The Street (reflection)

The Street by Stephen Dobyns:

"The Street" has a lot of cleverly worded, vivid imagery of a city street, describing the pedestrians as an insightful onlooker.  I'm intrigued by the nature of this poem, presumably being to describe a painting and the thoughts the painting gives the writer about the characters depicted.  In some places it could be taken as a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the painting, particularly the bit about the mother carrying off the grown baby that isn't really hers and is "very old", as the baby it is referring to doesn't really look like a baby in the painting.  I personally enjoy the metaphor of a girl disciplining her red ball and the baker who had half a thought and now stands awaiting another.

This poem, I think, suffers from trying to sound more profound than it really is in some places.  The first stanza is the one I take most issue with, which is bad for the poem as it should set the tone.

Across the street, the carpenter carries a golden

board across one shoulder, much as he bears the burdens

of his life.  Dressed in white, his only weakness is temptation.  Now he builds another wall to screen him.

The line "much as he bears the burdens of his life." has no contextual significance, adding nothing to the imagery of the scene or the character being described.  Is it that he bares his life burdens across one shoulder or just that he bares them and why does his having life burdens mean anything?  Are the boards the burdens of his life?  What is added to the imagery by adding this cliché sounding phrase?  Shortly after, the phrase "his only weakness is temptation." presents similar issues.  Both phrases suggest these dead-end ideas about the character that are contextually irrelevant, very difficult to visualize, and the writer does not elaborated on them.

The ending carries some neat insight but I question the ultimate relevance of it as well.  It says "these nine people circle each other... ...identical lives begun alone, spent alone, ending alone." This seems to detach from the painting it is describing, as the Asian couple and the mother and her very old baby are directly interacting, both in the painting and in the poem. The Asian couple are even having a particularly romantic moment.  My disillusionment toward the ending of the poem cheapens its minor insight.