Kitchenette Building: An Explication

The first noteworthy feature of Kitchenette Building is the banality of the title, which mirrors the commonness of the life in which the speaker is revealed to be living. Furthermore, “Kitchenette Building” is a somewhat contradictory grouping of words, seeing as kitchenette is merely a small kitchen while a building would presumably encompass much more than that. This reveals that the speaker may see the kitchenette as a building unto itself due to its prominence or importance in her life.

Furthermore, the structure of the poem follows the flowing thought process of the speaker. The first stanza introduces the life of the speaker as the speaker would typically describe it, and she mentions the fact that the word “Dream” cannot accompany her life. The second stanza follows her thoughts, which migrate to a contemplation of whether or not a dream could even make an appearance, and, if so, could it be kept and examined, the latter piece which is explored in the third, questioning stanza. The fourth stanza is an abrupt departure from the ponderous flow of thought of the speaker when she returns to the current conditions and surrenders all considerations of dreams.

In the first line of the poem, the speaker expresses very much about herself and about her acquaintances in few words by referring to them as “things”, describing their hours as “dry” and therefore dull and wrung lifeless, and terming their “plan” as involuntary, all of which paints a dreary picture of the speaker’s monotonous, forced life. The second line continues this thought with “Grayed in”, an allusion to the dreary entrapment of the speaker within her own life. It also introduces the concept of “Dream” in connection to her existence as something frivolous, since the speaker deems it to be “giddy” and juxtaposes the arbitrariness of Dreams with the necessity of grimmer, imposing words, like “rent” and “feeding a wife”. These lines demonstrate clearly that the priorities of the speaker lie in her daily life duties rather than in dreams.

The second stanza contemplates dreams more fully while incorporating images of the life lead by the speaker, constructing a bleak image for the reader. She mentions dreams sending through “onion fumes” their “white and violet” in lines one and two, highlighting the juxtaposition between the unpleasantness of onion fumes with white and violet colors used to describe dreams, which evoke more of a flowery image. The third line mentions garbage, yet another attribution to the unpleasantness of the speaker’s existence, and the fourth serves as its opposite, with words used to describe dreams like “flutter” and “sing an aria”, all terms of musicality and sweetness.

The third stanza displays the speaker’s contemplation of the possibility of dreams; she seems to be considering their relevance, if only for three short lines, as this stanza is in the form of an incompletely formed question.  It mimics a thought or question that is continuous yet has not completed.

The fourth stanza begins with a brief sentence which illuminates the overarching theme in the poem: “We wonder.” Then, the wondering, which was called “giddy” in the first stanza, is quickly cast aside with “But not well! Not for a minute!” as “Number 5”, perhaps an acquaintance with so little significance in the world such as not to merit a name, appears. Then, in the last line of the poem, the speaker returns to a dismal image, capturing the reality of lukewarm water and finally, in the word “hope” that is used, the bleakness of hope and the desire to dream which has been stifled by reality.