Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Calling His Children Home" by Natasha Trethewey presents an evocative journey through a single metaphor: a picture frame that transforms into a window. Within this frame or window, the scene of music-making unfolds. Through her meticulous choice of words and vivid imagery, Trethewey manages to make the poem not just a visual experience, but also an aural one, inviting us to listen to the story that this "window" tells.

The poem initiates the visual journey with the description of a "picture frame" that is "really a window, weathered white, wide open." Already, the boundaries between static art and dynamic life are blurred. The frame, typically a rigid border for a flat image, becomes a portal into another world - it's "wide open." The scene is set; we are prepared to leap from the mere act of viewing to the realm of participation.

As we look through this open window, the details start to unravel. "Dark arms flex to collar a note" - here, Trethewey masterfully uses synesthesia to capture the motion and music in the scene. There is a physicality in the act of creating music, depicted in the flexing arms. At the same time, these arms also 'collar a note,' capturing the musical essence as if it were something tangible. However, the narrative doesn't allow us to see the entire figure, only "the bell of a horn, or a valve, shiny as a silver dollar." We are given a glimpse, just enough to tease the imagination but not enough to satisfy our curiosity.

Then the magic happens: "His cornet comes toward you, pushing through the window, leaving the frame." The poem breaks the fourth wall as the cornet (a brass instrument similar to a trumpet) transcends its static representation in a frame to engage with the reader or viewer. It's as if the instrument, or rather the person playing it, refuses to be confined by frames, literal or metaphorical.

The climax is the confrontation with the "deep black mouth" of the cornet, which is "talking, loud." This auditory image is startlingly intimate; the poem compels us to hear the music as a form of speech, as a call. "Come on, it calls. You're almost here." The invitation is almost eerie in its immediacy; it's not just a call to appreciate art or music, but a summons to engage with a deeper, emotional or ancestral narrative that the music carries.

Trethewey's poem, in its exploration of art and life, music and image, separation and union, invites us not just to look but also to listen - and ultimately, to join in. It's an exquisite meditation on how art isn't just a reflection of life but can become an experience, a call that beckons us to step beyond frames, to engage fully with the story it seeks to tell.

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