On January 12th, 2009 world famous violinist, Joshua Bell, stood in a Washington D.C. subway and played for a crowd who did not have to listen. The importance of the event is marked by those who did.
Anyone for Bach?
David Lee Garrison’s poem “Bach in the Subway” comments on “an experiment” conducted by “The Washington Post” (lines 1-2). The Post had
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor (lines 3-10).
The poem’s form imitates waves because of the varying line lengths. The waves mimic the large crowd of people in movement during “rush hour” in Washington, D.C. The waves also serve as the first thematic undercurrent of water that will flow throughout the entire poem. Immediately one is pleasantly trapped in the current of the poem.
The Sound of Liquid
The poem shifts abruptly within the first stanza on line 11 from a predominantly prose-based approach to a more liquid poetic style. The Partita is characterized by simile that illustrates the stylistic pivot when it
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live (lines 11-15).
Helplessly the “ocean” is trying to recall its own “waves” and the poem embraces a human defiance to the perceived beauty of one of the most wonderful compositions ever penned by Johann Sebastian Bach or otherwise. The ocean knows how wonderful imagination, ingenuity, and creativity are, but it is without recourse to get the waves to return because they cannot return. Is anyone listening?
A Pause for Peace
Without even stopping to listen, look, or embrace the music that is swelling up right in front them “A thousand people” focus only on the future and destinations not yet reached. Although not everyone passes by because
Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case (lines 17-20).
Who were these people that stopped to listen? Were they the only passers-by that had no other pressing responsibilities? “A café hostess who drifted / over to the open door” was entranced by the music and even during a shift in a job that is without rest she was able to find “her peace” (lines 21-22, 25). The current of water that flows through the poem is not just found in form and simile, it also takes shape the diction: “floated” and “drifted”, two words synonymous with water.
Swim, Float, or Drown?
The affective coup de grace of poem comes when
all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water (lines 26-29).
The innocence of childhood and a life free from the perceived concerns of adult responsibility enable the children waiting for the subway to become immersed in the music and the extended liquid metaphor climaxes while adult priorities hemorrhage in a Philistine cesspool. The children, “all of them”, have found the embedded commonality of true genius without prior knowledge of the balance between High and Low art, without the knowledge of social stratification, and without a schedule and deadlines, bills and responsibility. The parents “had somewhere else to go”, but the surface of day-to-day living should never shadow the infinite depth life can provide.
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