Essay Questions

What is the subject of the poem titled “11:00: Baldovan”?

This short poem structure mostly as a series of couplets is ostensibly the tale of two young boys who have embarked for the first time upon a bus ride all by themselves and without any adult supervision. Beneath the context of this subject matter is the true thematic subject: the journey from innocence to experience which is by, by turns, exciting and terrifying. The narrative kicks off with imagery of imaginative excitement as the boys imagine themselves on a truly grand adventure by referring to their starting point as “Base Camp.” Still within the environs of pure innocence, excitement is stimulated by counting money with dreams of purchases of to be made such as comic books and magic tricks. Fear begins insinuate itself into these childish dream of excitement with expressions of trepidation over the potentially finding themselves in strange places featuring streets with the wrong name and even winding up somewhere where the candies whirling in their minds have never been heard of. The shocking end of the poem has fulfills the darker reality of the subtext by suddenly turning into context: when they return home, fifty years have passed since the sisters and mothers they left behind have died.

How does the final line of “Rain” seem to exemplify Paterson’s noted rejection of commenting upon his own work?

Paterson has been quoted several times on his own disinclination to provide commentary upon the meaning of his own verse. One very direct assertion on the topic explains this decision with the suggestion that once a poem becomes published or exposed to the public in some way, ownership of a sort is immediately transferred from the poet to the reader. “Rain” is a kind of a strange poem that is hard to get a handle on because the subject is not really the title; it is a poem about how the speaker loves films that open with rainy scenes. Thus, the poem is one which addresses the subject of rain in a secondhand manner that is slightly removed from itself and cast within a secondary context.

As the poem continues on, the distance between reader and the titular subject becomes even greater as the speaker observes that a film that starts with rain can even make him overlook technical flaws like an actor losing his accent or the boom mic dipping briefly into the frame. It is a poem in which it is deceptively difficult to get a firm grasp on exactly what the subject matter is precisely and this difficulty seems to be purposely made even more difficult with the poem’s closing line in which is set off by itself to comprise a completely separate stanza. The poem concludes resignedly with a sigh of “and none of this, none of this matters” in a manner which comes across more like the author commenting upon his work than the speaker concluding his thoughts.

Although not actually mentioned in the verse itself, in “The Ferryman’s Arms” who is understood to be the title character?

This poem is ostensibly about a man in a pub playing a coin-operated pool table; a quarter slipped into a slot will result in the balls being made available for play. The man is alone and strangely drawn to the dark room at the back of the pub where pool table sits almost as if in patient waiting for him to arrive. Over the course of the first long stanza, the language becomes more metaphorical and mythologically allusive. The second stanza begins jarring with the sudden introduction of the imagery of a boat that does not even seem to be making contact with the water below in a scene that transforms everything fully into the realm of the weird and figurative. The ferryman himself is neither described nor mad manifest in the text, but the mythological clues which have piled up over the course of the two stanzas lead to one inevitable conclusion about his identity: he is Charon, the operator of the ferry boat which transports the souls of the recently departed across the River Styx to the underworld of ancient mythology, Hades.