"Boston", Aaron Smith

1) THE POEM

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2) VOCABULARY

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3) ANALYSIS

(a) "Boston" is about loneliness and a yearning for someone that is no longer there. It is about how empty and lost you can feel when you are missing someone and you are no longer able to find comfort in them. The world seems too big and vast and it feels as though you cannot find yourself. The speaker of the poem remembers back to how he used to feel and how what he used to do now only adds to how deserted he feels. 

(b) In "Boston", the speaker is trying to deal with the emptiness he feels after the person he loved left him. The poet is showing the audience how feelings of loneliness can affect you. In the poem, the speaker has lost sense of who he is, saying how he "couldn't remember when [he] knew [he'd] never be beautiful, but it must have been quick and subtle, the way the holy ghost can pass in and out of a room." The doesn't even feel like he's living because the person he loves is no longer with him. The speaker is trying to find strength around him, but the city he's in is not providing him with any solace. Although this poem is very depressing, the audience is meant to be able to relate to it. The poet writes in a way that makes the audience feel the emptiness of both Boston and the space around the speaker without the person he loves by his side. The poem does not portray loneliness as a negative thing, instead, the audience feels the pain of the speaker and, if they have ever experienced a similar situation, is able to empathize with him.

4) PERSONAL CONNECTION

Everyone has felt lonely before. I can recall a few different periods in my life where I felt alone and empty, the way that the speaker in this poem feels. While I may not have been lonely because of the void a person in my life has left, the feeling of loneliness is the same no matter what its cause is. I also relate to the setting of this poem. I have visited Boston countless times, and experienced sunsets, night-times, and afternoons there. The simplest things, like sunsets, can happen in Boston and make you feel complete and can amaze you, but can make you feel empty at the same time. I related to not only the simple feeling of loneliness, but also how a certain place can maximize these feelings even more. The poem paints the feeling of missing someone in a beautiful way, so that while reading it, you can connect to the speaker's pain and, for me, share in the speakers feelings of loneliness.