Ross
Gay
Philadelphia Poet
Again
BRINGING THE SHOVEL DOWN &
Bringing the Shovel Down and Again are two versions of the same poem. The section below is the beginning of both poems. We will contemplate what they have in common and then we will explore where they diverge and what that means.
Because I love you, and beneath the dying stars
have become the delicate piston threading itself through your chest,
I want to tell you a story I shouldn't but will and in the meantime neglect,
Love,
the discordant melody spilling from my ears but attend,
instead, to this tale, for a river burns inside my mouth
and it wants both purgation and to eternally sip your thousand drippings;
and in the story is a dog and unnamed it leads to less heartbreak,
so name him Max, and in the story are neighborhood kids
who spin a yarn about Max like I'm singing to you, except they tell a child,
a boy who only moments earlier had been wheedling through sticker bushes
to pick juicy rubies, whose chin was, in fact, stained with them,
and combining in their story the big kids make
the boy who shall remain unnamed believe Max to be sick and rabid,
and say his limp and regular smell of piss are just two signs,
but the worst of it, they say, is that he'll likely find you in the night,
and the big kids do not giggle, and the boy does not giggle,
but lets the final berries in his hand drop into the overgrowth
at his feet, and if I spoke the dream of the unnamed boy
I fear my tongue would turn an arm of fire so I won't, but
know inside the boy's head grew a fire beneath the same stars
as you and I, Love, your leg between mine, the fine hairs
on your upper thigh nearly glistening in the night, and the boy,
the night, the incalculable mysteries as he sleeps with a stuffed animal
tucked beneath his chin and rolls tight against his brother
in their shared bed, who rolls away, and you know by now
there is no salve to quell his mind's roaring machinery
and I shouldn't tell you, but I will,
the unnamed boy
on the third night of the dreams which harden his soft face
puts on pants and a sweatshirt and quietly takes the spade from the den
and more quietly leaves his house where upstairs his father lies dreamless,
and his mother bends her body into his,
and beneath these same stars, Love, which often, when I study them,
seem to recede like so many of the lies of light,
the boy walks to the yard where Max lives attached to a steel cable
spanning the lawn, and the boy brings hot dogs which he learned
from Tom & Jerry, and nearly urinating in his pants he tosses them
toward the quiet and crippled thing limping across the lawn,
the cable whispering above the dew-slick grass, and Max whimpers,
and the boy sees a wolf where stands this ratty
and sad and groveling dog and beneath these very stars
This is the beginning of both poems. The boy is unnamed, giving readers the impression that he could be any of us, that any of us could become cruel to others as a result of being afraid. The tale is being told because it needs "purgation" and because the narrator loves you. He will "in the meantime neglect, Love", foreshadowing that this story is a shameful one and one that goes against the most basic of human nature, which Gay very much believes to be good and to be loving. That line also could be read as a direct address to his Love, saying he will be neglecting the "discordant melody spilling from my ears" to tell the tale. What is the discordant melody? His conscience?
The dog is almost left unnamed as well, as it would lead to "less heartbreak", but immediately after he is named Max, so readers know they are meant to be heart broken reading this poem. The neighborhood kids trick the boy into thinking Max is dangerous, and "inside the boy's head grew a fire beneath the same stars as you and I, Love". The boy is afraid of Max and begins to dream of conquering what he thinks to be his enemy, based on unreliable information. This is how hate begins, and this poem could be applied to hate in many other situations. The boy's fearful hate born out of misunderstanding exists under the same stars as love, which continues to show Gay's hope for humanity and for community to thrive despite the existence of hate.
