Sex and heartbreak in John Ashbery’s “Hop o’ My Thumb”

Steamy anticipation turns to post-nooky regret

Few things are more thrilling than the foreplay of desire, before anything even as physical as a kiss. Craving the attention and reciprocated physical contact of a lover. The chemicals of desire flooding your body with anticipation as you think about the object of your sexual attractions, because those same chemicals giving you joy in this moment may also be also hindering your judgment, even encouraging you to rush headlong towards mistakes or regret.

John Ashbery’s poem “Hop o’ My Thumb” tells a steamy story of momentary bliss during sexual awakening: the poem focuses on the foreplay and anticipation of sex by a girl and a boy, who seem to be young, perhaps just barely enough to be adult, with childhood not long behind. Soon after their sexual encounter is over, the boy vanishes, leaving the girl feeling betrayed and changed by their encounter.

Stories of sexual awakening are not new and often follow cliche paths. While the plot of this poem does follow a predictable plot, it also conveys an incredible depth of feeling and imagery in its brief three stanzas.

This poem demonstrates what an incredible poet John Ashbery was, so if you’ve never read his writing before, try this poem to get a sense of the flavor of his style. While John Ashbery is unfortunately now deceased and so I cannot thank him for this wonderful work of art directly, I can encourage others like you to read his work and experience the poem for yourself.

One of the joys of poetry is its openness to interpretation and adaptability. While the poem uses common gender roles, with the female being seduced by the more sexually experienced male, the poet himself was not heterosexual and neither will be many readers. Change the pronouns as you read this poem if you find it works better for you or your ability to put yourself in the place of one of the characters. Substitute words to make the poem more or less like your own experiences and see how it changes your understanding or feeling about the poem. Poetry is about your, the reader’s, experience and interpretation of that writing, so think about how you would like to engage with it. John Ashbery himself seemed to enjoy the various ways people interpreted his poetry.

Reading the poem in different ways can allow for new understandings of the content: Consider reading the poem aloud and then silently in your head. You may find your attention drawn to different words or pauses each time. Read by pausing at the end of each line, and then pause only at the punctuation marks. Read a stanza focusing on positive feelings and then negative ones.

The poem is on pages 31–32 of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I wasn’t able to find a link to the full-text of the poem online, so please check your local library for a copy. If there isn’t one on the shelf or in the library catalog, ask a librarian about how they can get a copy.

I’ll break the poem down in sections, starting with the title and then each of the three stanzas, which have their own flavor and mood. This analysis captures aspects I found while studying the poem, so understand that other interpretations, including your own, may differ.

What’s in a Title

The title of the poem, “Hop o’ My Thumb” refers to several things at once, and it’s important that there are contradictory references within the same phrase.

First, “Hop-o’-my-thumb’ refers to the name of a character from a French fairytale. The literary character is a boy similar to Hans from Hansel and Gretel, and this summons images of fairytales, bedtime stories, innocence (especially sexual innocence), and other aspects of childhood.

Now imagine hearing someone say, “Hop on my thumb.” Maybe you giggled like a middle schooler hearing “Uranus”, or maybe you heard a sensual voice, like a lover whispering sweet nothings. That’s a different bedtime story than one the fairytale character would star in, but both interpretations seem intentional. Because the poem focuses on a sexual adventure, the title may indeed be referring to the explicit act of fingering and sexual invitation.

The title weaves elements of childhood sexual innocence with burgeoning sexuality just as the characters in the poem are simultaneously part child and part adult, being neither purely innocence children or fully matured adults.

Stanza One

The first stanza is like foreplay, hinting at sex with increasing bluntness as the poem grows. The first time I read a poem, I pick up pieces, and on each rereading, I understand more and pick up more of the subtlety. I call attention to the aspects of this poem after many rereadings, so I wouldn’t expect anyone reading this poem for the first time to see all of these aspects right away either. Poems are best enjoyed being savored, returned to several times and looked at in different ways. Reading a poem through several times will increase your depth of immersion and understanding, so I encourage you to give yourself patience and time to revel in it by returning to it more than once. Each word in a poem has been specifically chosen, more carefully chosen than the prose of fiction, so if you question whether you’re reading too much into a word or a phrase, trust yourself and see where it takes your experience of the poem.

