Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"In These Streets with the Binary Trees" by Norman Dubie is a surreal and intricately woven poem that blends elements of the fantastical with the everyday. It presents a series of vivid, almost hallucinatory images that challenge the reader's perceptions of reality and the mundane. The poem's dense imagery and the disjointed nature of its narrative create a dreamlike quality, exploring themes of inevitability, fate, and the mysterious forces that govern our lives.

The poem opens with a scene where griffins, mythical creatures known for their protective qualities, are "sucking sleep from the eyes of a motorcyclist's father," an image that combines the mythical with the personal. This act of taking sleep could symbolize the removal of peace or the intrusion of a more mystical, perhaps troubling, reality into an individual's life. The father's offering of "boiled rice to the men of a mathematical ballroom" further adds to the scene's otherworldly feel, suggesting rituals or exchanges that defy straightforward interpretation.

The mention of "snow failing from fur coats into the canals of hell" intensifies the surreal, almost apocalyptic atmosphere. This imagery, combined with the reference to "a yellow pot of African violets," showcases Dubie's ability to juxtapose the chilling with the trivial, creating layers of meaning that are both contradictory and complementary.

The phrase "equatorial, despotic whether you do, whether you don't" implies a sense of inescapable fate or destiny, where outcomes are detached from actions, resonating with themes of existential absurdity. This is underscored by the fatalistic statement, "dead in fact, if you do, if you don't," which suggests that regardless of choice or action, the outcome is predetermined, lending a nihilistic tone to the poem.

The description of an envelope being passed "from one supreme calabash to the next, in a musical rendition" introduces a ritualistic or ceremonial aspect, where objects and actions acquire symbolic significance beyond their literal meaning. This scene, with its mysterious transfer of an envelope and the piano showing its teeth "like the piano swallowed by seawater," amplifies the sense of a world where the ordinary is steeped in mysterious, perhaps ominous, significance.

The final image of seawater pouring from the tap and the day's events catching up in a planet "involved with its own laughter like sodium feldspar in granite" closes the poem on a note that is both enigmatic and reflective. It suggests a cosmic joke or irony, where the natural elements themselves partake in the absurdity or the unexpected twists of fate.

Overall, Dubie's poem is a complex tapestry of images and ideas that invites multiple interpretations. Its use of vivid, sometimes bizarre imagery to explore profound themes reflects a world teetering between the known and the unknowable, where every element is laden with multiple meanings, and where the surreal becomes a lens through which to view the realities of human existence.

POEM TEXT: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+These+Streets+with+the+Binary+Trees-a0220768491

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