Charles Simic's ‘Miracle Glass Co.’: An Ode for Our Times
By Dr Ian Seed
The poem is written in free verse. It consists of two six-line stanzas, followed by a final four-line stanza. The lines are short and of irregular length, ranging from tetrameters to lines of just one foot. The metre is also highly irregular. This creates a kind of staccato movement which matches the vision of the poem’s narrator as he sees a series of changing reflections in the glass of the mirror as it is carried across the street.
It begins with a trochaic trimeter, followed by an iambic dimeter, thus forming a kind of split pentameter and in this manner paying a sly homage to the most traditional line in English poetry while refusing to respect its boundaries: ‘Heavy mirror carried / Across the street’. [3] The use of ‘heavy’ is highly evocative. How does the narrator know the mirror is heavy since he is not the one doing the carrying? With this word, the poet creates not only an image of a large mirror, but also of someone perhaps struggling to lift it. Beyond this, within the context of the poem as a whole, the word ‘heavy’ has implications of a metaphysical burden, as if the carrier is bearing the weight of the universe, and by doing so performing some kind of ‘miracle’, which is, of course, the first word of the poem’s title. The heaviness of the mirror is further emphasised by the poet’s placing of ‘carried’ at the end of the first line. The iambic rhythm of the second line, ‘Across the street’, conveys a lighter feeling, as if the mirror itself is becoming miraculously lighter the further across the street it gets.
‘I bow to you’ (l. 3) could be read as dimeter, with the stress on ‘bow’ and ‘you’, but because of the line breaks before and afterwards, the natural way of reading it is to stress only the word ‘bow’, thus emphasising the tribute that the narrator wishes to pay to the mirror. Yet the scene being painted has a comic, even old-fashioned slapstick element: a man bowing on a city pavement to a mirror, perhaps much to the bemusement of other people around him. This is in keeping with the poem’s mischievous title, and subverts our traditional notion of the ode as a solemn homage.
The fourth line is visually longer, but has in fact only two stressed syllables because its rhythm is mainly anapaestic. The quickening pace of this line gives a sense of livening interest in the promise of an ever-widening picture. We learn that the narrator is not only bowing to the mirror itself but to everything that ‘appears in you’. Yet as if to immediately temper our expectations, we are reminded in the last two lines of the first stanza that the reflections appear ‘Momentarily / And never again the same way:’ (ll. 5-6). The shock of the short fifth line pulls us up abruptly, while the sixth line carries us forward again, with its colon at the end heightening the suspense and making us eager to find out exactly what it is that will make its appearance. As we have seen, the language of the first stanza is simple, almost prose-like, and a long way from the elevated tone we associate with the ode. However, it is important to note the way in which the lines are bound together through the use of unobtrusive rhyme and half-rhyme: ‘carried / street’, ‘you / you’, ‘ly / way’.
The second stanza has a strong cinematic quality, with the narrator creating a larger picture through a series of snapshots, revealed line by line, as like a camera he moves from the background to particulars in the foreground. The scene begins with a ‘pink sky’ (l. 7). The ‘pink’ has connotations of beauty, but also of vague menace. We don’t yet know if the time of day is dawn or dusk, or what the pink might really signify. In any case, the pink of the sky is not something we have any influence over. By contrast, we are then presented with a ‘Row of gray tenements’ (l. 8). This is clearly an area where ordinary people live, as is confirmed by the greater specificity of the next four lines, which with just a few brushstrokes enable us to imagine the greater picture:
A lone dog,
Children on rollerskates,
Woman buying flowers,
Someone looking lost. (ll. 9-12)
In one sense, the scene depicted is one of simplicity and innocence. The dog and people here have a vulnerable quality. There is an underlying sense of sadness because the sun is going down, soon night will fall, and in any case, they are only images caught ‘momentarily’ in a mirror. The feeling ultimately evoked is one of the transience of life. This is reinforced by the fact that there are no sounds or smells associated with the activities going on in the street. The narrator is strangely detached from them, with eyes only for what can be seen fleetingly in the mirror. Interestingly, the semi-regularity of the rhyme scheme of the first stanza is missing. This reinforces the sense of the lives of these street dwellers being ultimately separate and fragmented, however idyllic the scene may at first appear.
