An Uneasy Read

The poem, "The Bath," by Gary Snyder is different than the poems we have read thus far in this course. It breaks away from modernism in a sense because the imagery is not clear throughout the work and there is no longer a pessimistic view of the world. The poem begins with an awkward eroticism that is almost unbearable to read with lines like, "his penis curving up and getting hard" (16). The reader is unsure if this is a strange love scene or something else. It turns out to be bath time in which an entire family, mom, dad, and two young sons bathe together in an innocent way. Their love for one another is exchanged at this time and the whole setting and manner of expression puts the reader in the mind of the sixties and seventies when hippies showed their compassion and feelings for each other in free mannerisms that would seem foreign to people of modern times. Although the sheer erotic undertones were uneasy to read at times, I can appreciate its place in post modernism literature.