Leaving A Mark

I've got another poem analysis for you. There are a few curse words, but I think we'll all be okay.

Another favorite of mine from The Quarter of Poetry was Dorianne Laux's Graffiti. I grew up in a poor, downtown neighborhood, not unlike the scene described in this poem, and maybe that's why it struck a nerve with me. Or maybe it's the burning need to leave a mark upon the world that the speaker describes. I know that feeling well.


Dorianne Laux
Graffiti

Near the Dayton Avenue signal tower,
below the tracks of the Southern P,
skittish brown birds build nests
in what's left of the trees, repeating
their one stunned note, repeating
their small dun selves.
Near the white lime piles
where factories bury their trash,
boys lug grocery sacks of spray cans
to the wall already crazy with pictures
and painted words: COCK, CUNT, KILL,
so carefully and beautifully made,
and the large, elaborate names: Skeet.
Damon. JoJo. Cray. From here
they can feel the train grind by,
pulling its row of open boxcars, the blank sky
punched through each empty door. Here,
in blue jeans and bandannas, among
the discarded car seats, the shriveled
condoms and broken glass, they will scrawl
themselves into infinity. One boy
picks up a can of red paint, sprays over
JoJo's name. It glides on effortlessly.
Three smooth strokes and he's gone.



Dorianne Laux's Graffiti is about people's universal struggle towards something permanent.

The boys are symbolic of humanity as a whole, how we seek recognition in an impossible sea of others just like us, and strive for immortality when our lives are brutally short. The wall is our history as human beings, the graffiti is our mark, what we do with our lives. The tone of the poem is one of hope amidst desperation and struggle, and the speaker relies upon the poetic devices of alliteration and assonance, irony, and rhythm to make her point.

The first sentence of the poem sets the scene.

"Near the Dayton Avenue signal tower,
below the tracks of the Southern P,
skittish brown birds build nests
in what's left of the trees, repeating
their one stunned note, repeating
their small dun selves."

We're in an inner-city, somewhere stark and barren. There are trees, but they aren't cared for, and there are birds, but they lead dull, repetitive lives. Alliteration and assonance are used quite a bit in this poem, and they add to the weight of nearly every line. The S and B sounds in line 3, "skittish brown birds build nests", alongside the repetition of the word "repeating" in lines 4 and 5 gives a particular sense of a flock of small, identical birds, all fidgeting and twittering in the same way. The birds are symbolic of the people who live in areas like these, the janitors and the dishwashers and the laborers who do the tedious tasks the rest of humanity abhors. They work hard and sleep in cheap beds and have children who live the same "dun" lives they watched their parents lead.

There is an irony in the language of the poem that starts in the first sentence and pervades throughout. The scene is cold, unforgiving, but nearly every single word in Graffiti is beautiful, or treated as if it is. The speaker shows us the magnificence in what would normally be a depressing moment and it connects the reader. We're all searching for beauty and meaning, no matter where we come from.

"Near the white lime piles
where factories bury their trash,
boys lug grocery sacks of spray cans
to the wall already crazy with pictures
and painted words: COCK, CUNT, KILL,
so carefully and beautifully made,
and the large, elaborate names: Skeet.
Damon. JoJo. Cray."

In the second sentence (I'm counting the isolated names within the single sentence, for simplicity's sake), the scene is set further with the image of "the white lime piles" over industrial garbage to drive home the point that we are in an urban wasteland. The repetition of the long I in white, lime and piles also lends to the imagery of a series of stark dunes in the mind's eye. Then, out of these desiccating dunes comes life, in the form of boys willing to brave the toxic environment to paint on a canvas, desperate to leave their particular mark on this world. Line 9 also has a noticeable sound to it with the repetition of the S in “grocery sacks of spray cans”, which reminds us of the sound of a spray can hissing as it's used.