The stars "seem to recede like so many of the lies of light" as the boy plans to kill Max with a spade. During these moments of darkness, both moral darkness and intellectual darkness (as the boy has been tricked to begin with into thinking Max is an enemy), light and goodness seem to be lies. This line could also be read as the boy becoming disillusioned with goodness when he studies it too closely. Max is a "quiet and crippled thing limping". He "whimpers" but the boy "sees a wolf where stands this ratty and sad and groveling dog". The stars are mentioned again, giving the impression that the world is so much bigger and full of love than this one dark event. From here, the poems diverge, and they will be pasted below, Bringing the Shovel Down on the left, Again on the right. Formatting for the two poems will be a little different due to space constraint. It should be mentioned that most of the lines are the same length and are typically grouped into couplets (without the rhyming). It made me think of the heroic couplet, which is interesting, because at least in the case of one of these poems, nothing heroic is going on (other than maybe the narrator being willing to admit to the shameful tale, if you would call that heroic.)
the boy brings the shovel down
until Max's hind legs stop twitching and his left ear folds into itself,
and the unnamed boy stares at the rabid wolf whose wild eyes loll white in its head,
taking slow steps backward through the wet grass and feels,
for the first time in days, the breath in his lungs, which is cool,
and a little damp, spilling over his small lips, and he feels,
again, his feet beneath him, and the earth beneath them, and starlings
singing the morning in, and the somber movement of beetles
chewing the leaves of the white birch, glinting in the dark, and he notices,
Darling, an upturned nest beneath the tree, and flips it looking for the blue eggs
of robins, but finds none, and placing a rumpled crimson feather in his mouth
slips the spindly thicket into another tree, which he climbs
to watch the first hint of light glancing above the fields, and the boy
eventually returns to his thorny fruit bush where an occasional prick
leaves on his arm or leg a spot of blood the color of these raspberries
and tasting of salt, and filling his upturned shirt with them he beams
that he could pull from the earth that which might make you smile,
Love, which you'll find in the fridge, on the bottom shelf, behind the milk,
in the bowl you made with your own lovely hands.
In this version of the poem, fear wins. This version, in which the dog dies, is the original poem. When asked in the Cortland Review why he wrote two versions of this poem, he responded
"I wrote the original poem, and it's called "Bringing the Shovel Down" because in the original poem the dog gets killed. The original poem, in which the dog dies, is a meditation on how we come to be violent. And how we come to be violent is very human; it's out of terror, and it's actually, precisely, I think, the way that we as a country were convinced to go into a war. And I didn't exactly realize this while I was writing this poem, but it's exactly the thing. I mean, all our political rhetoric lately is based on making people terrified and feeling that there are enemies that want to kill you, want to hurt you bad. So, in the poem the same thing's happening with this boy. This boy feels threatened or terrorized by this dog, and he spins it out of control, and in the first poem, he kills him. And he feels better. And I was thinking about what that actually means and what might be the poem that begs a different question, the thing that I might ideally want to do myself. So, the thing that I would ideally want to do myself is to be able to encounter the thing that I imagine wants to kill me and to realize that probably it doesn't. And then give it some hot dogs."
The poem that represents Gay's own ideal response to the situation is not this one, but rather the other one, Again. Gay is a poet that prefers for love to win, but finds it necessary and sometimes true-to-life when fear or violence wins instead. Bringing the Shovel Down is a poem that shows how human beings come to be violent towards one another, when we all have someone we call Love, when many of us aren't rabid when people say we are, when we all just want a scratch on the chin and some hot dogs. I may be going too far comparing humanity to the dog, but I do believe that all of us are simultaneously the boy and Max. We are afraid of someone and someone is afraid of us.
With the difference in these two poems, Gay both acknowledges this reality and seeks to correct it, with the only thing that we all really have in common: love. Love still happens under the same stars as dog murderings.
The beginning of this poem seems as though the narrator is looking back on something that happened a long time ago, which serves to show that time and age may correct the ignorance and fear of our youth. However, during the scene in which the dog dies, we remain in the present tense, making it feel as though this dog is still being killed right now. Metaphorically, Max is always being killed, every time human beings war against each other in confusion and fear.
