levelheaded: The Auditions

In the first sentence of Sarah Green’s prose poem “The Auditions,” the word “personally” establishes the piece’s conversational tone. But being “personally” disappointed also suggests that these tryouts had a profound effect on our speaker’s very sense of self—on his or her personhood.

Knowing that the circus spectacle is affecting a specific someone allows us to latch onto figurative interpretations of the lines that follow. For example, maybe “All of the women could breathe fire” because the speaker has dealt with some mean ladies. The line “All of the men could disappear” might reflect on romances gone awry. While the figurative interpretations of these familiar images can shed light on the speaker specifically, they are broad enough to encourage us to reflect on our own lives. Thus, we too are invested in the poem early on.

Because Green doesn’t use line breaks that might act as neon signs highlighting particularly metaphoric words, the poem works first on a highly visual, literal level. In part, we accept the poem’s universal themes because the poet doesn’t jam them down our throats—she describes an image, but never explains what it means.

Roughly halfway through, an interesting turn occurs with the word “unbreakable.” On one hand, we sense the speaker’s disappointment in falsity, in things not always being as they seem. But when we come to the poem’s end, we learn that this word also illuminates the persistence of the human spirit. Our speaker was just about ready to give up when those “twin tiger cubs raced orangely toward” him or her. Sometimes, despite our best efforts to be grumps, something unmistakably wonderful happens, and we are reminded that living is the greatest show on earth.

– The Editors