Shoes
Shoes - meaning Summary
Desire Tempered by Age
Bukowski's 'Shoes' contrasts youthful longing with aged resignation. The speaker describes how a solitary pair of women's high-heeled shoes evokes potent erotic imagination when young; in old age the same object is empty, mundane, and even preferable without the person it once signified. The poem compresses desire, time, and disillusionment into a brief, blunt observation about how objects carry shifting emotional weight across life.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen you're young, a pair of female high-heeled shoes just sitting alone in the closet can fire your bones; When you're old, it's just a pair of shoes without anybody in them and just as well.
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