The first stanza indicates that the characters have been at a party. There are “grand hotels” filled with “dancing girls”. Lines 11–14 describe cars and party hats. The characters had a “supper of cakes”, which tells us not only that there was cake at this party but that the characters seem to have indulged in a childish wish of having only cake for dinner.

The characters “urge forward” (line 2), which indicates a craving and intensity, perhaps not of their own volition but drawn together by primal instinct. The characters urge forward “under a veil of ‘lost illusion’”. A veil hides what is underneath. A ‘lost illusion’ indicates that the truth has been, or will be, revealed so that the truth underneath is known. The characters seem to want to be disillusioned, to see what is under the veil and experience the real thing rather than only dream of it.

What are the characters urging forward towards? “There is no day in the calendar” seems a joke about “hump day”. This is another combination of childish elements (joking about sex) with adulthood (this is foreshadowing of the sexual activity that the characters soon engage in).

The poem spends four lines (7–10) describing the boy’s dream of the body of a dreaming woman. He doesn’t describe the woman based on anything that the boy had actually seen himself. He has so little experience and knowledge of women that he can only use his mind to imagine what a woman looks like while she’s in bed. His image of a woman isn’t active or in control — she doesn’t choose to act but is acted upon. She is “seized” and flops over. She dreams and blushes at what her mind conjures during sleep, indicating unfulfilled sexual longing. She blushes “with fine foliage”, the floral referencing summoning literary and cultural symbols of femininity associated with plants and nature.

Then there is a clear reference to the people, echoing the pinpoint moment of decision itself: “…the amorous children / take the solitary downward path of dreams”. The poem zeroes in on these two people, who are still young enough to be called ‘children’ but who are also amorous, surging towards adulthood sexuality. Line breaks can be powerful in poetry, and having the line break at “the amorous children” forces a pause, highlights that phrase and the flow into the rest of the sentence which is the next line. Speak aloud those words aloud to hear the density in their sounds (the ‘d’ in ‘downward’ for example). The syllables of the words also have a similar downward trend — going from 4 to 1 — that parallel the meaning of the words: take (1) the (1) solitary (4) downward (2) path (1) of (1) dreams (1).

The boy refers to the girl as “Undine”, an elemental being like a water nymph who has a beautiful voice. He uses this complimentary term for her, as she makes noise (“the notes now can scarcely be heard”, line 16) while he fingers her (“the third wish” in line 18 being a reference to “third base” in sexual terms).

The first stanza is packed with beautiful things — the gorgeous party and setting where the characters meet — as well as lovely interactions between the characters themselves. The boy referred to the girl as a goddess, and she had such pleasure that she sang like a mermaid. Unfortunately, as the first two lines alluded, an illusion is about to be shattered.

Stanza Two

A male speaks from his, first person, point-of-view (“I remember…”, line 19), but he is no longer acting like a knight in shining armor. He can’t even remember if the girl he is speaking to is the one he remembers from an encounter (“you or some girl”, line 20). What matters to the male seems to be his experience, not who it was with, the other person involved with him.

Line 21 paints an image of a female with a pearl necklace, cum around her throat (“The necklace of wishes alive and breathing around your throat”). The two bodies become so entangled in the throes of passion that they didn’t know where one body ended and another began. Or so they tell themselves — the use of “we” means that someone is speaking of their own exploits, which may be embellished… probably almost definitely making things out to be way better than they really were. These two people are having sex on the beach in the middle of the day, hidden only by a quick rainstorm (“pelted in an electric storm of rain”, line 25). That certainly seems like the kind of setting chosen by amateurs, not far out of childhood.

The encounter reaches its height, orgasm, and then is over: “Yet all was desiring though already desired and past”, line 30). For an encounter that was so mind-blowing that the male referred to losing track of where his body ended and his lover’s began, the only souvenir or proof that it occurred is their memory of it (“The moment a monument to itself / No one would ever see or know was there”, line 31–32).

Stanza Three

The third stanza sees a dramatic mood shift as the peak of sexual activity is now past and the characters, the female in particular, grapple with the aftermath. While the male’s voice and thoughts came through so strongly in the second stanza, the third focuses on the female, as though the male is already gone, having abandoned the girl as soon as his sexual appetite was satisfied for the moment.

