levelheaded: Gaffled at the Apple Store
levelheaded: Gaffled at the Apple Store
With a word like “Gaffled” in the title and a narrative built around the purchase of iPhones, on the surface, Francis Raven’s poem is undeniably goofy. Like most good poems though, there’s more to it than we might catch at first glance.
Enacting the monotony of standing in line at an electronics store, the poem begins with waiting and dully creeps forward through Raven’s use of anaphora (“We waited”; “We were”; “We could”). The tired language wears on us. Yet, as the verbs wash over us, they usher in a little hope. We go from a repeated past tense to the conditional—where the scent of new phones is a pleasant break from the boring.
The question that follows, silly as it first seems, elevates the poem above the ordinary to give it more staying power than the trendiest electronic device. What is the cause of our ambiguous aching? Though the answer isn’t entirely clear, maybe it has to do with “the chase,” with distance (“the mall was far away”), with the “few other options.” Whatever it is, as the second stanza suggests, it is debilitating (“When you’re in line you can’t move”). Perhaps remaining “in line” is submitting to consumer culture, to being part of a world where both the marked method of communicating and its effect on us is not sharing or speaking, improving or illuminating, but instead, “gaffling.”
In a sense, this poem serves as an enactment of the “old and overweight” woman’s instructions: “To document what it’s doing otherwise you’ll never remember.” At the same time, it’s a recognition of the limits of poetry—of the limits of all experience: “You’ll never be able to do it again.” The poet takes on this second challenge in the fourth stanza, reemploying anaphora similar to that found in the opening (“She was”; “She was”; “She would”). Again, we go from being locked into a depressing past to an observation of the present.
The assertion that both “she” and “I” would not get new phones at first appears undoubtedly negative. The last two lines seem to solidify the grim picture. But imagine a food court where people aren’t on their shiny new phones! So much communication, as “Gaffled at the Apple Store” shows us, happens beneath the surface. In the midst of a consumer world where communication is blurred or lost—it’s funny and awful, but ultimately, not all bad, to return to our animal state, to sit with someone who shares our pain and “dog” some pizza together.
– Thelevelheaded: Gaffled at the Apple Store
With a word like “Gaffled” in the title and a narrative built around the purchase of iPhones, on the surface, Francis Raven’s poem is undeniably goofy. Like most good poems though, there’s more to it than we might catch at first glance.
Enacting the monotony of standing in line at an electronics store, the poem begins with waiting and dully creeps forward through Raven’s use of anaphora (“We waited”; “We were”; “We could”). The tired language wears on us. Yet, as the verbs wash over us, they usher in a little hope. We go from a repeated past tense to the conditional—where the scent of new phones is a pleasant break from the boring.
The question that follows, silly as it first seems, elevates the poem above the ordinary to give it more staying power than the trendiest electronic device. What is the cause of our ambiguous aching? Though the answer isn’t entirely clear, maybe it has to do with “the chase,” with distance (“the mall was far away”), with the “few other options.” Whatever it is, as the second stanza suggests, it is debilitating (“When you’re in line you can’t move”). Perhaps remaining “in line” is submitting to consumer culture, to being part of a world where both the marked method of communicating and its effect on us is not sharing or speaking, improving or illuminating, but instead, “gaffling.”
In a sense, this poem serves as an enactment of the “old and overweight” woman’s instructions: “To document what it’s doing otherwise you’ll never remember.” At the same time, it’s a recognition of the limits of poetry—of the limits of all experience: “You’ll never be able to do it again.” The poet takes on this second challenge in the fourth stanza, reemploying anaphora similar to that found in the opening (“She was”; “She was”; “She would”). Again, we go from being locked into a depressing past to an observation of the present.
The assertion that both “she” and “I” would not get new phones at first appears undoubtedly negative. The last two lines seem to solidify the grim picture. But imagine a food court where people aren’t on their shiny new phones! So much communication, as “Gaffled at the Apple Store” shows us, happens beneath the surface. In the midst of a consumer world where communication is blurred or lost—it’s funny and awful, but ultimately, not all bad, to return to our animal state, to sit with someone who shares our pain and “dog” some pizza together.
– The Editors
Editorslevelheaded: Gaffled at the Apple Store
With a word like “Gaffled” in the title and a narrative built around the purchase of iPhones, on the surface, Francis Raven’s poem is undeniably goofy. Like most good poems though, there’s more to it than we might catch at first glance.
Enacting the monotony of standing in line at an electronics store, the poem begins with waiting and dully creeps forward through Raven’s use of anaphora (“We waited”; “We were”; “We could”). The tired language wears on us. Yet, as the verbs wash over us, they usher in a little hope. We go from a repeated past tense to the conditional—where the scent of new phones is a pleasant break from the boring.
The question that follows, silly as it first seems, elevates the poem above the ordinary to give it more staying power than the trendiest electronic device. What is the cause of our ambiguous aching? Though the answer isn’t entirely clear, maybe it has to do with “the chase,” with distance (“the mall was far away”), with the “few other options.” Whatever it is, as the second stanza suggests, it is debilitating (“When you’re in line you can’t move”). Perhaps remaining “in line” is submitting to consumer culture, to being part of a world where both the marked method of communicating and its effect on us is not sharing or speaking, improving or illuminating, but instead, “gaffling.”
In a sense, this poem serves as an enactment of the “old and overweight” woman’s instructions: “To document what it’s doing otherwise you’ll never remember.” At the same time, it’s a recognition of the limits of poetry—of the limits of all experience: “You’ll never be able to do it again.” The poet takes on this second challenge in the fourth stanza, reemploying anaphora similar to that found in the opening (“She was”; “She was”; “She would”). Again, we go from being locked into a depressing past to an observation of the present.
The assertion that both “she” and “I” would not get new phones at first appears undoubtedly negative. The last two lines seem to solidify the grim picture. But imagine a food court where people aren’t on their shiny new phones! So much communication, as “Gaffled at the Apple Store” shows us, happens beneath the surface. In the midst of a consumer world where communication is blurred or lost, it’s funny and awful, but ultimately, not all bad, to return to our animal state, to sit with someone who shares our pain and “dog” some pizza together.
– The Editors
