Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Echo" is a devastating meditation on miscarriage, grief, and the cyclical nature of memory and language. The poem’s title suggests repetition—not just of words, but of pain, unanswered questions, and the inescapability of loss. Structured with a rhythmic return to certain phrases and motifs, the poem itself behaves like an echo, layering new variations upon its refrains, mirroring the way grief resists linear resolution. Hicok does not offer a straightforward narrative but instead immerses the reader in the disjointed and recursive thought patterns of a mind struggling to comprehend an absence that cannot be undone.

The poem opens with an ambiguous, emotionally stark statement: "He or she let go of my wife and me." The phrase "He or she" immediately places the lost child in a liminal space—neither fully realized nor fully erased, hovering between existence and absence. The choice of "let go" rather than "was lost" subtly shifts agency; it suggests that the child, in some ungraspable way, made a decision, or at least that the loss is being framed in terms of an act rather than an event. The doctor, introduced in the next line, embodies cold objectivity, "stressing objectivity", as if detachment is the only way to present such news. This detachment contrasts with the parents' experience, where objectivity is impossible.

Hicok then turns to strikingly visual and physical images: "Blood on denim looks like water at first. / Water interprets wind subjectively." The juxtaposition of blood and water introduces a key tension in the poem: blood, which stains and lingers, versus water, which moves and disperses. The transformation of blood into water at first glance suggests the body's attempt to process trauma—it misinterprets what it sees, softening it before reality sinks in. Meanwhile, the line "Water interprets wind subjectively" introduces the idea that even nature is not neutral; it responds, bends, and changes shape according to external forces, much like grief reshapes perception.

As the poem unfolds, Hicok weaves repetition into the structure itself: "When I say something new I repeat myself. / A child would repeat and erase ourselves." The paradox here is that any attempt to articulate grief leads back to the same point—language cannot escape its own echo. The mention of the child’s ability to "repeat and erase" is haunting. Children are often mirrors of their parents, but this child—never fully present—erases them instead, making them feel hollow or undone.

The next passage introduces a moment of quiet, understated devastation: "We had a list of names, column girl, column boy. / We waited for the face to decide itself." The careful organization of names suggests a structured hope, a way of preparing for the future. But the phrase "waited for the face to decide itself" is deeply unsettling—it implies that the child never reached the point of definition, never developed into the being they had imagined. Instead, the parents are left with an absence, a decision that was never made, an identity that was never fully realized.

The repetition of blood becomes more pronounced: "She stood in the door with blood on her jeans." This image of the mother—physically marked by loss—stands in contrast to the father, who is reading a book he "won't read again." The book, now forever associated with this moment, becomes unreadable, much like the life they had imagined. The mother turns to genetic explanations ("My wife thinks her genes let go of the child."), a desperate search for cause, but the doctor rejects this, "stressing his certainty." This binary—personal guilt versus medical fact—reveals the gap between the need for answers and the failure of science to provide meaning beyond the clinical.

Hicok’s use of silence becomes as powerful as his words: "The nurse almost tiptoed around the room." The near-silence of the nurse mirrors the unspoken grief in the parents, the careful avoidance of making things worse in a situation where words can do little.

The idea of "letting go" recurs, now stripped of its initial ambiguity: "My wife and I slept awake in different rooms. / We each let go and have never explained." The separation in grief—physically sleeping apart, emotionally distant—underscores the isolating nature of loss. The phrase "slept awake" perfectly captures the contradiction of trauma: the body is exhausted, but the mind cannot rest.

The poem then turns toward an impossible task: "It’s hard to prove by flesh you give no blame. / Blood unlike water never truly goes away." The speaker suggests that, no matter how much they tell each other that blame is not assigned, the body itself—its physical memory, the evidence of loss—resists that absolution. The assertion that "blood unlike water never truly goes away" reinforces the earlier tension between permanence and transience. Blood stains. It lingers, unlike water, which can be washed away. The loss of the child is something they cannot cleanse from themselves.

Repetition sharpens as the poem nears its close: "We repeat to each other it's impossible to explain." Even their communication is caught in a loop, their attempts to express the inexpressible leading back to the same conclusion. The doctor's hope ("The doctor hoped we would try again.") is clinical and detached, reducing the loss to something repairable, something replaceable. But the speaker and his wife are haunted: "When we touch she moves like water under wind. / In her flesh I hear the names repeat themselves." The imagery here is intimate yet eerie—the wife's body itself carries echoes of the unborn child, as if the loss reverberates within her.

The final stanza delivers the most chilling lines: "Blood on her hands will never be new." This line serves as both a literal and figurative statement. The mother’s hands, stained with the physical evidence of miscarriage, cannot return to a state of innocence. The trauma is permanent, no longer something that just happened but something that will always have happened. The closing lines—"It's impossible to stop wanting to repeat ourselves. / We slept in different rooms with our shame. / It's impossible to bury names under wind. / Blood disappears into water without blame."—circle back to the paradoxes at the heart of the poem. The need to repeat, to try to make sense of loss, is relentless. Shame and grief push them apart, yet they share the same wound.

The last line is particularly ambiguous: "Blood disappears into water without blame." Is this a comfort? A release? Or is it an acknowledgment that, despite wanting answers, despite needing something or someone to blame, the loss ultimately dissolves into nothingness, becoming an absence rather than a reason? The poem resists closure, just as grief resists resolution.

Hicok’s "Echo" is a masterful rendering of miscarriage’s quiet devastation. The poem, structured around repetition and contradiction, mirrors the recursive nature of grief—the way loss loops back on itself, making language feel inadequate. Through fragmented imagery, shifting metaphors, and restrained lyricism, Hicok captures the unbearable weight of an absence that cannot be fully explained or understood. The poem leaves the reader inside the echo chamber of the speaker’s mind, where words, blood, water, and silence repeat themselves endlessly, never quite resolving into something whole.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...