[annie nance]

TO A CHILD TRAPPED IN A BARBERSHOP, by Philip Levine

You’ve gotten in through the transom
and you can’t get out
till Monday morning or, worse,
till the cops come.

That six-year-old red face
calling for momma
is yours; it won’t help you
because your case

is closed forever, hopeless.
So don’t drink
the Lucky Tiger,* don’t
fill up on grease

because that makes it a lot worse,
that makes it a crime
against property and the state
and that costs time.

We’ve all been here before,
we took our turn
under the electric storm
of the vibrator

and stiffened our wills to meet
the close clippers
and heard the true blade mowing
back and forth


on a strip of dead skin,
and we stopped crying.
You think your life is over?
It’s just begun.

[Maryann Corbett]

Annie, the silence around here may suggest that others are as stumped as I am. Let me think out loud about it a bit.

Getting in through the transom? A six-year-old? This is the part that's nearly impossible to take literally, since most transoms are placed high up, over doorways. Ditto with "drink the Lucky Tiger"--no one would, especially not a kid. So what else could be going on?

Certainly the poem is about the sensation of being trapped. S2, "that six-year-old red face" is about the realization of how helpless one is, and how one looks to others in that position.

The allusions to cops, to a case, and to crime add to the picture the threat of having "the system" against you.

S5-7 turn much more realistic, taking their details from the act of getting a buzz haircut, an experience that does frighten children. But the lines "stiffened our wills to meet/the close clippers/and heard the true blade mowing/
back and forth" certainly call up images of the scythe of death too.

"You think your life is over? It's just begun" seems to say to the child that he'd better get used to a life full of threats and learn to meet them.

Perhaps this will serve to get other people started on this.

[Michael Cantor]

Originally posted by Maryann Corbett:
Perhaps this will serve to get other people started on this.

But why should they? Threads like this puzzle me. Is the time invested worth the return? The poem just doesn't seem all that interesting to me, or all that overwhelming. Why this one? What is the reason for putting it up and asking for an interpetation. If it's important to annie, why doesn't she start? (And possibly that's why nobody is responding.)

[annie nance]

Hey MaryAnn and Michael,

I guess I didn't want to say anything first because it's a tough one for me, too. It was a poem presented in one of my classes from two summers ago, that I liked on some level, I think, but just didn't really get, so I was hoping somebody a lot smarter and more experienced in reading poetry might. Of course I guess "getting it" is not a requirement.

So anyway after two years of mulling it over, I think it's about a kid trapped in a barbershop. Ok, just kidding. But I guess it's about growing up. I especially liked the "true blade" line, which I take as a representing something inevitable, like truth itself, maybe. It seems like it could even be about loss and death of someone. (No matter how much you cry, things aren't going to go back to the way they were, so suck it up, kid.) It has a sense of no turning back, like getting a haircut. And he seems to be making the statement that this feeling, this experience is universal. (We've all been there - under the electric storm).

One thing I never noticed until recently was that it rhymes, sort of. (transom/cops come, crime/time, face/case). Although Levine certainly doesn't seem to be going out of his way to make it rhyme.

Do you think it's sort of an unwritten rule that lack of response means everyone thinks it's a crappy poem? Because I didn't get much on the last poem I posted on the non-metrical board. Yikes!

annie


[This message has been edited by annie nance (edited January 23, 2008).]

[Brian Watson]

[This message has been edited by Brian Watson (edited July 02, 2008).]

[annie nance]

Brian, I think you are right about knowing a little something about the author, sometimes that helps kick the poem into gear. Not that I think poems are all autobiographical, but, maybe they are in some small ways. Levine's father died when he was five, and I think that's why I thought it was about a death or loss.

annie

[This message has been edited by annie nance (edited January 24, 2008).]

[Maryann Corbett]

Some critics believe we should grapple with the text only and not rely on information from the poet's life, but I think we should use all the help we can get. So here's some help:

Philip Levine

editing back, now at work:

Knowing that Levine's early work was metrical and short-lined--and seeing that this is both--gives me a clue that this poem is from that early period and is one of those poems about being trapped in a murderous system. I think that read works. The title, while it does serve to gather the images, is a red herring.

I'd say this is about an Everyman--including the poet. It's spoken in a time when there was an unpopular war on for which men were being drafted, which makes the miltary buzz-cut references live ones in readers' minds. "In through the transom" isn't literal, but a reference to every person's sense that he's not here legitimately, that he's going to found out and prosecuted, that the world has it in for him. The rest of the images and allusions fit that read, I think.

[Lance Levens]

Maryann, I think you're stretching Levine a bit. Is the title such a throw-away? I've never read anything else of his in which he does that. The man strikes me as a fiction writer trapped in a poet's body, a little like B.H. Faichild, though not as skilled,IMHO. He writes about what the five senses tell him. I may be wrong, but little I've read of his indicates that he ever employs such far-reaching metaphors.

Lance Levens

[Brian Watson]

Is it a nightmare?

Most of the (few) Levine poems I've read are plainspoken and story-like, but then there's the strange and wonderful They Feed They Lion.

[RCL]

In an interview (where, I don't recall), he made it clear that his were persona poems, that he populated them with friends, parents, and other relatives that he, Levine, did not have. I believe him.

Cheers,

------------------
Ralph