Sample+Explication+of+a+Poem

**public moon?**

 * The power in "All Day All Night Talk Radio" comes from what it says and does not say, from its imagery and effective sound devices, its repetition, and its clipped little stanzas, each packing a wallop. Author Marge Piercy is criticizing the Neo-cons and conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh for their hatred and scapegoating of Mexican immigrants, though neither party is explicitly identified. Piercy spent much of the 1970s in Los Angeles and witnessed the wave of immigrants coming over the border, people whose civil rights issues paralleled the feminist issues she was dealing with as an activist. Undoubtedly the increasing venom Piercy heard on A.M. talk radio stations throughout the 1990s infuriated her.**


 * The poem can be broken into four movements, the first three building to the resolution in the final stanza. Stanzas 1 and 2 are primarily figurative, where Piercy uses metal – a train and molten steel – to signify the anger pouring from the talk radio hosts’ mouths into the ears of their listeners. This is a perfect metaphor, since steel connotes many things, all relevant to the poem: strength, masculinity, America itself, and corporate money. Since nearly all of the conservative talk show hosts and pundits are male, the phallic reference to the train emerging from a tunnel is apt. That it comes out of a tunnel also suggests it’s been in darkness, a reference to the men’s ignorance, and it “roars” out into the light spewing fury at the world, indicative of the over-generalizations and stereotypes these men like to use.**


 * Piercy’s use of alliteration is particularly effective, the r’s in “roars from the radio” sounding leonine, and the c’s in “car carries... coke load” creating a choking sound. Just as effective, her use of assonance with the long “e” sound makes a screaming effect: //steel, ear, sears//. Verbs carry the forceful tone forward as well, including //roars, pours, ignites, sears//. The word //coke// is also interesting. The literal reference here is to the residue of coal that the trains would carry as a fuel by-product; yet the other references are more provocative: Coca-Cola, suggestive of American capitalism, and cocaine, the drug known to rev up its users to fury and violence. When the speaker figuratively notes that the radio hosts are pouring steel into their listeners’ ears, we envision the steam-rush in the steel mills, and how that steel becomes rods that will hold up skyscrapers – immovable – like the ideas now solidified in their “snoozing brains” which stand no chance of hearing any other argument. I also was reminded of the scene in** **//Hamlet// (whether Piercy intended this or not), where Claudius pours poison into his sleeping brother’s ear in order to usurp his throne and steal his wife, an act of ultimate betrayal and treason. The speaker in this first section is obviously someone who abhors what the talk show hosts are doing to the ignorant masses.**


 * The next two stanzas, 3 and 4, quickly shift from metaphoric to literal, and from a third-person to a second-person perspective. Here Piercy invokes the voices of the talk show hosts themselves, making them sound like swindling street-corner preachers hypnotizing their flock, who become the “you.” She uses “you” eight times in the eight lines, creating rhythmic and repetitive song-like phrases, with only the “hallelujahs” and “amens” missing. What’s most interesting about this section, though, is Piercy’s use of vague words to suggest that it’s all lies, that none of it has really happened. Just what is the “stuff,” the “thing,” the “it” the listeners covet so dearly? We aren’t sure. Jobs? Houses? Cars? Backyard pools? These preachers never say. The use of the generic “they” here takes on a sinister tone: “they took it from you” implies these were criminals, stealing what was not rightfully theirs.**


 * Racism becomes more apparent as well, in line 2 of stanza 4: “you and those like you,” suggesting white mainstream Americans are somehow** **//not like// the darker-skinned immigrants. This is where the scapegoating comes in, and, as she suggests at the start of stanza 3, we’ve heard it all before: “How familiar it feels, this anger...” Each time a new wave of immigrants has come to the U. S., those who were already here and assimilated have ironically greeted the newcomers with fear and loathing. The irony cuts deeper here, as the voice on the radio shifts from saying “stuff you almost had” and “thing you wanted” to “You had” and “You owned.” In fact, immigrants did not steal anything at all, Piercy implies. If the brainwashed listeners have missed out on owning any deeds to any castles, they only have themselves to blame. And certainly no one could ever own the sun, no matter how rich he was. How would anyone, let alone a powerless immigrant living on minimum wage, steal such things from you if you //did// own them? This fear-mongering is based on smoke and mirrors and is actually blatant racism, which Piercy addresses in the next section.**


 * It’s in stanzas 5 and 6 where the speaker gets specific with ethnic references, metaphorically contrasting the typical foods each culture eats. Besides having the talk show host describe the criminals as ants, those pesky critters who creep and crawl and swarm where they are not wanted, he tells the listeners that these ants are “biting your ass like cayenne” with their “demand[s]” of “your dream stuff.” Cayenne spice, made from hot peppers, is most strongly associated with Mexican salsa, something eaten with un-American foods like tamales and enchiladas. “Biting your ass” is a sophomoric, masculine idiom in our culture, one that implies you are being made a fool of by a less-worthy, dog-like opponent. This kind of inflammatory rhetoric is what the conservative talk show hosts are known for. The listeners are of course eating greasy hamburgers, the archetypal American cuisine. She deftly combines the anger the racists have for immigrants with her own anger at the racists, in the simile, “this spite you chew like gristle....stuck in your teeth.” The gristle, those hard little nubs of cartilage in the beef, are the lies that are repeated, growing more spiteful and powerful with each crush of teeth. I found the word “gristle” also effective here because it sounds like “grist,” as in “grist for the rumor mill." Piercy seems to be referencing how quickly a lie spun on certain news channels can turn into truth over-night for millions of Americans.**


 * The poem’s resolution in stanza 7 is swift, with just one sentence that shifts the point of view of the poem back to its original stance, the critical observer, posing a question to “you,” now the talk show hosts and their listeners. Stereotyping them as gun-toters (another dig at the Neo-cons, who support the NRA), the speaker suggests they shoot their guns at the phantoms they’ve been aiming at – nothing but proverbial dogs howling at the moon. And not just any moon; she reminds them that the moon is, in fact,** **//benign// and //public//, emphasized by her setting off the words in the final lines of the poem. Immigrants are blameless, and America is the land of the free, here for the enjoyment of all. Piercy’s use of the epithet “rabid dog” to describe the conservatives’ anger is also fitting, since she’s just reminded us that much of what they claim is lies – foam spouted from madmen. Yet rabies can kill, and here is the dark point in the poem’s conclusion: while many of the more moderate or liberal citizens may view AM talk radio as just so much garbage, it has become a very powerful and dangerous tool for the minority Neo-con voice in America. Piercy’s poem may mock these men and their bluster, but she clearly sees that they are a force to be reckoned with.**