Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Tony Hoagland’s "You’re the Top" is a meditation on nostalgia, generational difference, and the shifting perspectives that come with age. Through the figure of his grandmother Bernice, the speaker contrasts youthful self-righteousness with the more nuanced understanding that emerges later in life. The poem, set against the backdrop of a car ride north of Boston with Cole Porter on the radio, moves fluidly between admiration, critique, and eventual acceptance of a worldview shaped by privilege and romanticized elegance.

The poem begins with a simple but profound assertion: "Of all the people that I?ve ever known / I think my grandmother Bernice would be best qualified to be beside me now / driving north of Boston in a rented car / while Cole Porter warbles on the radio." This opening sets the tone of reflection and longing. The speaker is not just reminiscing about Bernice but actively wishing for her presence in the moment. The specificity of "north of Boston in a rented car" suggests transience—he is traveling, but not in a place he calls home, and in a car that isn’t his. This sense of impermanence makes his wish for companionship more poignant, emphasizing the longing for connection with a past he once rejected.

The choice of Cole Porter’s "You’re the Top" as the background music is crucial. Porter’s lyrics, filled with extravagant rhymes and references to high society, embody the world Bernice loved—a world of effortless glamour, where elegance and wealth were celebrated without irony. The speaker acknowledges this with wry affection: "Only she would be trivial and unpolitically correct enough to totally enjoy / the rhyming of Mahatma Gandhi with Napoleon brandy." The juxtaposition of these figures—one a symbol of asceticism and resistance, the other of European decadence—captures the playful absurdity of Porter’s style. Bernice, unbothered by the contradictions, would have delighted in the rhyme purely for its wit, unconcerned with deeper political implications.

The next lines continue this nostalgic indulgence: "and she would understand, from 1948, the miracle that once was cellophane, / which Porter rhymes with night in Spain." This reference underscores how the world Bernice inhabited was one of artifice and marvels that now seem quaint or even naïve. Cellophane, once a symbol of modernity and innovation, is now an environmental hazard—just as the privileged lifestyle she admired is now viewed with more skepticism. But for Bernice, these symbols retained their original magic, untouched by contemporary cynicism.

The speaker then deepens his portrait of his grandmother’s world: "She loved that image of the high gay life / where people dressed by servants turned every night into the Ritz: / dancing through a shower of just uncorked champagne / into the shelter of a dry martini." The phrase "high gay life" (in the older sense of gay meaning lively, extravagant) perfectly encapsulates her worldview—one in which wealth, luxury, and style were not just aspirations but assumed virtues. The image of "dancing through a shower of just uncorked champagne / into the shelter of a dry martini" is dazzling and cinematic, a vision of perpetual celebration. This is a world untouched by hardship, where problems dissolve in the fizz of fine liquor and well-tailored suits.

But the speaker does not remain in admiration. He recalls his younger self’s anger at this worldview: "When she was 70 and I was young I hated how a life of privilege / had kept her ignorance intact about the world beneath her pretty feet." The phrase "kept her ignorance intact" suggests not just obliviousness but a kind of insulation, a bubble that wealth allowed her to maintain. The younger speaker resents this, seeing her as someone who never had to confront the struggles of those without money. His youthful idealism makes him unable to forgive her detachment.

His frustration is articulated through specific grievances: "how she believed that people with good manners naturally had yachts, / knew how to waltz / and dribbled French into their sentences like salad dressing." These beliefs seem laughable to the young speaker, who sees them as evidence of an out-of-touch worldview. The mention of "dribbl[ing] French into their sentences like salad dressing" is particularly sharp, implying that her understanding of culture was surface-level, a garnish rather than a deep engagement.

The speaker’s "liberal adolescent rage" is described as "a righteous fist back then that wouldn’t let me rest." This phrase captures the consuming nature of youthful indignation—how moral clarity can sometimes feel like a burden, preventing rest and reconciliation. His anger is not just at Bernice but at the system that allowed people like her to live so effortlessly while others struggled.

However, the poem does not end in condemnation. The speaker acknowledges that "I?ve come far enough from who I was to see her as she saw herself." This shift is crucial—it marks a movement from judgment to understanding. The speaker no longer defines Bernice solely by her privilege but recognizes her as a person who saw herself in a particular way, shaped by her own experiences and desires.

The final image is one of playful, wistful beauty: "a tipsy debutante in 1938, kicking off a party with her shoes; / launching the lipstick-red high heel from her elegant big toe / into the orbit of a chandelier suspended in a lyric by Cole Porter, / bright and beautiful and useless." This moment captures both the appeal and the emptiness of the world she adored. The "lipstick-red high heel" flying through the air is a perfect symbol for her life—graceful, glamorous, untethered from the weight of reality. That it lands "in the orbit of a chandelier suspended in a lyric by Cole Porter" ties the image back to the song "You’re the Top," reinforcing the idea that her world was one of fantasy and performance. The closing phrase—"bright and beautiful and useless"—is both affectionate and damning. It acknowledges the charm of her life but also its lack of substance, its detachment from anything beyond aesthetics.

"You’re the Top" is a complex reflection on privilege, nostalgia, and the evolution of perspective. Hoagland captures the tension between youthful righteousness and the more forgiving wisdom of age, showing how we can both critique and admire those who shaped us. Bernice’s world, with its champagne showers and Cole Porter lyrics, is undeniably alluring, even as it is insulated from real suffering. The poem does not seek to resolve this contradiction but rather to inhabit it fully, allowing both admiration and critique to coexist. Ultimately, it is a poem about learning to see people—not just as products of their circumstances, but as individuals who, in their own way, were reaching for something bright and beautiful, even if it was, in the end, useless.

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