Chapter 23 'These Days' Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The poem "These Days" opens with the speaker and a companion coming indoors after a downpour, only to discover that rain is also falling inside the house. This paradoxical situation mirrors the speaker's internal state. She observes that her body is aging and that her anger is becoming a persistent, burning seam. She expresses deep annoyance with love, yet love continues to arrive anyway. The poem cycles through these images a second time, reinforcing the repetitiveness of the experience. The indoor rain suggests that there is no escape from the emotional weather—frustration, change, and love follow wherever she goes. The final line, "and still it comes," underscores love's stubborn, unwelcome persistence.
Key Events
- The speaker enters a building after being caught in a downpour.
- Rain is also falling inside, defying the expectation of shelter.
- The speaker acknowledges her body's aging process.
- Her anger is described as burning into a seam, implying deep, continuous friction.
- The speaker feels a strong annoyance toward love.
- Despite the annoyance, love still comes—the event repeats.
Character Development
The speaker in "These Days" reveals a conflicted emotional state. At the start, she seeks refuge from external weather but finds no relief indoors. This mirrors an internal struggle: her aging body and smoldering anger are inescapable. The anger is not a momentary flash but a "seam"—something woven into her daily experience. Yet the poem's turning point is her admission of being "annoyed by love." Annoyance is a small emotion, but here it implies a weary familiarity, not outright rejection. The poem's repetition shows that this cycle is ongoing. By the end, love's arrival is presented as inevitable. The speaker's development is subtle: from seeking shelter to accepting that the storm is internal, and that love will come regardless of her feelings. She does not change her circumstances but changes her awareness.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Duality and Contradiction: The central image—"raining indoors"—symbolizes how external troubles become internal ones. Shelter offers no escape. The speaker is both outside and inside the same storm.
- Aging and the Body: The line "My body ages" is stark and unembellished. The body becomes another site of unavoidable change, like the weather.
- Anger as a Seam: Anger is not a flame that goes out but a seam—a line of stitching that holds something together, perhaps the speaker's identity. It suggests permanence and integration.
- Love's Persistence: Love is described with annoyance, yet it still comes. This motif recurs throughout And Yet: love is not a choice but an ongoing, sometimes unwanted force.
- Repetition as Structure: The poem is written twice in the text, emphasizing the cyclical nature of the speaker's experience. Each day brings the same pattern.
Why This Chapter Matters
"These Days" condenses several core tensions in Kate Baer's collection: the friction between weariness and love, the inevitability of physical decline, and the lack of safe harbor from one's own emotions. It serves as a microcosm of the book's central concern—how to keep living and loving when the world (and the self) feels broken. The indoor rain metaphor is one of the most direct statements in And Yet about the impossibility of escaping one's inner climate. This chapter also demonstrates Baer's characteristic economy: in just eight short lines (plus repetition), she evokes a complete emotional landscape. For readers, it reinforces the idea that acknowledgment—not resolution—may be the only honest response to life's contradictions.
Study Questions and Answers
1. What does the image of "raining indoors" reveal about the speaker's emotional state?
The image suggests that the speaker cannot find safety or peace. After escaping the external downpour, she discovers that the same storm exists inside. This mirrors her internal condition: no matter where she goes, her feelings of anger, aging, and conflicted love follow her. There is no separation between outer circumstances and inner turmoil.
2. How does the poet use the word "seam" to describe anger?
A seam is a line where two pieces of fabric are joined, often with difficulty. By describing anger as burning "into a seam," Baer implies that the anger is not a passing emotion but becomes part of the speaker's fabric—something stitched into her daily life. It is persistent, structural, and cannot be easily removed.
3. Why might the poet repeat the entire poem? What effect does this have?
The repetition mimics the cyclical nature of the speaker's experience. Each day brings the same downpour, the same aging, the same anger, and the same love. The reader feels the weight of recurrence. It also emphasizes the final line—"and still it comes"—by giving love two opportunities to arrive, reinforcing its inevitability.