In Donald Hall’s “Safe Sex the speaker challenges the traditional notions of practicing safe sex and relationship precautions and instead dives into the emotional aspects of relationships. The poem’s title is a play on the conventional connotations attached with the term “Safe Sex”; for anyone in any sort of relationship, there are a multitude of risks associated and those that one cannot explicitly prepare for are bound to be the most disastrous and emotionally damaging. The only ways to prevent becoming hurt in all sorts of romantic relationships is to put up an emotional guard, that will, in turn, prevent one from experiencing joy, love, and the overall bliss that comes from sharing all sorts of blissful moments that emerge from being vulnerable in a relationship.
The poem does not follow any specific format, perhaps to demonstrate the variability in all relationships, those with or without love. Furthermore, the poem seems to lack proper sentence structure, as it contains many commas, semicolons, but no end punctuation. The poem’s conclusion, or lack thereof, is as open-ended as a relationship with no definitive ending.
Entitled “Safe Sex” the poem begins with a series of “if” statements, each that describe a sentimental action that would make a relationship “unsafe” according to the speaker. Warning against danger, the poetic speaker recommends that their relationship will be safe “if he avoids affectionate words; if she has grown insensible under the skin […]”, implying that one must be detached to experience a love life that is free of sorrow. However, the speaker recognizes the benefits of a no-strings-attached relationship, stating that there will be “no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation, no trembling days […]”. The speaker repeats “no” to convey the message that a loveless relationship will certainly eliminate any possibility for despair, pain, and heartache; “no” become a sword that punctures any sort of rival, anything that has the power to infiltrate the speaker’s perfectly culminated, protected world.
Alluding to greatest lovers in the literary world, Romeo and Juliet, – but no doubt to any passionate couple whose families disapprove of their relationship – and the speaker warns that “[…] if they employ each other as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel – then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread […]”. The obstacle of familial feuding will always allow for these commitment-phobes to revert back to the protective blanket of the classic childish scapegoat of “Sorry, my mom said no”.
Until the last line of the poem, the speaker seems to be incessantly looking for any form of escape or cop-out to prevent themselves from getting closer to their romantic partner. They look for the emotional armor to wear into the metaphorical, relationship battlefield. They are avoiding the risks at all costs. All they want is to be safe. But then the tone of the poem changes as they come to the realization that perhaps all this emotional protection is not necessary.
The poetic speaker utilizes an image of “body floating face-down at [a] pond’s edge” to illustrate the lifelessness of a body without feeling, without any sort of pulse; just as a relationship without love is passionless and void. However, the speaker is too late, as the relationship is over, without a lifeline.
Although the tribulations of love and relationships can drive one to an incessant state of woe, there are no guarantees when it comes to love; one must be willing to risk their emotional stability and safety to attain greater euphoria through love.
As I’ve written before, in analysis to one of my favorite poems Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why (Sonnet XLIII)”, there is nothing wrong with casual, romantic relationships. In contrast to Millay’s sonnet, Hall characterizes the speaker as someone who is fearful of intimacy; whereas, in Millay’s sonnet the poetic speaker is one who is not fearful of intimacy but instead has not found a meaningful and significant relationship with a partner who gives them an absolute sense of fulfillment. I thought it would be critical to contrast the speaker of Millay’s sonnet to that of Hall’s poetic speaker as there are certainly varying types of experiences within modern-day romance and relationships. Jaded individuals, such as Hall’s speaker will go to austere lengths to protect themselves and ironically, are hurt in the end. This is because they are not nourishing their relationship by allowing themselves to be vulnerable; this is comparable to having a full glass of water but not giving any to one’s flowers in the middle of mid-July heatwave. Millay’s speaker is one that pours all the water into saturated soil; the affection that she has showered her lovers is not conducive to the growth of the relationship.
So where one may ask is the balance between caring too much, too little, and finding the right amount of water to give to one’s flowers? There’s no set formula and sometimes, it just takes time to develop a green thumb, so to speak.