Melodic Train by John Ashbery - 1341 Words

Melodic Trains Introduction and Main Theme Life is a perpetual journey into the unconscious regions of human mind, which brings up a new perspective each time an activity is stirred. The poem shows the poet sitting in a train heading towards a destination. He is not alone. There is a little girl who attracts his attention but only for a short time because later the people and scenes in and around the train capture his imagination. He feels in relation to the everything around him. According to Ashbury, ‘Life is in motion’. We spend our time in trains, boats and buses and time is fleeting like these four wheelers. Time is precious and unique. Melodic Trains is a journey of time. We come across various destinations, fall into†¦show more content†¦The poem is highly personal and in the words of Huybernsz, ‘throws the reader out of the poem’. According to one critic, the poem suggests ‘the premise of this marvelous poem is a journey around New York City.’ The opening metaphor is that of music which sets the poet in meditation and find meanings in life. The main purpose in life seems, how to live and what to do? This process of meditation begins when a little girl asks the poet time. The poet is attracted towards the jagged peaks of the mountains by the seams of his coat and later caught up in the humdrum of every day life. Rather than a meaning, the poet finds confusion, crowds and tensions everywhere. A sense of entrapment encapsulates us, we find surrounded by troubles all around us and find no way out. The Pisa figures ultimately end this process of mediation and life seems a perpetual struggle against the odds of society. We keep oscillating between the complex beginning and peaceful end and sometimes, peaceful begging and complex and disturbing end. Symbolic Elements – Melodic Trains as drama of life Only the wait in stations is vague and Dimensionless, like oneself. How do they decide how much Time to spend in each? One beings to suspect there’s no Rule or that it’s applied haphazardly. Next the train takes turns like a pencil and the poet experiences that life too is like a train full of complexity and running