The third and final stanza returns to the address of the ode, and with a more elevated tone: ‘In you, mirror framed in gold’ (l. 13). Here we learn about the gold frame for the first time. It adds a quasi-religious quality to the scene unfolding. One thinks, for example, of a golden light or altar. The gold has other connotations, too. This may not be a rich area, but the mirror is precious. Perhaps it is a family heirloom. Perhaps a family is moving, or have been thrown out of their home. Perhaps someone has died and possessions are being taken away for auctioning. The poet leaves us to tell our own story here. The gold frame will of course add to the weight of the mirror. But as well as being ‘weighty’ in the physical sense, the mirror is weighty because its changing reflections contain a micro-universe, representative of a wider picture of our passing lives in a much greater cosmos.
The last lines of the poem explore this idea further, opening up a new dimension. The mirror is carried ‘By someone I can’t even see, / To whom, too, I bow’ (ll. 15-16). The implication here is of a maker behind the reflection of reality. The fact that reality is only a reflection points to our limitations as human beings. We will never be able to perceive the reality beyond the one we know.
The tone of the last stanza is mixed: both solemn, with its image of gold and its slightly longer lines, yet also comic, as if the poet is challenging us to reflect in existential fashion on the meaning of our existence, but again not to take life too seriously. After all, what has been briefly described is only an ordinary scene in an unremarkable place, as the poem reminds us with its repetition in the third stanza of the phrase ‘carried across the street’ (l. 14). With the lightest of touches, this poem reminds us of our impermanence, and our all-too-human need to transcend this. As poetry should, it awakens in us an enriching sense of astonishment.
Endnotes:
[1] Jeffrey Wainwright, Poetry: The Basics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), p. 230.
Citation:
Ian Seed, ‘Charles Simic’s “Miracle Glass Co.”: An Ode for Our Times’, Notes on Literature: For Readers and Writers, www.notesonliteraturechester.blogspot.co.uk [accessed Day Month Year].
About the Author:
Dr Ian Seed is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Department of English, University of Chester. He is programme leader of BA (Hons) Creative Writing, on which he teaches the modules: Life Writing; Poetry: Other Voices, Other Forms; Writing Poetry; Writing Poetry for Publication; Writing the Past; and The Writing Project. He also gives lectures on Studying Literature and Varieties of Writing.
On MA Creative Writing: Writing and Publishing Fiction, he teaches on the modules: Writing Novels for Publication; Getting Published; and The Writing Project.
He is editor of the Department of English’s online magazine Pandora’s Inbox and general editor of its sister print magazine, Pandora’s Box.
Ian’s books of flash fiction and prose poetry include New York Hotel (2018), Identity Papers (2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (2014), all from Shearsman. His short stories include Italian Lessons (LikeThisPress, 2017) and Amore Mio (Flax, 2011). Work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books) and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 (Faber and Faber).
‘Miracle Glass Co.’ (1994) is an ode to a
mirror. It breaks with the conventions of the ode, which has its origins in
Greek antiquity and which has traditionally been regarded as a form paying
solemn homage to an important person or occasion, or in Romantic poetry as a
way to exalt nature or an object. According to Jeffrey Wainwright, the ode is ‘a form of lyrical poetry, usually of
considerable length, that treats significant subjects such as mortality, and
often public events’ and whose ‘tone
is serious and the line and stanza forms often elaborate’. [1]
However, Strand and Boland claim that the traditional ode’s ‘straight-faced and unswerving elevation of objects and persons no longer seems so possible in an age of lost faith and broken images’. [2]
This essay will examine how the prize-winning Serbian-American poet Charles Simic creates a genuine ode while at the same time subverting our expectations of this form and thus creating an authentic experience for a reader of today.
At first glance, ‘Miracle Glass Co.’ is a short, simple, imagistic description of a mirror being carried across a street. A more appreciative reading reveals that beyond this it is a metaphysical poem pointing to a transcendent reality, and also a philosophical investigation which questions what that reality might be while acknowledging that it is a reality we will never grasp, although we will have an inkling of it in certain rare moments when we are caught by surprise.
