The Blue Bowl

The bowl represents the speaker’s attempt to give structure and form to her grief, and to participate in a common human ritual of processing this grief. In the face of death, the speaker seeks out ritual and repetitive tasks, and she wants the cat’s burial to convey a larger sense of meaning to her understanding of the natural order. The bowl gives the speaker a physical allusion to the cat’s life. It allows her to contemplate the possibility of an afterlife and to reflect on her own position in the natural world.

The blue bowl also represents the banality and universality of death and grief. The bowl in the poem is simply the cat’s everyday water or food dish; it is not a fancy, beautiful piece of pottery. In highlighting this image in the title of the poem, Kenyon underscores the idea that the simple, everyday actions are what the speaker has found most meaningful. Placing the bowl in the grave also allows the speaker to act, rather than remaining passive, giving her an opportunity to seek meaning via the burial ritual.