“Skunk Hour” by Robert Lowell first steadily describes three characters: an heiress, a millionaire, and a decorator. The speaker's tone is difficult to read, and he does not make an appearance in the first stanza.
Halfway through the poem, the speaker enters, driving up a hill and observing lovers in their cars. He feels his own loneliness with sudden acuity and is seized by a burst of self-hatred. Suddenly he turns his focus to skunks that he imagines march through the center of town at night. Then he is on his back steps, facing a mother skunk and her kittens. The mother skunk rummages through the garbage cans and is not intimidated by him. The poem ends on the image of this fearless skunk.