However, Strand and Boland claim that the traditional ode’s ‘straight-faced and unswerving elevation of objects and persons no longer seems so possible in an age of lost faith and broken images’. [2]
This essay will examine how the prize-winning Serbian-American poet Charles Simic creates a genuine ode while at the same time subverting our expectations of this form and thus creating an authentic experience for a reader of today.
At first glance, ‘Miracle Glass Co.’ is a short, simple, imagistic description of a mirror being carried across a street. A more appreciative reading reveals that beyond this it is a metaphysical poem pointing to a transcendent reality, and also a philosophical investigation which questions what that reality might be while acknowledging that it is a reality we will never grasp, although we will have an inkling of it in certain rare moments when we are caught by surprise.
The poem is written in free verse. It consists of two six-line stanzas, followed by a final four-line stanza. The lines are short and of irregular length, ranging from tetrameters to lines of just one foot. The metre is also highly irregular. This creates a kind of staccato movement which matches the vision of the poem’s narrator as he sees a series of changing reflections in the glass of the mirror as it is carried across the street.
It begins with a trochaic trimeter, followed by an iambic dimeter, thus forming a kind of split pentameter and in this manner paying a sly homage to the most traditional line in English poetry while refusing to respect its boundaries: ‘Heavy mirror carried / Across the street’. [3] The use of ‘heavy’ is highly evocative. How does the narrator know the mirror is heavy since he is not the one doing the carrying? With this word, the poet creates not only an image of a large mirror, but also of someone perhaps struggling to lift it. Beyond this, within the context of the poem as a whole, the word ‘heavy’ has implications of a metaphysical burden, as if the carrier is bearing the weight of the universe, and by doing so performing some kind of ‘miracle’, which is, of course, the first word of the poem’s title. The heaviness of the mirror is further emphasised by the poet’s placing of ‘carried’ at the end of the first line. The iambic rhythm of the second line, ‘Across the street’, conveys a lighter feeling, as if the mirror itself is becoming miraculously lighter the further across the street it gets.
‘I bow to you’ (l. 3) could be read as dimeter, with the stress on ‘bow’ and ‘you’, but because of the line breaks before and afterwards, the natural way of reading it is to stress only the word ‘bow’, thus emphasising the tribute that the narrator wishes to pay to the mirror. Yet the scene being painted has a comic, even old-fashioned slapstick element: a man bowing on a city pavement to a mirror, perhaps much to the bemusement of other people around him. This is in keeping with the poem’s mischievous title, and subverts our traditional notion of the ode as a solemn homage.
The fourth line is visually longer, but has in fact only two stressed syllables because its rhythm is mainly anapaestic. The quickening pace of this line gives a sense of livening interest in the promise of an ever-widening picture. We learn that the narrator is not only bowing to the mirror itself but to everything that ‘appears in you’. Yet as if to immediately temper our expectations, we are reminded in the last two lines of the first stanza that the reflections appear ‘Momentarily / And never again the same way:’ (ll. 5-6). The shock of the short fifth line pulls us up abruptly, while the sixth line carries us forward again, with its colon at the end heightening the suspense and making us eager to find out exactly what it is that will make its appearance. As we have seen, the language of the first stanza is simple, almost prose-like, and a long way from the elevated tone we associate with the ode. However, it is important to note the way in which the lines are bound together through the use of unobtrusive rhyme and half-rhyme: ‘carried / street’, ‘you / you’, ‘ly / way’.
The second stanza has a strong cinematic quality, with the narrator creating a larger picture through a series of snapshots, revealed line by line, as like a camera he moves from the background to particulars in the foreground. The scene begins with a ‘pink sky’ (l. 7). The ‘pink’ has connotations of beauty, but also of vague menace. We don’t yet know if the time of day is dawn or dusk, or what the pink might really signify. In any case, the pink of the sky is not something we have any influence over. By contrast, we are then presented with a ‘Row of gray tenements’ (l. 8). This is clearly an area where ordinary people live, as is confirmed by the greater specificity of the next four lines, which with just a few brushstrokes enable us to imagine the greater picture:
A lone dog,
Children on rollerskates,
Woman buying flowers,
Someone looking lost. (ll. 9-12)
In one sense, the scene depicted is one of simplicity and innocence. The dog and people here have a vulnerable quality. There is an underlying sense of sadness because the sun is going down, soon night will fall, and in any case, they are only images caught ‘momentarily’ in a mirror. The feeling ultimately evoked is one of the transience of life. This is reinforced by the fact that there are no sounds or smells associated with the activities going on in the street. The narrator is strangely detached from them, with eyes only for what can be seen fleetingly in the mirror. Interestingly, the semi-regularity of the rhyme scheme of the first stanza is missing. This reinforces the sense of the lives of these street dwellers being ultimately separate and fragmented, however idyllic the scene may at first appear.