The wall is representative of human history, and the words "COCK, CUNT, KILL" can not be mistaken, they are a message from our most primitive of drives to reproduce and survive, to repeat our dun selves. The line is already emphatic for the capitalization and pauses at the end of each word that force the reader to stop and savor every expletive, but the repeated hard K sound is also harsh, cacophonous. The words are socially taboo and their very sound is sexual and violent. The description of this graffiti, however, in line 12, is in stark contrast in both tone and sound. "Carefully and beautifully" is a lovely, yet ironic, turn of phrase, the rhyme and meter are melodic, but the words themselves would never be a normal descriptor of such spray-painted vulgarities. The contrast startles the reader into seeing something we normally take as an ugly nuisance, or a petty crime, as artistic expression.

The spray paint is our mark that we want to leave on the world, and the graffiti -the pictures, vulgarities, and "large, elaborate names"- is the history that we've left thus far. The names are given caesuras because they are the whole point of lugging the spray paint all this way. The first thing we learn to write is our name, and to scrawl it hastily or draw it beautifully is making our own individual mark. Our names are integral to our identities, and there's no better way to fight the insignificance of anonymity than to shout one's name from the rooftops, or paint it elaborately in twenty-foot high letters.

"From here
they can feel the train grind by,
pulling its row of open boxcars, the blank sky
punched through each empty door."

The train in the third sentence is a symbol of opportunities these boys don't have. It grinds past them (a verb that invokes struggle) but it's empty. The doors are open and there's nothing but the vastness of the sky to be seen in them. If there was ever something there, it's long gone now.

In the fourth sentence is when the phoenix starts its rise from the ashes, and the tone of the poem turns hopeful:

"Here,
in blue jeans and bandannas, among
the discarded car seats, the shriveled
condoms and broken glass, they will scrawl
themselves into infinity."

The boys are of the streets, and the streets are chaotic, dirty and dangerous. Despite this, the boys want more, they want to be known, they want to mark something for themselves that lasts longer than their "dun" lives. The words used in this sentence are interesting. Line 18's "blue jeans and bandannas" has repetitive B, A, and N sounds that echo the feel of "skittish brown birds", drawing a parallel between the two. The repetition of the CAR sound in "discarded car seats" makes it musical, and the words shriveled and broken are somewhat abstract examples of onomatopoeia.

The speaker doesn't say the boys are drawing or writing on the wall, they're scrawling, a word that sounds like scramble and scrape and crawling, more verbs of struggle. Scrawling is also one of the most basic actions a human can take with a hand tool, we've been scrawling since our prehistoric infancy.

For all the meaning in this sentence, it climaxes with the resolution. From a place where discarded, shriveled, and broken are the descriptors, the concept of infinity springs forth, forever, being bigger than our small dun selves.

"One boy
picks up a can of red paint, sprays over
JoJo's name. It glides on effortlessly.
Three smooth strokes and he's gone."

The final sentences are short and poignant. One person writes over another, destroying their infinity for his own.

The boy uses red paint, which contrasts with the drab colors used in the poem otherwise (dun, brown birds, white piles), reinforcing his need to be distinguished from the crowd. In making his own immortality, the boy has taken JoJo's without pause ("effortlessly", "smooth strokes") or thought that his will also be taken someday. The irony is a painful reminder that we never really get what we want, we'll all die and fade away, no matter how hard we try to be remembered.



Addendum: I chose this poem, reveled in this poem, and now that I've realized I need to pursue writing as a career, my total obsession with this poem at the time makes a whole lot more sense. I don't hold any illusions of permanence, I'm an atheist existentialist so I think we're all just ants on a rock hurtling through space with a billion other rocks that may also have existentialist-atheist ants on them, but I do want to make an impact on my fellow ants, I want to help people be better, and happier. I want to make my mark on this world, and in taking the next steps in my education I feel like I'm finally picking up the spray can. I'm nowhere near the trigger yet, but the can feels good in my hand. I'll get there.