A lot of time has passed since these characters left the party and went to the beach. The first two stanzas contained the urgency of desire, of the lovers seeking one another’s bodies on the beach in the middle of the day, and time seemed to stand still while they were actively engaged in their sexual pursuits. By stanza three, “time faded too” — time has passed, and the characters become aware of the time and how late it is, being now night with “sleeping cabins” nearby.

Notice that the poet personifies “cabins” and “lanterns”: “There were sleeping cabins near by, blind lanterns” (line 35). Cabins and lanterns are inanimate objects, things that are not alive and so cannot be literally sleeping or blind. The lanterns are blind — these things that should provide light and revelation cannot, or will not, see. They do not see the girl. Does she want them to see or let her and what she has done this day pass by unseen? Perhaps she does not even know herself whether she wants to be revealed.

The poem incorporates references to childhood in a way that seem jarring and disillusioning after the sexual adventures of the previous stanzas. There is “the plate of milk left for the fairies”, for example, which tells us that someone nearby, if not one of these characters specifically, still believes in the real existence of fairies. I think it’s safe to say that most adults would say fairies are the stuff of fairytales, not real life, so this reference to the fairies calls to mind the transition from child to adult, evolving maturity and beliefs as children grow up, and the disillusionment that can come from leaving childhood. Having one’s first sexual encounters can trigger such a disillusionment and awakening.

Confusion and disillusionment, the questioning of one’s beliefs and whether one made the right decision, become stronger as the stanza continues and the poem begins to end.

“And always an open darkness in which one name / Cries over and over again: Ariane! Ariane!” (lines 39–40). Someone was crying out a name, Ariane. Perhaps this is actually the girl’s name, but I think other interpretations are more likely, and considering these multiple interpretations and aspects seems to be important here because each can tell us something important.

First, Ariane was the name of a series of rockets initiated in the 1970s (and still active) associated with France and the European Space Agency. John Ashbery lived in France for some period of time, though he was an American, born in Rochester, New York, and who lived a substantial part of his life in New York. So, I believe he would have been quite aware of the rocket initiative with this name. When I see Ashbery telling us that someone cried out “Ariane” over and over in the darkness, I see the tangled imagery of rockets, associated with Ariane and male sexuality, specifically the rocket-shaped penis and orgasm “blasting off”. But why would a character cry out the name of a space rocket during sexual stimulation? The character seems rather amateur and childish, to do so.

This brings a second interpretation or aspect into play. While the European Space Agency chose “Ariane” for the names of their rockets, this is a version of the name of Ariadne, which refers to a princess from Greek mythology. As stated on Wikipedia, she is “best known for having helped Theseus escape the Minotaur but being abandoned by him on the island of Naxos; subsequently, she became the wife of Dionysus. (There are many other versions of her myth.)” According to the myths, after Theseus got what he needed, escaping death and the island on which he would have died, he abandoned Ariadne. He deserted her when he no longer had use of her, and she later found someone else to be with. In this poem, the boy seems to similarly abandon the girl he had been sexually worshipping with his fingers, perhaps even calling out the name “Ariane” aloud during the height of their passion. Crying out the name of your lover giving you joy can be an homage, a mark of worship, like crying out, “Oh, God!” Calling out the name of a goddess may be similar.

Calling out the name of Ariadne conveys regret and acknowledgment of being controlled and now abandoned. “Ariane! Ariane! / Was it for this you led your sisters back from sleep” (lines 40–41). I imagine the girl speaking these questions to herself, similar to how you may think to yourself, “Oh, god, what have I done?” This is a lamentation, an expression of sadness and regret. Ariane is being spoken to and emphatically so; Ashbery uses exclamation points to convey emphasis and emotion, like shouts. The girl speaks to herself not softly or subtly but emphatically, using the second person “you” in questioning whether what she has done was worth it or a good decision: “Was it for this you led your sisters back from sleep” (line 41). Was it really worth it? This seems very much like morning-after regrets especially associated with first sexual encounters that so many of us can remember of our own.

In line 42, the female refers to the boy as a betrayer, not as a romantic hero: “and now he of the blue beard has outmaneuvered you?” He of the blue beard” refers to the French folktale of Bluebeard: “a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word “Bluebeard” the definition of “a man who marries and kills one wife after another”. The verb “bluebearding” has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.” The girl calls him Bluebeard to herself, acknowledging that she has been used for the boy’s own purposes and desires. There is an aspect of betrayal now that the deed is done.

