Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

May Swenson’s “Written While Riding the Long Island Railroad” is a surreal and enigmatic poem that uses vivid, disjointed imagery and playful language to explore themes of perception, absurdity, and the fragmented nature of experience. The poem reads like a dreamscape, where ordinary objects and scenarios are transformed into bizarre and unexpected forms, reflecting the mind?s wandering state during the monotony of a train ride.

The opening lines, “Hard water and square wheels. / A foot wears a hat and walks on its thumbs,” immediately plunge the reader into a world where logic is suspended. These images invert normal associations, suggesting a playful interrogation of reality. The hard water and square wheels, physically impossible and contradictory, establish the poem’s central motif: the distortion of the familiar into the absurd. The foot wearing a hat and walking on thumbs evokes a surrealist painting, where objects assume roles beyond their ordinary functions.

Throughout the poem, Swenson employs a series of unrelated and often nonsensical images, creating a collage-like effect. For example, “The clouds are of plaster. That hiss is a box. / Honey is hairy. This cipher’s a house” layers incongruous elements to disorient and intrigue the reader. These images defy easy interpretation, encouraging a focus on the sensory and linguistic play rather than on linear meaning.

The surrealist tone deepens with lines such as “In a coffin of chocolate the hatchet is laid. / A cactus is sneezing.” These juxtapositions challenge the reader’s expectations, blending the macabre (a coffin) with the whimsical (chocolate and sneezing). The effect is both unsettling and humorous, highlighting the unpredictable associations that can arise in a wandering mind. The poem revels in its absurdity, using language to blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.

Swenson also incorporates a sense of motion and sound, reflective of the train journey. Lines like “The telephone’s juice / has stiffened a horsefly, whose porcelain curse / is rocking the corridor” evoke the rhythmic clatter of the train and the way its motion shapes perception. The imagery is vivid but elusive, capturing fleeting impressions that mirror the fleeting views from a train window.

The poem’s structure mirrors its content: fragmented and nonlinear. Each line or couplet introduces a new image or idea, often disconnected from the previous one. This disjointedness reflects the randomness of thought during idle moments, where the mind leaps unpredictably from one idea to another. Swenson captures the way external stimuli—like the passing scenery or the hum of the train—blend with internal musings to create a kaleidoscope of impressions.

Despite its apparent randomness, “Written While Riding the Long Island Railroad” contains moments of critique and reflection. Lines like “The bite of the barber begins to compete / with the weight of a capsized spondee or stilt” suggest a playful commentary on language and form, as the barber’s bite becomes as significant as a poetic meter or a collapsing structure. Similarly, “The front page is blank” in the closing line can be read as a metaphor for the emptiness or meaninglessness of certain narratives, or as a statement on the potential for endless creation and reinterpretation.

The poem’s humor is underscored by absurd scenarios, such as “An owl’s in the sink. There’s a flag in the oven.” These surreal images reflect a world unbound by logic, where the familiar domestic scene is transformed into something strange and disorienting. Swenson’s use of humor softens the poem’s more chaotic or unsettling moments, making it an engaging exploration of the mind’s capacity for invention.

In “Written While Riding the Long Island Railroad”, Swenson turns a mundane experience—a train ride—into a fertile ground for surreal imagination and linguistic play. The poem resists straightforward interpretation, instead inviting readers to revel in its whimsical and disorienting imagery. By embracing absurdity and celebrating the unpredictable nature of thought, Swenson creates a work that captures the beauty of creative freedom and the endless possibilities of language.

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