Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Record Player," Christopher Howell meditates on the ephemeral nature of music, memory, and human experience, using the image of Barbara listening to old ballads to explore themes of loss, nostalgia, and the artificial nature of certain human constructs, such as war and manufactured memories. Through the familiar yet hauntingly transient experience of listening to a record, Howell reflects on the ways we attempt to capture and replay the past, even as it remains fundamentally elusive and ultimately beyond our control.

The poem begins by introducing Barbara, who is listening to “ballads; familiar, inoffensive phrasings discovered at a used record shop.” The record shop on Hawthorn is specific yet universal, evoking a sense of nostalgia for places that hold remnants of the past, places where music and memories from other eras are given a second life. Barbara’s choice of “ballads” suggests a leaning toward songs that are likely evocative of love, longing, and melancholy. These “familiar” tunes are safe and comforting, embodying emotions that resonate but do not necessarily confront or challenge.

Howell’s description of the singer’s voice is vivid, imbued with sensory details: it is “low and strong with its charmed lights and losses winking.” This phrase captures the enchanting quality of music, how it illuminates and conceals moments of sadness, beauty, and introspection. The voice is personified, almost as though it is conjuring scenes of “the moon sailing off by itself somewhere above the rain and other forms of weeping for the Earth.” This line invokes a sense of cosmic solitude, where even the moon drifts alone, detached, and indifferent to human sorrows. Howell’s suggestion that the moon “sails off” emphasizes the ongoing, unstoppable movement of time and celestial bodies, hinting at an eternal indifference to the personal losses encapsulated in music.

The poem takes a turn as the singer’s voice shifts tone, “swing[ing] brightly south, Caribbean,” where “love is a thoughtless shimmering absence of decay.” This Caribbean setting contrasts with the previous melancholic tone, presenting an idealized place free of time’s inevitable decay. Howell wryly observes that this “shimmering absence of decay” is something “we think we must, by suffering, have earned,” pointing to a human desire to believe that joy, or freedom from sorrow, must be deserved. The Caribbean thus represents a paradise that feels undeserved, perhaps even illusory—a happiness we feel we must struggle for to claim, yet one that may always lie just out of reach.

As Barbara’s record plays on, the singer mentions “cormorants and the color blue as it must have been for Columbus.” Here, Howell links the singer’s voice to history, evoking Columbus as a figure captivated by imagination and possibility. Columbus, “bent above his imaginary charts,” becomes a symbol of ambition and human yearning. Howell’s Columbus is ironically self-important, yelling at his first officer, “Not now! Not now! Can’t you see I’m plotting a course!” This comically pompous portrayal of Columbus highlights a historical figure lost in his own dreams, detached from reality, and focused on an imagined future. The figure of Columbus underscores the ways in which people, too, can become overly absorbed in their own visions, missing the present while plotting some illusory course.

As the record winds down, Barbara’s voice fades, “and the machine lifts its arm coldly out of her voice, sinking now into the dark vinyl like a djin charmed back into a golden lamp that isn’t really gold.” This image of the machine’s arm withdrawing evokes the fragility and artificiality of human attempts to hold onto transient experiences. The comparison of the voice to a “djin” (or genie) returning to a “golden lamp that isn’t really gold” suggests the illusory nature of music’s magic. Just as the voice depends on the machine to bring it to life, the emotions evoked by the song are fleeting, dependent on an external device to be summoned. Howell seems to suggest that music, while powerful, is ultimately an illusion, a momentary escape that will always fade back into silence.

In the closing lines, Howell contrasts the transience of music with the inescapable permanence of historical events, such as war. He remarks that while music can be stopped and restarted, “events” like war possess an “artifactual aplomb” that seems “avoidable only in retrospect.” This observation critiques the inevitability with which history often unfolds, especially the “smoking arms and heads” of war, and how leaders and “men in immaculate pinstripe” count the losses in a detached, mechanical way. These “pinstriped” figures represent authority and power, removed from the human suffering they orchestrate, as they think, “we didn’t ask for this one, boy.” Howell’s tone here is sardonic, revealing a disconnect between those in power and the suffering inflicted by their decisions, as though they are as bewildered by the violence as those affected by it.

The poem concludes with a poignant image: “as we forget the moon’s dark other hand, the one that points, naturally, toward the emptiness and salutes.” This “dark other hand” of the moon, hidden and unobserved, symbolizes the unacknowledged aspects of life and history—the parts we overlook or ignore, yet which persist. Howell’s final line gestures to an emptiness that resides beneath both the beauty and sorrow of human experience, the “dark other hand” that accompanies all moments of joy and despair, pointing us toward the silent vastness of existence that music, memory, and even history cannot fully capture or hold back.

"Record Player" is a meditation on the illusory nature of beauty, the complexities of memory, and the artificial constructs humanity clings to in its search for meaning. Howell’s poem suggests that while music can transport us to distant places and emotions, it remains a fleeting comfort, ultimately returning to silence. Through his exploration of Barbara’s record, Howell reveals the fragile nature of human memory and the weight of historical inevitabilities that persist despite our attempts to momentarily escape them. The poem leaves readers contemplating the tension between ephemeral beauty and the unchanging reality of the world, where moments of harmony are always shadowed by silence and emptiness.

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