Line 43 shows a shift in phrasing and line length that parallels the girl’s mental or emotional shifts. When the third stanza starts, the lines are long and rather grandly stated sentences. After crying out “Ariane! Ariane!”, perhaps yelling at herself, the girl seems to say to herself, “But for the best perhaps”, as though to say what is done is done and to move on.

The line doesn’t stop there though. The full line is: “But for the best perhaps: let” The single word ‘let’ at the end of the line gives us a breath of pause while reading (I encourage you to read poetry aloud as well as in your mind. See and hear the differences. The same poem read in a different way can bring new understandings, interpretations, and joy). When reading the “let” aloud, I breathe it out like a sigh, like an “oh, well,” a resignation.

“Let / Those sisters slink into the sapphire / Hair that is mounting day” (lines 43–45). The sisters here seem to refer to the constellation Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45, and other names. These stars are coming into view — they “slink”, perhaps as the girl herself slinks back to where she should be, hoping not to be seen by “blind lanterns”. She says not that they sink but tells herself, “let them sink”. Let go of something, perhaps release the emotional pain of having been used and discarded so quickly that the boy isn’t even walking with her, for she is indeed alone as she returns home.

John Ashbery paints a beautiful image while connecting femininity and night, the moon, and stars. Literature has a long history associating night and femininity, which I encourage you to start to explore if you are yet unfamiliar with that history. The poem focuses on the sky with the stars slinking into view as the daytime sky shifts to the darker sky of night like sapphire blue hair. While Bluebeard the betrayer had blue hair like the dark sky of night here, Bluebeard was a male, a seducer and user of women while the blue hair of night is referred to in more feminine ways, protecting the star sisters and rising, overtaking the daytime sky as if becoming more powerful or shifting the power from male day to female night.

Though the star sisters are slinking, a word that conveys meekness and shame, the blue hair of night itself is “mounting” day. A male may sexually mount a female, as the girl in this poem was mounted by the male she now considers to have outmaneuvered her. “Mount” requires active intent and is not a passive act. The girl was sexually mounted earlier, literally in a physical manner and also emotionally manipulated (“outmaneuvered”). Now, as day turns to night, the power dynamic between male and female, the boy and girl, shifts. The sisters in the sky, while referring to the constellations, also may refer to sisterhood among females more generally and femininity. Night and especially the moon often represent femininity in mythologies and folktales. So here we see the sisters slinking, perhaps regretful of what is now done, into the hair of night, the night sky taking over the daytime sky, and the night is not passively accepting the change from day towards night but actively mounting the daytime sky. The female symbols of night are rising up and overtaking the elements of day and male subterfuge.

The last lines of the poem, lines 46–49, reiterate feelings of betrayal and shame but also a sense of resolution and revenge:

There are still other made-up countries

Where we can hide forever,

Wasted with eternal desire and sadness,

Sucking the sherbets, crooning the tunes, naming the names.

This experience was a sexual awakening or early, if not her first, such physically intimate encounter for the girl. As she makes her way home afterwards, she seems to be telling herself that yes, she can hide what happened, perhaps even lying to herself, but that won’t change what happened or her feelings on it. “There are still other made-up countries” seems a reminder of childhood — the girl can return to childish tendencies like hiding in her imagination as with childhood games, but she would be “wasted” with unfulfilled sexual desire mingled with the sadness of betrayal and the failure of reality to match her imaginings. So, even though she goes back to her life and may not appear any different on the outside, still doing things that a child may like eating ice cream (“sucking the sherbets”), she is internally changed. She does not accept the boy’s betrayal entirely lying down, even if she isn’t punching him in the face. Even while she may eat her ice cream and sing songs, and will be “naming the names.” She will speak the names of her enemies, putting words to their deeds and naming them so that she and others will know them and of their actions. The poem ends with emphasis on the girl’s power and direction: she will name her offender and not be silent. She feels betrayed and sad after this encounter, and she seems resolved that while yes she will nurse her wounds and feel her sadness, she will also not allow the boy to escape without others knowing of the pain he caused. She will name her transgressor and speak her truth.

A Final Note

I hope that you don’t think this breakdown explains everything in the poem. Of course there’s more, but why would I break down every single word, ruining the treasures you may find yourself? Go read it, revel in it, and see what it means to you, dear reader.