“Telephone Poles”, by John Updike, 1/29/12

“Telephone Poles”, by John Updike

They have been with us a long time.
They will outlast the elms.
Our eyes, like the eyes of a savage sieving the trees
In his search for game,
Run through them. They blend along small-town streets
Like a race of giants that have faded into mere mythology.
Our eyes, washed clean of belief,
Lift incredulous to their fearsome crowns of bolts, trusses, struts, nuts, insulators, and such
Barnacles as compose
These weathered encrustations of electrical debris¬
Each a Gorgon’s head, which, seized right,
Could stun us to stone.
Yet they are ours. We made them.
See here, where the cleats of linemen
Have roughened a second bark
Onto the bald trunk. And these spikes
Have been driven sideways at intervals handy for human legs.
The Nature of our construction is in every way
A better fit than the Nature it displaces
What other tree can you climb where the birds’ twitter,
Unscrambled, is English? True, their thin shade is negligible,
But then again there is not that tragic autumnal
Casting-off of leaves to outface annually.
These giants are more constant than evergreens
By being never green. 

REACTION

This poem is depressing and instills a certain fear into its reader. The poem creates an image of these telephone poles as some sort of monster. The poem seems to focus on how man has created something that totally contradicts the nature from which it was made. This contradiction is a major theme of the poem and it is shown in various images throughout the poem.

PARAPHRASE

They’ve been with us for a long time; they will outlast the elm trees. Our eyes, like the eyes of someone hunting for game, run through them. They blend along small town roads like giants that have faded into myth. We look up in disbelief and fear at the bolts, trusses, struts, nuts, insulators, and other parts that compose these electrical machines—each Gorgon’s head at the top of the pole could kill us. Yet they are made by us, and the spikes in the sides of them are made for men to climb on. The Nature of our construction fits the area better than the real Nature. What other tree could u climb that you could here, when unscrambled, English? They cannot provide shade, but they don’t cast-off leaves in the fall. These poles are not consistent than trees because they are never green.

SWIFTT:

Syntax- The author uses one stanza for this poem. Updike also uses very complex sentences separated by commas and dashes. The author also uses question marks in this poem. The poem seems to have no meter and is apparently a free verse poem.

Word Choice- The author uses words in such a way as to stress how unnatural the telephone poles are. For example, Updike capitalizes the word “Nature” to show that he is specifically talking about nature as though it were its own being. Updike also chooses specific words to show exactly just how much the telephone poles contradict nature.

Imagery/Figurative Language- The author uses a vast array of imagery and figurative language throughout the poem. The author uses similes throughout “Telephone Poles.” The first use of simile is when the author says “Our eyes, like the eyes of a savage sieving the trees/In his search for game,” and continues to use similes elsewhere. This initial use of similes creates the image of a modern day person with their eyes looking like that of a savage. Updike also uses allusion when referring to the “electrical debris” of the telephone poles as “a Gorgon’s head.” This creates the image of the electrical debris being a massive Gorgon’s head at the top of a telephone pole. The author also uses the image of the “birds’ twitter” to represent the words spoken over the phones, and also uses the image of the telephone pole as a tree that never losses or gains leaves to represent how much the poles contradict nature.

Tone- The tone of this poem is gloomy and surreal. The poem is both gloomy and surreal because throughout the poem Updike creates a grand image of the telephone poles as these larger than life giants which contradict nature. This is show brilliantly when Updike says, “They blend along small-town streets/Like a race of giants that have faded into mere mythology.”

Theme- The major theme of “Telephone Poles” is how these telephone poles have become something more than just telephone poles. This is a theme throughout the poem demonstrated when Updike says the poles are “Like a race of giants that have faded into mere mythology” It is then repeated when Updike says, “The Nature of our construction is in every way/A better fit than the Nature it displaces”.

CONCLUSION

My initial reaction was not far off from my reaction to the poem after analysis. The poem has a somewhat depressing tone, but it instills more of a feeling of awe instead of a feeling of fear into the reader. The poem does create the image of the telephone poles as larger than life, but not necessarily as monstrous. The poem does centralize around how man has created these things that have taken on their own mythological-like identity, and it uses various images to show this.