do, “Next Day” contrasts the universal themes of death and dying with a routine, daily experience: an aging woman’s visit to the grocery store a day after her friend’s death. The tone is softer when compared with that of his early work, especially the ferocity of the speaker in “90 North” after he realizes that wisdom, though promised, can never be possessed. “Next Day” also deals with themes of wisdom and knowledge.

In the poem’s first line, Jarrell lures the reader away from any grand themes with names of ordinary household cleaners: Cheer, Joy, All. Immediately thereafter, however, the speaker quotes the American psychologist and philosopher William James, brother of the famous writer Henry James: “Wisdom, said William James, / Is learning what to overlook” (6-7).

This reference does not seem in keeping with Jarrell’s desire to write for the common reader, “and not for the more specialized audience that reads modern poetry” (Kipling, Auden, and Co. 170). In the Washington Post, Karl Shapiro, a fellow World War II poet and publisher of Jarrell’s works, praised Jarrell’s ability to capture the voice of common people and his refusal to “surrender his intelligence and his education to the undergraduate mentality” (quoted in Colum 1942).

The speaker’s elevated syntax, however, allows readers to experience her own regret: Long, lyrical sentences mirror the inner wanderings of a woman trying to piece together a new life from old memories. Jarrell does not, however, let her continue unchecked. In the middle of the second stanza, the real world intrudes—“the boy takes it to my station wagon”—pulling both speaker and reader back to a safe intellectual distance (10).

The woman laments the unfulfilled dreams of her youth and states her current crisis: “Now that I’m old, my wish / Is womanish: / That the boy putting groceries in my car / See me” (16-19). Again, in multisyllabic words and complex sentences, the woman drifts off to remember even more vividly what she was like when she was young. In a reminiscent style of Shakespearean wordplay, in which the same word is repeated in the same line with a different meaning, Jarrell writes, “And, holding their flesh within my flesh” to express that the feelings of the woman and her admirers seem to have been mutual (24).

The line “Their vile imaginings within my imagining,” however, implies that perhaps it was all in her mind, after all, and not in the desires of others. Just as she approaches an understanding of this mirrorlike quality, two short sentences of single-syllable words snap her back to her reality—“now the boy pets my dog / and we start home” (27-28).

For Discussion or Writing
1. Read “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden and then compare it with Jarrell’s “Next Day.” Think especially about the two speakers’ reactions to the death of a friend. Consider the primary focus of the speakers and the ways in which their outlooks on life change as a result of their friend’s death.

2. Jarrell writes the poem from a woman’s perspective. Why does he make this deliberate choice, and how does this choice affect our understanding of the poem? Is his feminine voice successful? Why or why not?