Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Simon J. Ortiz’s "Portrait of a Poet with a Console TV in Hand" is a meditation on displacement, absurdity, and the small yet revealing details that shape modern experience. Ortiz, an Acoma Pueblo poet, frequently explores themes of movement, liminality, and the contrast between Indigenous identity and contemporary American life. In this poem, a mundane act—carrying a television home on a bus—becomes a lens through which the speaker examines urban alienation, violence, and an unexpected sense of personal estrangement.

The poem opens with a simple, matter-of-fact statement: “I bought that TV at John’s TV / on College Avenue in San Diego / and lugged it all the way home / on the Greyhound bus.” The specificity of location—San Diego, College Avenue—grounds the scene in reality, while the act of “lugging” a television on public transportation introduces an immediate sense of awkwardness. The choice of a Greyhound bus—a vehicle associated with long, often uncomfortable journeys—suggests both transience and economic necessity. The speaker is not driving home in a private car; they are navigating the American transportation system, a space where disparate lives intersect. The phrase “lugged it all the way home” hints at effort, an action that is both burdensome and, in hindsight, slightly absurd.

This absurdity becomes more pronounced in the next stanza, where the speaker sits in the Phoenix bus depot, the TV balanced on their lap. The setting of a bus station waiting room—a place of temporary stasis—creates a sense of suspended reality. The phrase “I felt foolish as I watched” signals self-consciousness, an awareness of how ridiculous the situation might appear from the outside. However, this self-awareness quickly shifts outward as the speaker observes a troubling scene: “depot officials grab an old man / derelict as he searched dazedly / into an open locker compartment.” The language here is stark, emphasizing the man’s confusion (“dazedly”) and vulnerability. The phrase “they pushed him reeling out / into deadly stunning American city” transforms the scene into something cinematic, yet deeply unsettling. The enjambment between “deadly” and “stunning” creates a moment of tension—the city is both mesmerizing and dangerous, a place where people like the old man are discarded rather than helped.

Ortiz then introduces a striking comparison: “At 12:30 A.M., there wasn’t anything else on, / just that already too late, late channel.” This line equates the violence of the moment with late-night television programming, suggesting both inevitability and desensitization. The phrase “already too late” resonates beyond the literal reference to time; it implies a sense of irreversibility, as if the moment—like so many others—has already passed into history, unnoticed and unchangeable. The TV, which initially seemed like an object of personal comfort or entertainment, now serves as a dark symbol of passive observation. Just as television channels broadcast repetitive, numbing content, so too does reality unfold in predictable patterns of neglect and brutality.

The poem’s final stanza shifts the focus back to the speaker, who reflects on their journey with a sense of bemusement: “I had known that I would be coming home / but the TV-in-hand bit / was an entirely new angle.” The phrase “new angle” carries a double meaning—it refers both to the unexpectedness of carrying a TV home and to a shift in perspective, a realization that something about this journey has altered the speaker’s perception. The concluding thought—“and I think / that it must have to do with an odd madness”—suggests that this absurdity is not just personal but indicative of something larger. The “odd madness” may refer to the irrationality of modern life, the way people carry burdens (both literal and metaphorical) without fully understanding why, or the surreal nature of witnessing suffering while clutching an object designed for entertainment.

Ortiz’s use of free verse allows the poem to move fluidly between personal reflection and external observation. The lack of punctuation in key moments, particularly around the description of the old man’s ejection from the depot, creates a breathless quality that mirrors the rapid, impersonal nature of such actions. The structure also reinforces the disjointed, fragmented experience of travel—thoughts come in fits and starts, influenced by what the speaker sees, remembers, and reinterprets.

Ultimately, "Portrait of a Poet with a Console TV in Hand" is a meditation on dislocation and disconnection, where an ordinary object like a television becomes both a burden and a metaphor. The speaker's journey home is tinged with surrealism, as the act of carrying a TV through bus stations collides with the stark realities of urban poverty and institutional neglect. Ortiz captures the contradictions of contemporary life—the coexistence of entertainment and suffering, of movement and stagnation—leaving the reader with a sense of quiet disquiet, an awareness of how the absurd and the tragic intertwine in the fabric of everyday existence.

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