Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Albert Goldbarth's poem "Before" intricately weaves together personal history, collective memory, and the human quest for origins and meaning. Through its reflective narrative, the poem explores the interconnectedness of past and present, as well as the deep yearning to understand one's roots.

The poem opens with the speaker reminiscing about a history class, but his desire is for more than just the "Presidents and paper" the textbook offers. He craves the unrecorded, primordial history—the history of his ancestors and the elemental forces that shaped their lives. This longing is symbolized by the image of the "bridge the bent Yid ragman took reluctantly between steamship and sweatshop," a metaphor for the immigrant journey and the transformation it entails.

Goldbarth skillfully uses the bridge as a motif to connect different epochs and stages of evolution, from the landbridge crossed by early mammals to the first leg-like appendages. This desire for an elemental understanding is echoed in the speaker's yearning for "something almost a leg that was the gray-veined print of a leg in a web," a reference to the fossil record and the deep time of geological history.

The speaker's lineage is traced through a series of evocative images: "ragpickers, songpluckers, kettlemenders, renderers of humpfat for the candles, masters of disputation over a nuance of scripture, debtors, diddlers, elegiasts and jewellers." These ancestors are part of a rich tapestry of history that the speaker feels connected to, despite their absence from the history books.

Goldbarth's use of vivid, almost tactile imagery brings these historical figures to life, making the reader feel the weight of their labor and the texture of their lives. The "renderers of humpfat for the candles" and "masters of disputation over a nuance of scripture" are particularly striking, evoking the physical and intellectual labor that has shaped the speaker's heritage.

The poem takes a poignant turn as the speaker recalls a specific moment of revelation near Washtenaw and Ainslie. Here, he stops on a bridge above a sewerage ditch and experiences a moment of transcendence as the sun transforms the "urban rut's otherwise lustreless flow" into a constellation. This vision evokes the idea that even in the most mundane or polluted places, there is a potential for beauty and meaning.

The ragman, with his cart of "garment district scraps... some wholeskinned Spanish onions, wool socks, and a single tired rose," becomes a symbol of resilience and survival. His tuneless humming, "as if from before the idea of song took full root in American soil," represents a connection to a more primal form of expression, one that predates the formal structures of language and culture.

The speaker's reflection in the ragman's pots and in the sewerage currents symbolizes his search for identity and self-understanding. This reflective moment captures the fluidity of identity, as it shifts and changes like the light and water, suggesting that our sense of self is constantly being reshaped by our experiences and perceptions.

In the final lines, the speaker articulates his longing for something beyond the tangible and the recorded: "something like a bottle with a notepage in it, thrown to sea—the clarity of glass, but from before glass; and the urgency of that written note, before writing." This desire for a pre-linguistic, elemental form of communication speaks to a deep-seated need to connect with the world on a fundamental level, to find meaning in the very essence of existence.

"Before" is a meditation on the nature of history and memory, exploring how our personal and collective pasts shape our present identities. Through its rich imagery and reflective tone, the poem invites readers to consider their own connections to history and the ways in which they seek to understand and articulate their place in the world.

 
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