City Eclogue, Part 1

City Eclogue, I will admit, was sort of baffling during my initial reading. The central ideas were all there, clear and understandable, but I sometimes had to re-read a poem multiple times in order to grasp all of the intricacies at work. I think the biggest theme behind City Eclogue lies in the fascinating juxtaposition of nature and mankind's footprint on it, how one can look around and purvey the world they live in and compare it (rather bleakly) to a "cleaner" world. Synonyms for trash and other unpleasant things are contrasted with the elegance of nature, and even entire poems are contrasts ("Sequoia Sempervirens comes to mind) between man and nature.

Culture is not left out of the picture, however. It's clear that Roberson is making an effort to detract from the lives of others around him, and to comment on the way the world is changing in an undesirable (to Roberson, anyway) way. This was admittedly kind of confusing on a deeper level in many cases, but Roberson does make his intentions clear on several occasions, where it doesn't feel necessary to evaluate every word on the page to get a grasp of his points.

One particular poem, "Platform Values" on page 46, emphasizes this nicely: it's a direct commentary on the state of politics and politicians, and how they really feel about the voting masses (and, hence, their supporters). The poem is fairly structured compared to the other pieces in the book, and flows well, and also makes great use of wordplay, such as equating "personal value" to "votes," demeaning the term and changing it to a mere buzzword. Roberson is making an important observation, of course, that politicians care first and foremost about the votes they're receiving to win, without much regard to the platform they're running under or actually following their values after they've won. It's sort of sad, but at the same time, I think most people have this same perspective of government-- even if it's not worded quite so poignantly.