Having It Out with Melancholy

When a friend suggests in the poem that Kenyon “wouldn’t be so depressed / if you really believed in God” (Lines 28-29), the friend inadvertently echoes the lack of understanding and negative perceptions about mental illness in late-20th-century America.

Although the wave of new pharmaceutical drugs introduced between the 1950s and 1980s created new treatments for patients, the public still lacked insight into the nature of mental illnesses. The public’s resources often painted people with mental illnesses as dangerous, unreliable, lazy, amoral, or weak-willed. In a study about Americans’ perceptions about mental illness, researchers found that almost 80% of participants dismissed major depression as the result of “the ups and downs of life” (Pescosolido, Bernice A., et al. “Trends in Public Stigma of Mental Illness in the US, 1996-2018.” JAMA Network Open, vol. 4, no. 12, 2021). People also trivialized and shamed others with mental illnesses. As a result, depression went underdiagnosed and untreated well into the 1990s (Leary, Warren. “Doctors Urged to Look for Signs of Depression.” The New York Times, 21 Apr. 1993).

Kenyon deconstructs these arguments throughout “Having It Out with Melancholy”: “I’m trying to explain to people who have never experienced this kind of desolation, what it is. It’s this thing that will not let you go, that comes when it wants and goes when it wants,” she said in an interview with Bill Moyer. “I want to increase people’s understanding about this disease” (Kenyon 158-59).

Rather than being the result of traumatic life events or personal loss, Kenyon’s depression first manifested when she was a baby before she could articulate and recognize ideas. Because depression “taught” (Line 11) her at a young age, these lessons predisposed her towards looking at things through a melancholy lens. Even during moments of everyday happenings “among red tin lunch boxes / and report cards,” depression lingered as “an anti-urge” (Lines 17-18, 19).

Kenyon also shows that depression is much more than sadness. It also manifests as low self-esteem and alienation from her own identity. She feels outside of herself, watching “a piece of burned meat / wear my clothes, speak[ing] / in my voice” (Lines 59-61). Despite trying, this other self cannot function. She “dispatches obligations / haltingly, or not at all,” struggles to read, and cannot “call / for an appointment for help” (Lines 61-62, 85-86).

Kenyon’s depression does not end with closure or a revelation about a precipitating incident or with time as one might expect with grief. Instead, it breaks suddenly one morning after some time and after taking the antidepressant Nardil. She feels more present in her body, enjoying “the bird / singing in the great maples” (Lines 102-03).

However, Kenyon is quick to point out that while the medication is vital for treatment, it cannot cure everything—therapy is an option that can help assist in conjunction with medication. Despite “pharmaceutical wonders […] at work,” Kenyon still knows, “Unholy ghost, / you are certain to come again” (Lines 76, 78-79). She even begins the poem with a quote from Russian playwriter Anton Chekhov. The quote reads, “If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.” In other words, no vaccines exist for mental illnesses in the same way they exist for smallpox. However, prescription medication and therapy help manage them.

Kenyon felt “Having It Out with Melancholy” was essential to write and publish since the shame and misinformation about mental illnesses often isolated many people without resources or companionship. “I want to ease people’s burdens,” she told Moyer (Kenyon 159). The poem left a significant impact on readers and listeners to the point where people thanked her after readings since they felt seen (Kenyon 153-54).