Mellow, Middle-Age Dad Rock and the Good Life

This was my first encounter both with Stephen Dunn and with Poetry magazine. I've talked about them both elsewhere, but I really can't pass this one up. 

Sisyphus in the Suburbs

Stephen Dunn

It was late and the wine had wet
an aridity he'd forgotten he had.
He could feel the evening
arching above the house,
a good black dome. No ledges,
he realized, tempted him.
The once-inviting abyss
was now just a view. 


Sisyphus put another CD on
and stroked the cat.
His wife was in Bermuda
with her younger sister,
celebrating the death
of winter, and a debt paid. 
Her missed her, and he did not. 


He'd been mixing Janis Joplin 
with Brahms, accountable now
to no one. The lights
from some long-desired festival
were not calling him.
No silent dog or calm ocean 
made him fear the next moment. 


But Sisyphus was amazed
how age sets in, how it just came
one day and stayed. And how far
away the past gets. His break
from the gods, just an episode now. 


Tomorrow he'd brave the cold,
spireless mall, look for a gift.
He'd walk through the unappeasable 
crowds as if some right thing
were findable and might be bestowed.




I'm a huge fan of classical mythology, just like I am of biblical references. It always seems to add more class, more depth, more poignancy when you're throwing in brief echoes from the past.


But what makes this astounding is how it's really about so much more than the titular character. There's both a regret and an acceptance of aging, a recognition of how much has changed since he's given up his labors.


It's also pretty cool how despite the calmness, the prose-ness of it, it never ceases to feel like poetry. The observations and descriptions are clear and concise, but also just a bit out of reach. Prose with funny spacing misses the point: it's not the line breaks that make it poetry, it's the poem-ness. Every detail seems to illuminate some corner of Sisyphus' life and surroundings and create a full, true world that is completely believable.


I guess if you're cynical you could say this is just a paean to middle-class Anglo life: your 401K stowed safely in your fraternity brother's financial institution and the dividends keep rolling in. (Sort of how Pitchfork reviewed Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" record as "dad rock." Which is facile but that doesn't make it less true.)


I also appreciate how "Sisyphus in the Suburbs" is counter-counter-cultural. Maybe the good life really can be sitting on your deck drinking a wine you've grown to appreciate. Or better yet, maybe it's just one of many possible good lives. 


Especially living in mostly left-leaning sections of the country for the past few years, you get the sense that you're not allowed to be happy unless you've got a sign and a cause and an anthem; or that you've got to adopt an orphanage of blind lepers to prove you're a good person. There's an interesting argument to be made there - your life is significant when it is of use to others.


But it doesn't have to be grandiose all the time, does it? Being of use can't be a melodrama. I just don't see myself being able to permanently appreciate life on that kind of epic basis. 


I'm also a selfish bastard but at least I'm honest.


I appreciate being able to rest from labors, seeing age and experience as prizes to be earned instead of traps to be avoided. At least once a week a client at work will joke, "Don't ever get old!" And I'd like to say, "You can't tell me what to do - you're not my dad!" Age is wasted on the old. I aim to appreciate the onset of losing my youth.