Tools
The poem titled “Tools” is a celebration of screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, and even bubble levels. The speaker is in a celebratory mood as he philosophizes on the little-considered fact that most people tend to own the screwdriver, hammer, pliers and even bubble levels not for weeks or months or even years, but decades. In light of this consideration, the final questioning of the verse brings into sharp relief the existence of tools as the symbol of modern day waste, especially in the age of instant obsolescence when the release of an $800 phone is known to be at the time of purchase a temporary investment lasting no longer than three or four years at the most.
When Rolls Met Royce
The poem title “Duet, with Muffled Brake Drums” commences with a quote from an advertisement in the The New Yorker magazine: “50 Years Ago Rolls met Royce—a Meeting that made Engineering History.” The poem which follows proceeds to invent a fictionalized version of that meeting in which Mr. Rolls asks Mr. Royce immediately after meeting him if there is anything he would care to make following up with several suggestions including tea and a fourth at bridge. Mr. Royce responds by suggesting that if his afternoon is free, perhaps he and Mr. Rolls should “make engineering history.” The poem becomes a subversive symbol of the lack of truth of advertising by ironically undermining the falsity of the implicit assertion in the advertisement that the meeting between the two legendary businessmen were actually historic in any genuine way.
Air Shows
The title of the poem is singular, but the subject applies to each and every once. “Air Show” for the most part describes in unusually (for Updike) “poetic” language. For a poet who generally eschew fancy flights of language, the description of the air show taking place is purposely made into an epic. And then comes the final stanza and the kicker as the language is stripped down considerably in order for the writer to make his point. And that point is that the air show in all its pomp and glory symbolizes more than anything else the monetary waste of public demonstrations of patriotic pride.
“Light Switches”
In this poem, the speaker begins by complaining about how wearing he has gotten of flipping light switches on an off. From there he goes on to admit that he recognizes they are a modern miracle without whom any civilized human could do without. And therein lies the problem. Merely two or three generations back in time, such a feat and flipping a switch on the wall and bringing total illumination into a darkened room would be thought a magic act. The failure to recognize the extraordinary quality of everyday modern conveniences is symbolized in this the lowly plate on the wall of every room in the house.
Storm Windows
“The Melancholy of Storm Windows” purports for most of its length to be about the wistful quality of storm windows themselves: the paint which cracks and peels, the screens which need cleaning, the loosening of their once snug fit. By the end of the poem, however, the full depth of the poet’s melancholy is on display as it becomes an explicitly symbolic poem in which all the problems of the aging storm windows are transferred into all the problems of the aging owner of them.
