Lowell's Petrarchan sonnet offers an octave dramatizing the agony of a constantly recurring thought; yet the sestet bemoans the loss of freedom to a beloved.
Amy Lowell’s poem “A Fixed Idea” consists of an octave and a sestet, which signals the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet form. The speaker of this sonnet is decrying the “torture” of consistency, more particularly, the consistency of thought. Then she dramatizes her wish that her beloved not burden and restrict her life.
Octave
In the octave, the speaker makes the bold statement that “What torture lurks within a single thought / When grown too constant.” The reader can readily identify with such a claim; some thought gets itself stuck in the brain, and it may take days or months to dislodge it. And it does not seem to matter if the thought itself is a pleasant one or a nasty one; just having it lodged there seemingly permanently gives the bearer’s brain the “torture.”
“Dull remembrance taught / Remembers on unceasingly,” the speaker says. Even if the thought is hardly noticed at first, it might keep presenting itself like endless drudgery. Despite “old delight” that we once felt in the thought, once it becomes habitually situated and consistently intrusive, we begin to “struggle, caught.” The human mind sucks up joy and grief equally, and the constant presence of either is an annoyance, a bother—actually, the speaker in the first line called it “torture,” which seals its fate as disastrous to the poor brain.
As is the tradition in the octave of the Petrarchan sonnet, the problem is posed and somewhat explained. So Lowell has posed the problem of the torturous thought that has lodged itself in the mind. Furthermore, she alerts the reader that it matters little whether that thought be positive or negative; it is still a torture, making the poor soul feel trapped. And what’s a poor soul to do? How will it free itself?
And from what must it free itself? Obviously, the way it would seek liberation from the thought depends entirely upon what the thought is.
Sestet
In the sestet, the reader listens as the speaker addresses seemingly a person; although, the speaker could be addressing that pesky “fixed idea,” which she has complained about so thoroughly and repeatedly in the octave.
The reader learns that the speaker’s problem with the “fixed idea” is not so much a mental or intellectual problem as one of a difference sort. The speaker says, “You lie upon my heart as on a nest.” After complaining about some pesky thought depressing the mind, now she informs her readers that the real complaint is about “my heart” or feeling.
Apparently, her addressee is like a bird who had nested in her heart, and the burden of having that bird there is too much for the speaker: “you can never know / How crushed I am with having you at rest / Heavy upon my life.” The speaker continues and quite literally confesses that “I love you so / You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.”
The speaker has no room in her life for a beloved. She has places to go, people to see, other fish to fry, so to speak. She cannot be tied down with a beloved. So she simply asks the little bird to buzz off: “In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.”
The fixed idea? There is lots of room for interpretation here. Just what that idea is remains a mystery.
Other Amy Lowell article, “Amy Lowell’s ‘Penumbra’”