The third and final stanza returns to the address of the ode, and with a more elevated tone: ‘In you, mirror framed in gold’ (l. 13). Here we learn about the gold frame for the first time. It adds a quasi-religious quality to the scene unfolding. One thinks, for example, of a golden light or altar. The gold has other connotations, too. This may not be a rich area, but the mirror is precious. Perhaps it is a family heirloom. Perhaps a family is moving, or have been thrown out of their home. Perhaps someone has died and possessions are being taken away for auctioning. The poet leaves us to tell our own story here. The gold frame will of course add to the weight of the mirror. But as well as being ‘weighty’ in the physical sense, the mirror is weighty because its changing reflections contain a micro-universe, representative of a wider picture of our passing lives in a much greater cosmos.
The last lines of the poem explore this idea further, opening up a new dimension. The mirror is carried ‘By someone I can’t even see, / To whom, too, I bow’ (ll. 15-16). The implication here is of a maker behind the reflection of reality. The fact that reality is only a reflection points to our limitations as human beings. We will never be able to perceive the reality beyond the one we know.
The tone of the last stanza is mixed: both solemn, with its image of gold and its slightly longer lines, yet also comic, as if the poet is challenging us to reflect in existential fashion on the meaning of our existence, but again not to take life too seriously. After all, what has been briefly described is only an ordinary scene in an unremarkable place, as the poem reminds us with its repetition in the third stanza of the phrase ‘carried across the street’ (l. 14). With the lightest of touches, this poem reminds us of our impermanence, and our all-too-human need to transcend this. As poetry should, it awakens in us an enriching sense of astonishment.
Endnotes:
[1] Jeffrey Wainwright, Poetry: The Basics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), p. 230.
[2] Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (eds), The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of
Poetic Forms (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 240.
[3] Charles Simic, ‘Miracle Glass Co.’, in
The Making of a Poem, p. 50, ll. 1-2.
All further references will be given in the body of the text.
Citation:
Ian Seed, ‘Charles Simic’s “Miracle Glass Co.”: An Ode for Our Times’, Notes on Literature: For Readers and Writers, www.notesonliteraturechester.blogspot.co.uk [accessed Day Month Year].
Dr Ian Seed is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Department of English, University of Chester. He is programme leader of BA (Hons) Creative Writing, on which he teaches the modules: Life Writing; Poetry: Other Voices, Other Forms; Writing Poetry; Writing Poetry for Publication; Writing the Past; and The Writing Project. He also gives lectures on Studying Literature and Varieties of Writing.
On MA Creative Writing: Writing and Publishing Fiction, he teaches on the modules: Writing Novels for Publication; Getting Published; and The Writing Project.
He is editor of the Department of English’s online magazine Pandora’s Inbox and general editor of its sister print magazine, Pandora’s Box.
Ian’s books of flash fiction and prose poetry include New York Hotel (2018), Identity Papers (2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (2014), all from Shearsman. His short stories include Italian Lessons (LikeThisPress, 2017) and Amore Mio (Flax, 2011). Work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books) and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 (Faber and Faber).
What a beautiful reading - thanks, Ian! And yes, limitation and impermanence, but also the potential for human consciousness to frame, transform and elevate physical perceptions.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your comment, Jen. You make a vital point here and I confess I hadn't quite thought of the poem in that way. What you say makes me feel much more hopeful. There were other things I wanted to explore, for example the element of fable in 'Miracle Glass Co.', and the way I could see the scene both in New York but also in a central European country disrupted by war, but I was limited by a word count (perhaps no bad thing for a blog). Ian
DeleteYes, such rich potential. It's made me want to read more Simic, possibly as an antidote to the Romantic poetry I'm working with at the moment.....Tnanks again for introducing it to me.
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