The Way to Work
A billboard asks me
if I can name five types of apples.
I am listening to classical radio.
Suddenly, I am driving past the graveyard
and realize I can name only two:
red and green. So naturally I wonder
what, exactly, is wrong with me.
The DJ says there have been explosions
at the Boston Marathon. That’s it.
The graveyard is now gone. Too far
behind me. Stores are trying to sell
office supplies, but they are fooling no one.
Now back to the music. The sun
all around. In ways I cannot touch
and in very gradual increments
somehow brightening the day.
-Trey Moody, from Autoblivion
Trey Moody is the author of Autoblivion (Conduit Books, 2023), winner of the Minds on Fire Open Book Prize, and Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. The recipient of the Poetry Society of America Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, his poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, and New England Review. He teaches at Creighton University and lives with his daughter in Omaha, Nebraska.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Seventy-Two): Trey Moody
Trey Moody’s colloquial and provocative “The Way to Work” illuminates the everyday disjunctions of driving—an activity rare for the original poets of the New York School. It may remind us that “commuting” is associated with just two activities: a trip to work or a sentence. Its first question is asked by a billboard that wants to know if we can name more than five types of apples.
The cheery Food and Wine website reveals that “There are over 7,500 apple varieties around the world (and counting), each with its own unique history. There are heirloom apples that have withstood the test of time, and new types of apples coming into being every year.”
The website doesn’t mention the many varieties lost to commercialism: those that don’t travel well, have lumpy or oddly colored skins, are expensive to grow, or just aren’t consumer friendly.
The billboard seems to hold us somewhat accountable for this, especially if we can’t remember five apples. Its message, by necessity brief, is drowned out by “classical radio”—its music differentiated only by type, like the generic apples.
“Suddenly, I am driving past the graveyard” reminds us of human death while the apple challenge, not forgotten, is still being processed. Shades of Eden: “and realize I can name only two: / red and green.” The flatness of the colors is a humorous letdown, as is “So naturally I wonder / what, exactly, is wrong with me.”
The poem’s present tense and mode of rapid-fire reaction to the seen reminds us of Frank O’Hara’s ‘I do this I do that’ poems, especially “The Day Lady Died,” in which the ephemeral—that surrounds us so thickly—is burst by the eternal in the form of a newspaper headline announcing the death of Lady Day: “The DJ says there have been explosions / at the Boston Marathon. That’s it.”
The first announcements of horror are always the briefest, since knowledge, like the poet’s of apples, does not yet exist. “The graveyard,” which may have somehow provided enlightenment, “is now gone. Too far / behind me.” During the commute there is little time to react. Radio, when there is no more information, must say “Now back to the music.” But the music will not be itself, but a blood-stained thing. The sun that illumines the poem’s close is like the blithe one that illumines the swirling wreck at the end of Moby Dick.
. . .The sun
all around. In ways I cannot touch
and in very gradual increments
somehow brightening the day.
Trey Moody’s “The Way to Work” achieves an ending both immensely understated and simply immense. Like the apples, the sun is beyond grasp. How well and how coldly “in very gradual increments” captures the morning, and “somehow” expresses the poem’s vast bewilderment—not an argument with existence but an uncommuted incomprehension.
Like the poem itself, its title is both modest and expansive. The word “way” has been used in many languages and holy books to advise how to arrive at enlightenment, wisdom, oneness with creation. Here, all that is being arrived at is “work”—so generic (like a “red” apple) that it need not be specified.
Perhaps, Moody’s powerful poem suggests, we—the minions of the ordinary—have created such a quantity of it that bombs appear as agents of transformation—that “what is wrong with me” is wrong with us all. -Angela Ball
Go to Source
Author: Angela Ball
