[Turner Cassity]

Navy Housing


On Jones Street every house is painted white,
each door is white, and every yard adheres
to certain rules: the grass at ankle-height,
an apple blossom tree bent toward the sun,
a single bush trimmed squat and round and so
symmetrically it seems manmade. No one
can deviate from others in the row.
How easily I lose myself out here.
Even the dog can barely sniff his way
back from the park. Was it a left we took?
A right? Perhaps it’s safer just to stay
indoors than go off course again. Oh, look—
another flag, another garden gnome,
another sign proclaiming Home, Sweet Home.



Comments:
Suburbia always gets a bad rap, probably out of ordinary snobbism. The dog walks away with this poem.

[Catherine Chandler]

Navy Housing


Even the street is nondescript. Jones Street. The predominant color, actually the absence of color, is – and must be -- white. The strict military order of the place and the things in it is wonderfully overstated. But the people? Not a chance. One’s eyes and heart are caught by the mention of apple blossoms, a tree/flower not lightly considered by the poet, I suspect. Such a contrast, the blossoms symbolize love, youth, beauty, happiness and promise. The double meaning of losing oneself perfectly ends the octave.

And yet, the housing compound is merely a backdrop to the larger question, that of taking chances, of trying to find one’s way in life, where “even a dog” would find it difficult.

Finally, the killer couplet. All those “anothers” and the all-important verb “proclaiming”, what Edward Arlington Robinson called “the perfect word that is the poet’s wand.” The mastery, not only of the form, the language and the music, but of the spirit of the sonnet, is exemplified in what, at first reading, may seem a very quiet, homey, and unassuming poem. Not so.

This poem broke my heart.

[Holly Martins]

'Yard' rather than 'garden' tells me this is by an American poet - hmmm, I'm working on it. I don't share Catherine's melancholy, I rather like estates where all the houses look the same. A nice piece though, memorable.

[Kate Benedict]

I've never encountered a poem before that so perfectly describes a legislated sameness and conformity. Nature has no business here, nor creativity, nor ingenuity ... it's a nightmare scene, made all the eerier because it describes a place where people actually live. The details are well chosen and the plainspoken diction is a foil for the horrors it disguises. That this sterile place is described with such artistry is the only reason to hope.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Because this is Navy Housing, I am reading this as a stalwart attempt to make a "Home, Sweet Home" by people who often relocate.

Perhaps it’s safer just to stay
indoors than go off course again.

These lines might express a (momentary?) wish for individuality, rather than the regulated military scene (where even the lawn grass has military haircuts). This sonnet is about wanting normality, stability, longing for that little deviation from a "sameness" which is is quite different than the sameness of a dormitory suburbia.

What symbol is more military than a flag? What symbol is further from the military life than a garden gnome?

Supurb closure.

another flag, another garden gnome,
another sign proclaiming Home, Sweet Home.

[Michael Cantor]

Is David Lynch competing? Wow!

I had a mixed reaction to this. Technically, it's superb. Everything is well handled, the voice is pitch perfect, it's creepy and eerie and well done. My only nit would be that, with the empasis on uniformity, you want to get those iambs bumping into place at the start, not leading with a ("Jones Street") spondee, unless that's deliberate - the David Lynch signal that something's wrong on Jones Street. Assuming it's not, I'd suggest:

On Adams Street each house is painted white,
all doors are white....

My objection is that it's been done. Over and over. In articles and stories and films, if not specifically in a sonnet. So much skill - but nothing new is said. A+ for execution, C for originality.

[amacrae]

I agree that the dog makes the poem. This is a poem with a light-ish surface and a core of steel. No chinks here. I really enjoyed the final rhyme as well--completely unforced and original.

Austin

[Petra Norr]

I think it’s well done on the whole. I’m not sure I can find a volta, but maybe it’s not necessary. In the main, the sonnet doesn’t seem to change much from its starting point of a community where everything adheres to certain rules. At the end of the sonnet the flag, garden gnome, etc. are just further examples of the conformity, in my view.
I think the word “Navy” in the title is important because if we didn’t see this as Navy housing it would seem no different from any surburban (row-house) community. The “Navy” gives the poem a bit of edge.
I like the dog. But I was surprised at the “ankle-length grass” – that’s way too long for a place like this. The lawn needs a Navy crewcut.

[John Beaton]

I read another layer here: to me, "than go off course again" suggests naval navigation. This place is like a seascape with no landmarks. And those that exist (the Home, Sweet Home signs) are false because there are lots of them. I get the sense of a ship lost in fog surrounded by so many lighthouses the crew can't identify any of them. So it conveys to me a mixture of would-be homeliness and naval lostness. I think the poem contains some originality.

Like Petra, I had a problem with ankle-height grass.

I like the "apple blossom tree". It suggests that these trees are there only because they look good for a brief period in spring--a concise way of eliciting superficiality.

John

[Alex Pepple]

The meter here is capable and the simple rhyming, besides being almost all monosyllables, has a plainness that mirrors the dull setting. There is a lot going on in this deceptively understated sonnet. Besides the obvious, I read an eerie sameness of purpose for the residents, one where some who leave indeed be lost or never find their way back home no matter their skills at sniffing their way out of danger -- where the residents would prefer to stay in their nondescript “Home, Sweet Home” because “it’s safer to stay / indoors than go off course again.” This is well-executed, subtly and masterfully but layered.
Cheers,
…Alex