Modern Anxiety and Discontent in God I Feel Modern Tonight

Defining the Thematic Claim

Catherine Cohen’s God I Feel Modern Tonight presents modern anxiety and discontent as a chronic, self-aware restlessness that short-circuits every attempt at satisfaction. The speaker lives inside a paradox: she knows her worries are trivial, yet she cannot stop cataloguing them. Her ironic self-deprecation is both a symptom of this condition and the tool she uses to survive it. The thematic claim is that contemporary life—saturated with social media, therapy culture, dating apps, and wellness jargon—produces a species of anxiety that feels inescapable precisely because it is so legible. The speaker can name her problems, diagnose her jealousy, and mock her own health fears, but naming never leads to release. Instead, each insight folds back into another layer of discontent.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

The collection is not linear, but several poems act as anchor points for the theme. Three distinct scenes show how the speaker’s anxiety manifests in different contexts.

1. The Subway and Therapy Session (Chapter 2)

In the poem written after waking at 6 a.m. as a joke, the speaker is stuck on the C train with a beaded bag—a symbol of fragile, decorative femininity. A stranger boasts about his sound system, and her mind immediately jumps to a dystopian future where everyone is late to therapy and restaurants seat incomplete parties. She cannot wait to check her phone, to hear her daughter’s first podcast. The mundane details of modern transit and scheduling become vehicles for existential dread. Later, in therapy, she directly challenges the premise of personal growth: when her therapist says growth reduces suffering, the speaker questions the motive behind such a claim. She recalls an Italian waiter who said only the sound of rain matters, then undercuts the moment by wondering if he wanted sex. This poem captures anxiety as a refusal to take anything at face value—every moment of calm is inspected for hidden agendas.

2. The Health Scare and Embodied Discomfort (Chapter 3)

In the poem after she “crummed,” the speaker visits CityMD convinced she is dying, only to find the staff look like casino workers. She wakes at 2 p.m., buys a cold brew coffee (a symbol of modern productivity rituals that are themselves anxious), and feels like falling in love. The term “crum” fuses crying and sexual climax, suggesting that physical and emotional release are interchangeable responses to pressure. Health anxiety here is a specific form of modern discontent: the body is constantly monitored for symptoms, and every ache is read as catastrophic. Yet the poem undercuts that fear with dating satire and the surprise of seeing someone her age married. The speaker’s anxiety is real, but so is her ability to pivot to comedy.

3. The Pandemic Upstate and the “Perfect Life” (Chapter 52)

During the pandemic, the speaker worries that her arms are fat and recalls misdiagnosing vaginismus for an unattractive ex. She puts the wrong gas in the car, hates being alone, and notes that everything she does is on a computer, which already feels like a word from the past. Upstate, she has constant sex and eats string cheese, yet tells her therapist that watching Love Island makes her feel like a trapped islander. She laments there must be a fabulous party somewhere without her, everyone in shawls, smoking with long holders. Then she says she misses feeling alive—by which she means crying about her perfect life and boys who can’t dress themselves. The contradiction is explicit: she has comfort, partnership, and safety, but her mind still manufactures longing. This poem captures the core of modern discontent: a life objectively good can feel hollow without the tension of lack.

Character and Symbol Connections

The speaker is the sole narrator, and her anxiety defines every relationship. The lover/partner appears in the upstate poem as a source of closeness, yet the speaker still feels isolated. The therapist is a recurring figure whose advice is met with skepticism. The ex-boyfriend haunts poems about jealousy and past decisions—she thinks about the girls he kissed before her more than her own family. The stranger (the C train man, the Italian waiter) provides fleeting, ambiguous connections that she reads as possible romantic interest, adding another layer of anxious interpretation.

Symbols reinforce the theme. The beaded bag is a fragile accessory that she carries into the subway; it represents the ornamental, Instagram-ready self that cannot protect against breakdown. The subway C train is a liminal space where time slows and the speaker’s mind races. The phone/smartphone is a constant lure—she cannot wait to check it, yet it never delivers satisfaction. The cold brew coffee signals the need for alertness and stimulation, a drink that fuels the very anxiety it is meant to manage.

Complexity and Contradiction

The poems refuse a simple diagnosis. The speaker mocks her own therapy sessions, yet she keeps attending. She admits jealousy is like swallowing a house on fire, yet she also says she wouldn’t change a thing. She romanticizes errands before doing them, but finds the actual grocery store “in love” with her partner. There is a persistent tension between the desire for ordinary pleasure and the compulsion to undermine it. In Chapter 30, she tells rehearsal she can do the splits, then rips her pants; no one laughs. The moment is funny “in a TV way,” but the silence is real. This gap between performed confidence and actual exposure is where modern anxiety lives. Similarly, in Chapter 57, she takes a photo of her body alone “like an adult,” mixing self-objectification with absurdity. The poems do not resolve the contradiction—they inhabit it.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the speaker’s relationship with therapy illustrate modern anxiety? The speaker repeatedly attends therapy but challenges its premises. In Chapter 2, she asks why she should grow; in Chapter 52, she uses Love Island as a therapy tool. Therapy is both a resource and a site of resistance, reflecting a culture that insists on self-improvement while the speaker doubts its efficacy. Her anxiety persists despite—and perhaps because of—this relentless introspection.

2. What role does jealousy play in the collection’s depiction of discontent? Jealousy appears as a consuming force: she thinks about her partner’s past lovers more than her own family, and she admits that anyone who looks cool is just thin. Jealousy is a form of social comparison amplified by Instagram and dating culture. In Chapter 31, she calls jealousy “cool because it is like swallowing a house that you just set on fire,” suggesting it is both self-destructive and captivating.

3. How do mundane activities (e.g., buying cold brew, commuting, ordering food) become sources of anxiety? The speaker invests ordinary actions with existential weight. Buying cold brew feels like falling in love; getting stuck on the C train triggers visions of a dysfunctional future; ordering the wrong gas leads to thoughts about being alone. The modern condition, in Cohen’s world, turns every errand into a potential crisis because the speaker’s mind is never at rest.

4. In what ways does the speaker resist contentment even when it is available? In the upstate poem, she has constant sex, eats string cheese, and enjoys a brilliant sky, yet she asks her partner if they are dead up there. She misses feeling alive, which she defines as crying about her perfect life. The availability of contentment is precisely what makes her restless—she needs the friction of dissatisfaction to feel real.

5. How do symbols like the beaded bag and the phone reinforce the theme? The beaded bag is a fragile, decorative object that cannot contain the speaker’s anxiety; it accompanies her into the subway where she feels trapped. The phone is a promise of connection and distraction that always falls short—she looks forward to checking it, but the act itself never delivers peace. Both symbols highlight the gap between the curated surface of modern life and the unstable interior.