City Eclogue Summary

City Eclogue Summary

Brandon Lazovic

                For class this week we had to read City Eclogue by Ed Roberson. It’s a collection of poems by this author and is divided into several parts, the first of which is the chapter City Eclogue. In the beginning of this chapter the poems are ‘normal’ (as far as that goes). Something I noticed was as the poems went on the spacing between the words and sentences got more irregular. Since the title of the book is City Eclogue, it felt to me that it was done purposely to convey that the city was overcrowded and that nothing was quite routine. The sentence structure and thought process became more vague or limited with each story as well, only highlighting key words or phrases. Also there are many key things repeated in each poem, such as the planet, mirrors, eyes/sight, and the city of course. I’m not quite sure what they allude to, although maybe it’s supposed to elaborate on the scale at which we live (ourselves being tiny in comparison to a city or the world). As for the mirrors and eyes, my guess is that we see things everyday and it becomes normal to us. So much so that we take it for granted and live in the present as opposed to acknowledging the past or preparing for the future. The perspective also changes from more of a top, general view of everything to a more personalized view of an individual person’s perspective of the city, from the slums to the rich parties that some may have (as told in the last poem of this chapter).

                In the next chapter, Beauty Standing, it begins on a comparison to cities and oceans. The world is being polluted and as cities are built on the land Roberson states in one of the poems, “they are made   into land people pour into to colonize   as artificial reef is sunk next to dying corals on the sea floor   such as housing,” further emphasizing that as artificial cities are being made the natural beauty of nature is being destroyed. Throughout the chapter pollution and corruption are touched upon, talking about the pollution that cities emanate as well as the division between people (the rich and poor, the segregation of race, black being the prominent one). In this aspect a few poems follow a regular person who isn’t making enough money and is influenced to blame problems on blacks and even politics (as all politics try and focus on the values of people according to one poem). Most of the poems make the point to rhyme and the flow of words and the way they are worded doesn’t seem so fragmented and hectic, but rather makes it seem overwhelming in a sense as you read as it allows you to read quickly with a build up to it.

                The chapter after Beauty Standing is called The Open. The beginning of this chapter is extremely bleak, talking about fires and embers everywhere and a city basically burning down. As it continues all it speaks of a city in ruins, bleak, the history of it worn as the ambers settle and the years drag by. Death and the dead is commonly brought up throughout each poem, describing people as ghosts. This could allude to both the death of people as well as the death of culture in the city, the city becoming a ghost as most people move away in search of better things. One part of the very last poem in this chapter reinforces this, “ He wants to walk away from this. This rough odd luck how many in his make up brought---walking away from rope   irons    the capture--- up through him    his hair   the glide to his feet   the tendency to go fu’thuh in life   Somewhere a couple decent pair of shoes.” Things get bad enough and people leave in search of a better life, for a decent pair of shoes to wear on their feet. Not for wants, but necessities that are taken for granted amongst most people. Some can’t though as they are caught in bondage. This could be meant in a physical sense, but I feel as though it is more of an emotional sense or a financial sense. Everyone is too poor to leave, they have nothing waiting for them anywhere else and so they are caught in an endless loop of poverty.

                Next chapter is Ornithologies, and it’s kind of short compared to the other chapters. Basically it describes nature and almost praises it for its beauty and its peacefulness. It displays people living with nature in their city and the peace it brings compared to the busy lives of people in the city as their days converge on a time schedule. There really isn’t much else to say about it other than it’s a stark contrast compared to the chapter before it, maybe a prologue in the novel that the city is. Or maybe it’s even what the city became after the corruption and pollution that preceded it.

                The second to final chapter, Her Movement By The Moment In Occurrence, displays various human emotions, from love, primal instinct and survival, hate, and wishing for no emotion at all. It shifts from person intimate human contact to various geographical spots far away from civilization, from the Northern part of the globe to the vast blue sky. It contrasts between nature and human thought and how one is free and pure (nature) while the other is corrupted and destructive as well as ignorant (humanity). The final chapter, Eclogue, continues on, questioning human thought and if it is very far seeing and if we think beyond just the everyday norms that we come across every day. We do not as we kill the planet with our cities and way of life, destroying nature and the bounty that comes with it. “What can we say of our own that stand in Newark say   so far adrift from a chance to was   that the dirt on her feet cracks into sores the skin of her soles   and steps her in one more shit infection she has to kick, one more occupation of her body by her monkey rulers she will have to throw off into space   off her back   burned out but clear of starring habit.   Of her destroyed sun   say it endows the landfill   on which to build a new development   “We are the stuff of stars,” Sagan says.” In this context is seems that ‘she’ is the Earth and that all the terrible things happening to her are the effects of humanity, the cities that we produce, the pollution that is spewed about, and it slowly spreads from a little speck of dirt on her feet to sores and infections as it continues to grow.

                In short, a City Eclogue is a very diverse book of poetry. Each chapter correlates to a certain message and there are many allusions to be found in the book, from God (both Greek and Christian), to death, shadows, ghosts, culture, water/rivers and oceans, and a whole slew of other allusions. The main message is that the cities we live in are demonized, horrible environments that do nothing but harm ourselves, the way we think and act as well as the environment. The way the poems are written are thought out and different from one another in several aspects, and the main message is clear but has a depth of complexity to it that isn’t quite apparent in the first hand full of poems and the book conveys it to great effect.