The boy feels better and continues advocating for himself and for his Love, as he flips a birds nest in search of eggs. He is pricked and bleeds the same color as the raspberries he collects for his Love. I interpreted that section as a simultaneous acknowledgment and condemnation of the way communities look out for the ones they know and love rather than looking out for everyone and understanding everyone. In protecting yourself, you kill a dog. In finding a gift for your loved one, you destroy a bird's home. The prick serves as almost a punishment, connecting pain with the loving gift he presents (the raspberries).
Another possible reading: after committing an act as heinous as killing an innocent dog, the boy is still capable of appreciating the beauty in life and is still capable of Love. Once he was no longer fearful, he returned to his natural state, the state of all human beings, which is loving and communal. The prick with this reading could serve as an indicator of self-sacrifice in the name of love, rather than the self-preservation in the name of fear that had just occurred. This reading gives the poem a more hopeful end, implying that humanity will have dark scenes but will in general return to the light.
Both readings are equally valid, but the first reading resonates with me more. Especially because it would contrast more with Again.
Max raises his head to look at the unnamed boy
with one glaucous eye nearly glued shut
and the other wet from the cool breeze and wheezing
Max catches the gaze of the boy who sees,
at last, the raw skin on the dog's flanks, the quiver
of his spindly legs, and as Max bends his nose
to the franks the boy watches him struggle
to snatch the meat with his gums, and bringing the shovel
down
he bends to lift the meat to Max's toothless mouth,
and rubs the length of his throat and chin,
Max arcing his neck with his eyes closed, now,
and licking the boy's round face, until the boy stands,
taking slow steps backward through the wet grass and feels,
for the first time in days, the breath in his lungs, which is
cool,
and a little damp, spilling over his small lips, and he feels,
again, his feet beneath him, and the earth beneath them, and
starlings
singing the morning in, and the somber movement of beetles
chewing the leaves of the white birch, glinting in the dark,
and he notices,
Darling, an upturned nest beneath the tree, and flips it
looking for the blue eggs
of robins, but finds none, and placing a rumpled crimson
feather in his mouth
slips the spindly thicket into another tree, which he climbs
to watch the first hint of light glancing above the fields, and
the boy
eventually returns to his thorny fruit bush where an
occasional prick
leaves on his arm or leg a spot of blood the color of these
raspberries
and tasting of salt, and filling his upturned shirt with them he
beams
that he could pull from the earth that which might make you
smile,
Love, which you'll find in the fridge, on the bottom shelf,
behind the milk,
in the bowl you made with your own lovely hands.
This version of the poem was interestingly the one that was chosen to be published in the American Poetry Review. I will later ask why you think they chose this version over the other.
In this version of the poem, the boy does not kill the dog. The boy notices the dog's "glaucous eye nearly glued shut", the "raw skin on the dog's flanks" and the struggle it is for the dog to eat the hot dogs with his "toothless mouth". The boy realizes clearly here that the dog is not his enemy and is not dangerous. In the other poem, he is blinded by his fear, the dog more wolf-like than pathetic.
What is responsible for the difference? In this poem, the dog looks at him whereas in the other he does not. That moment of connection between the two allowed the boy to really see the dog and not just strike blindly from an emotional place. In consideration of what Gay said in the previous quote from the Cortland Review, it seems that what is responsible for much of the hate and violence is listening to fear-mongering language from afar and not interpreting the world, up close and personal, for ourselves.
This poem's ending is the same as the other, but as it comes after the scene in which love and understanding conquers fear, the ending should be read differently. For this ending, I would stand by my second possible reading for Bringing the Shovel Down.
After considering something so terrible like killing a dog, the boy interpreted the situation for himself and acted in kindness despite his fear. He was capable of appreciating the beauty in life and capable of Love. He looked out for someone outside of his community (the dog) and then brought that loving energy back to his Love, allowing himself to be hurt and pricked but not letting the pain or fear stop him from exploring the trees, from gathering raspberries to make his Love smile. The raspberries, or maybe Love itself, are in the fridge on the bottom shelf. The bowl was "made with your own lovely hands", which asserts that when people act individually and compassionately, they make something lovely and share that love with someone else in their community.