Ed Roberson - City Eclogue

The first poem that really caught my eye in this collection is "The Distant Stars As Paparazzi." From the beginning, it's obvious that the subject of the poem (the paparazzi, in the most obvious sense) is not tolerated well by Roberson. The adjectives and nouns that color the actions are often undesirable, as well as some of the verbs.  For example, Roberson starts out by describing the subjects as "cattlebirds" (line 1). In the third line, Roberson incorporates the term "rubbish." More undesirable words are emulated in "The Distant Stars As Paparazzi." The terms "dump" (5), " "garbage" (5), "horns" (9), "odor" (11), "stink" (12), and "compost" (15) all appear in the poem. Going more in depth, the poem seems like it's referring to dying stars (in the literal sense). Roberson talks about recycling after death and how the planet turns into a beautiful mirror; it's almost as if he is relating celebrities to stars. As one 'dies out' another is readily available to take their place.

The next poem that spoke to me is "Beauty's Standing." Roberson displays what I interpret to be his sense of beauty. In the first verse, he describes the old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder: "Only eye lives in this no place anything else can come to rest on." The next verse implies that beauty is only an optical illusion: "...proposing your sight on the room as beautiful." Branching off of that concept in the next two verses is the idea that beauty has no function but to be beautiful. It also appears to be a projection of beauty being shallow: "That this is his only company for conversation he gets/ A room physically functionless..." (lines 9-13). Developing into an even shallower beauty is Roberson's description of a "magazine culture" (16). Finally, Roberson adds mystery to the poem by implying that beauty fills a void: "...to caulk the hole in such pockets" (22-23).

The final poem that reached out to me is "Untitled." First of all, the mystery of the poem's subject really makes it much more interesting. I think the titles for most of the other poems were too suggestive for a real structuralist approach to interpreting them. This poem emulates life, birth, and death (and also what happens in between.) The first verse is a symbol of birth: "Sky walls and white neoclassical moulding cloud wedgewood days room after room of palace season." The descriptive words in this verse imply a happiness and a new beginning, thus emulating birth. The second verse is the interpretation of what happens in between. By saying, "Vacation a blue gown of ocean..." (line 5), Roberson is describing the process after childhood in which we are searching for our true self (the imaginary, according to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan) that we had since birth. By saying, "...not since anyone remembers seen" (7-8), Roberson is describing how fast our lives really go, and that time is simply an illusion we've created. In the third verse, he is projecting the essence of old age: "Any fall of palaces seemed shelved among the porcelain exhibits of narrower centuries from this beach" (9-12). Words like "porcelain" and "centuries" are important in determining the interpretation of this verse because they imply fragility and age. Finally, Roberson implies death and rebirth in the next short verses: "A smoke dust empties the sky of its blue as if emptying  building--a whole other day clears under a shadowless cloud" (13-18).