The Bagel

The most clear symbol of the poem is named in the title: the bagel. Ignatow described the bagel as a personal “token of his hope” for a more expansive life from which he felt curtailed at the time of writing the poem in 1964. Others have seen the bagel as the absurdity life entails as people often pursue things that do not truly matter. Some have seen the bagel as the quest of the working-class man to break from the exhausting routine of urban hustle and bustle. Interviewer Gary Pacernick indicates that he sees the bagel as a symbol for the feminine side of the self, for which the masculine must quest before becoming whole. Others, like poet Robert Bly, concluded that due to its noted commonality as a Jewish food, the bagel symbolizes the Jewish community. In this reading, the dropping of the bagel, the speaker’s subsequent need to retrieve it, and their symbolically becoming the bagel all function to exhibit assimilation. Becoming the bagel is a way for the speaker to internalize their Jewishness rather to look for it beyond themself where it is inevitably lost.