City Eclogue Response

I noted several of my favorite poems while reading City Eclogue and figure the best way to respond is to examine what I enjoyed about them. In Sit In What City We're In (pg 26), Roberson describes the urban center "our hive grid as plumb as circles flanked into the insect hexagonals". Much, if not all, of the poems in this collection are concerned with, unsurprisingly enough, the city and typically urban decay. As such, the work is filled with stark descriptions of the city as seen by Roberson's mind's eye and I found those to be very engrossing and helped me to keep reading. Another of my favorite descriptions (pg 41) "The buildings stood, a bunch of garbage odd-sized barges lashed together between currents of the railroad and river,"

Roberson also writes on disparity, of economics and rights.On page 48, the passage "what kind of really bastard son wishes his father had won election to eradicate his sister for the fucker's birthday?" brings to mind, to me, politicians whose platforms are to keep away or abolish the rights of others. A few pages later (pg 55) we have "Get me a piece of that fall off the back of a truck first economy I can pick up like, Y' know, with the bootstraps!", a clear allusion to the idea held by the well to do that the poor and underprivileged simply aren't working hard enough, not that they are without opportunity. Finally, it'd be unfair to mention disparity without touching on racism, as Roberson does in the Open / Back Up (breadth of field) on page 88 "...lost in midst of the security of local mounted police. Black people get stopped regularly to show they have university I.D.".  The passage calls to most clearly to mind the civil rights movement, first blows to racial bigotry.

Lastly, there was a certain poem I liked, Escape Training: Instructor's Flying Rappel on page 121. It begins "I jump backwards off the cliff to show how it's done:" and ends "This is an emergency maneuver done right it'll 've been music once it's sung. You can't hold a note forever you run out of breath you run". The poem is actually fairly clear from in its imagery, between the name and the verse, but by the last line it has me thinking of suicide. Perhaps the act of killing one's self can be though of as it's own "escape" or maybe it's just that the image of throwing yourself from a height has been so ingrained in my mind as self destructive.