Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Old Story" is a playful yet melancholic reflection on love, longing, and the elusive nature of desire. The poem is structured around an extended metaphor—the speaker being in love with fireflies—which transforms a whimsical premise into a meditation on incompatibility and emotional distance. The brevity of the poem, its clipped, conversational tone, and the way it plays with expectation and reversal give it a sense of lightness that belies its deeper resonance.

The opening line immediately establishes the central conceit: "It’s hard being in love with fireflies." This phrasing suggests not just admiration but a romantic attachment to something fleeting, untouchable. Fireflies, after all, are ephemeral, appearing only at night, glowing briefly before vanishing. The difficulty the speaker expresses is not in loving them, but in maintaining a relationship with something so elusive.

The humor of the next line—"I have to do all the pots and pans."—grounds the poem in the mundane. The contrast between the ethereal beauty of fireflies and the domestic chore of washing dishes introduces a tension between the romantic and the practical. This line reinterprets the metaphor of the fireflies as an absent, unreliable partner—someone who dazzles but does not participate in the labor of daily life.

The poem continues with more playful grievances: "When asked to parties they always wear the same color dress." Here, the speaker pokes fun at the uniformity of fireflies' glow, framing it as a social faux pas. The line anthropomorphizes the fireflies further, reinforcing the sense that they are not just distant but indifferent. They are predictable in their beauty, but their lack of variety or effort seems to frustrate the speaker.

The starkest difference between the speaker and the fireflies is laid out in the next line: "I work days, they punch in at dusk." This presents a fundamental incompatibility—the speaker belongs to the world of structured, daylight responsibilities, while the fireflies emerge only at night, free and untethered. The relationship, if it can be called that, is one of misalignment. The fireflies exist in a different temporal and emotional realm, mirroring the frustration of being in love with someone who operates on an entirely different rhythm.

The poem shifts toward a more personal, almost confessional tone in the last three lines. The speaker sits up late at night, "With the radio and a beer I sit up doing bills, jealous of men who’ve fallen for the homebody stars." The juxtaposition of radio, beer, and bills suggests loneliness—a quiet domestic scene where the speaker is left to contemplate the absence of the fireflies. The "homebody stars" contrast with the fireflies; they are steady, constant, reliable—everything the fireflies are not. The speaker’s jealousy reveals a longing for stability, for a love that does not flicker in and out of reach.

The final lines solidify the poem’s emotional depth: "When things are bad they shake their asses all over town, when good my lips glow." This is perhaps the most striking image in the poem, at once humorous and poignant. When the speaker is struggling, the fireflies seem carefree, indifferent to his pain, dancing wildly as if to taunt him. But when things are good, his "lips glow," suggesting that he finds joy in their presence, however fleeting. The phrase "my lips glow" carries an intimacy that underscores the intensity of his attachment—his happiness is tied to their presence, yet they remain transient and unpredictable.

Hicok’s "Old Story" encapsulates a familiar emotional experience—the tension between desire and reality, between love and incompatibility. The fireflies represent an elusive, dazzling beauty that the speaker longs for but cannot hold onto. The humor in the poem serves to mask, but not entirely erase, the speaker’s loneliness and resignation. The brevity of the poem reinforces its theme; like the fireflies themselves, the poem glows briefly before vanishing, leaving behind a quiet longing for something that cannot be contained.

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