West Barry Street
I love the ordinary doingness
of things, the man in an olive
green jacket putting a shovel
into the trunk of his clean
grey car, leaving it open.
The redhead hustling
across the street, the stroller
in front of her bumping
over the curb, the white dog
roped to the playground fence
facing the other direction. Coming
back, the man puts in a folding
chair, another, a woman
joins him, her tan jacket
flapping, she zips it, they drive
away. Someone jogs past
as if it were her natural pace,
without effort or strain. Why
a shovel? It was red. Headphones
are getting larger again, as are strollers.
My best friend’s cat had one ear
removed entirely, and doesn’t seem
to notice or mind. My astrologer says
sometimes you burn enough karma to get
a pass life, an easy ride. Last night
my neighbors to the east
had a party, the stoop abuzz
in stilettos without coats, and I thought
of going over in my house clothes
to say hello and offer blankets
or tea, but they didn’t seem
to be feeling the cold. I went back
to my work and texting
with a friend whose wife made
a terrible mistake, the noise
from the party a backdrop
of garbled babble and laughter,
wind against the windows,
the occasional casualty of glass.
| Marty McConnell |
|
levelheaded: West Barry Street
Nouns in Marty McConnell’s poem are a big deal. In “West Barry Street,” objects themselves participate in furthering the poem, and are active agents in the speaker’s thought process—in her very existence.
The poem states straight-out this focus. The opening lines prepare us for a noun-concentrated world: “I love the ordinary doingness / of things.” The speaker loves activated nouns, excited nouns with the capability to excite. Matter matters. Later in the poem, “the man puts in a folding / chair, another, a woman / joins him.” Here, “another” almost equates the chair and the woman. Does it mean the man puts in one chair after the other, and then a “woman / joins him”? Or “another” chair, “a woman / joins him”? Both? There are a few ways to read this depiction of the seemingly commonplace.
West Barry Street is, as all places are, both a concrete and abstract noun. The next street over is not West Barry Street, that much is certain. But, more theoretically, everything in the poem somehow adds up to what the street is in our speaker’s eyes. By naming a particular street, McConnell calls to mind William Carlos Williams’ famous “no ideas but in things” notion, first creating a visual image of a street—and with that picture in our heads a connection is made and built upon. This aura nouns take on, this special importance, reverberates throughout the poem.
Though this is a very peopled world, objects reign supreme. Describing a party, the speaker’s first impression is of “the stoop abuzz / in stilettos without coats.” Of course there must have been party-goers in the stilettos, but only the shoes and absence of coats is relayed. The speaker considers going over “in [her] house clothes / to say hello and offer blankets / or tea, but they didn’t seem / to be feeling the cold.” To go over bearing those objects, then, would be inappropriate, so she doesn’t go at all—not even just to “say hello”—because of primary power are the things.
What about color in the poem? Line two: “the man in an olive / green jacket.” Four and five: “the trunk of his clean / grey car.” Nine: “the white dog.” Lines 14 and 15: “her tan jacket / flapping.” How colorful the poem—and how responsive the colors are to this glorification of objects. Colors elaborate on, they vivify objects and may actually answer some questions for our speaker: “Why / a shovel? It was red.” This comes about halfway through the piece, revisiting the shovel from line three. Of course that it was red could be a continuation of the question, but that’s all we get on it before the speaker jumps to “Headphones / are getting larger again.” The shovel is dropped altogether for another object, so that the color kind of has to serve as an answer to the question.
Why are the headphones and strollers “getting larger again”? Could be that they’re moving closer to the speaker, so they appear larger to her—a perspective thing—or that the speaker is noting a general market trend. Either way, it’s important to her to take note of the change in the objects’ size. A change in her life’s objects, after all, is a change in her life.
“It was red” picks up the “redhead” thread from line six: “The redhead hustling / across the street, the stroller / in front of her bumping.” Here the stroller clarifies the verb. How would we know what type of “hustling” she’s doing, in the absence of the stroller accompanying that act? Instead of the traditional adverb, a verb is clarified by a noun.
Life on West Barry Street is bizarre, it’s extraordinary, until and even when you read on and contextualize. Think back to the “man in an olive / green jacket”—in the moment before we absorb the “green jacket,” the man is inside an olive! Time’s bearing is evident, as events unfold, but life’s events are helped along enormously by the being of nouns.
– The Editors
