Having It Out with Melancholy

Kenyon often refers to medications by their official names, such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors. The names’ complexity in an otherwise plain-spoken poem can shock the reader. If the reader is unfamiliar with the drugs’ titles, they feel overwhelmed. This emotional state allows readers a small window into the overwhelming experience of trying to take medicine while depressed. For readers familiar with these drugs, their appearance makes the poem more intimate and relatable to lived experiences.

The medication motif most notably appears in the second section, which introduces the medication through a sentence fragment (a sentence without a subject or a verb is called a sentence fragment). Kenyon does not directly depict herself taking “Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, / Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, / Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft” (Lines 21-23). Readers can intuit that Kenyon has tried them all since she classifies sensory differences between different types. Since this list happens early in the poem, readers can also connect it to the opening quote about diseases with multiple remedies lacking a cure. Kenyon worries that these drugs will not work for her.

Additionally, people with depression frequently report feelings of “just going through the motions,” feeling disconnected from their actions, and being “here simply to wait for death” (Line 13).