Emotional
Void
“Alone
with Everybody” by Charles Bukowsky dramatizes the conflict between physical
and emotional relationships. The speaker is a lonely, troubled person with a
bleak impression of emotional love. Therefore, it is appropriate that this poem
begins by making use of American slang to convey an underlying meaning. The
first line, “the flesh covers the bone,” is slang for a penis, resulting in an
unexpected meaning of the next three lines, “and they put a mind / in there and
/ sometimes a soul.” This use of double meaning reveals that the poem is about
sex and how easy it is for people to have a physical relationship, while
finding “the one” (a soul mate) is impossible.
The
speaker connects the poem with the title at the end of the second stanza by
stating, “we are all trapped / by a singular / fate.” At first, the title seems
to imply a feeling of isolation in a crowd of people, but the title actually
means everyone is alone in love. The metaphorical meaning of these lines,
however, is that there is no escape from the loneliness triggered by the absence
of love.
Lines
nine through nineteen highlight the myriad of physical relationships people
have in hopes of finding a soul mate: “and nobody finds the / one / but keep /
looking / crawling in and out / of beds. / flesh covers / the bone and the /
flesh searches / for more than / flesh.” The personification of flesh creates a
symbol for people having sex with various people in hopes of uncovering
something more meaningful than a physical relationship.
The
author uses enjambment to rush the reader to the end of the poem, just as
people rush to find “the one.” On the surface, the poem may seem unorganized or
random. Its lack of capitalization, sparse punctuation, and absence of set
meter and rhyme scheme, however, serve to reinforce the theme. It seems as if
something is missing from the poem, just as people feel like something is
missing from life when they cannot find “the one.”
The
use of dramatic imagery in the poem exposes the frustration that spawns from a
long-term lack of emotional intimacy: “and the women break / vases against the
walls / and the men drink too / much.” The fourth stanza exposes the outcome of
this continued frustration while utilizing regular rhythm, each line beginning
with “the” and ending with “fill,” in order to draw attention to its
significance: “the city dumps fill / the junkyards fill / the madhouses fill /
the hospitals fill / the graveyards fill.” While people waste their lives
searching for a true love through numerous sexual encounters, these places
become full; some of them full of people who cannot find this love, such as madhouses,
hospitals, and graveyards. These three places signify what often happens to
those who search too determinedly; they go mad, become ill, or commit suicide…
this is a waste, which is what is held in dumps and junkyards.
“Alone
with Everybody” uses repetition of certain ideas in order to support the
implied message. In the first stanza it is stated that “nobody finds the one,”
then the speaker begins the second stanza with, “there’s no chance / at all,”
in order to reiterate the depressing reality that there is no such thing as
“the one.” The final stanza, “nothing else / fills,” enforces the theme by
stating that while the dumps, junkyards, madhouses, hospitals, and graveyards
continue to fill, nothing else does, meaning no one will ever be filled by true
love. There will always be a void, an empty space where we believe someone else
belongs. This line was a dramatic conclusion to an exceptionally successful
poem portraying a bleak outlook on love.
