Ruben and the Radio
Only two or three switches
off brought an army’s crickets
and a sweeping blackness that coated our farm.
My grandfather did not believe in outdoor lighting
and when it was dark,
it was dark.
Good: it engendered a wandering stumble through a noisy thicket
of late nite radio.
The pale light of the dial illuminated only garble
1. the scratchy framework of Montgomery doo-wop
2. melded with an old guy talking Reagonomics
they crept over to a hot summer match, far . . .
and how distant sat that at-bat
in my little perspective.
The Texas Rangers were but a hop and a skip
but when you write letters and use landlines,
it’s no closer than Neptune,
that dusty old cot in that old room
in Butler County, Alabama.
All I recall is a strike
or two as the game checked in
and checked out, such depravity,
but the gravity of those black hours
has an irreducible pull.
And is Mr. Ruben Sierra still suiting up?
For the Pennington Peacocks or something or the other?
I heard his name on Channel
40’s SportsTalk Live something ago.
the little game withered away into wondrous static
the little meaningless match of hardball, amidst pale light, satellites
It is there.
| John Glass |
|
levelheaded: Ruben and the Radio
“Ruben and the Radio” has, at its core, technology—electric light and radio. These inventions transform men into miniature demigods, controlling the absence or presence of light, of information and entertainment, of disembodied voices beaming shared history. Certainly, technology affects the speaker of the poem, but the author goes about showing it via language shifts and ambiguity, in the end only hinting at his view.
Language shifts in this poem indicate departures from the speech of the speaker, like he’s trying on the pants of whomever he overhears. “[W]hen it was dark, / it was dark”—hard to argue with that. Sounds like his grandfather’s reasoning against outdoor lighting, perhaps in response to the boy who wants to explore the grounds after sunset. The numbered lines (references to stations on the dial?) pluck “Montgomery doo-wop” and “Reagonomics” from places that are patently not a nighttime farm in Butler County, Alabama.
Maybe the owner of a self-described “little perspective,” the speaker whose grandfather insists on darkness (strictly literally, or figuratively, too?) would easily recognize these phenomena and pepper his speech with them (he is, ostensibly, a regular radio listener). But also maybe he would not—the words seem to have been lifted. Get to the fifth stanza, and the language undergoes a huge shift: what’s with the “something or the other” and “something ago”? We think here the radio signal drops, a suspicion strengthened by the “wondrous static” of the next line. Or, the speaker just doesn’t care what was said fleetingly on the radio to repeat it.
After we finish reading the poem, line 12’s “match” is contextualized. We understand that it means, at least on the surface, baseball match, that the other stations crept over to a broadcast of a baseball match. But Glass’ word choice is smart and effective—think of the match that’s but one strike (ha!) away from providing illumination; think of the match that means equal, making the material of one station just as important as the next.
In a way, the speaker gets to, after dark, “stumble through a noisy thicket” outside, which is strongly suggested by “thicket,” in addition to the more literal event following the line break, when it is revealed that the stumble is through the thicket of late nite radio. In keeping with this ambiguity, the words “old” and “little” each come up three times. This age and size can be read as sturdy and established, fond and tender; and/or brittle and used, paltry and worthless.
Man harnesses energy and nature through the avenue of technology, but his actions wither “away into wondrous static / the little meaningless match of hardball, amidst pale light, satellites / It is there.” What is there? The meaninglessness, or the it, the pith of things?
– The Editors
