Poem Response: The Street by Stephen Dobyns

  My first reaction to the poem was that it felt like snippets of city life.  Each separate subject became a cuckoo clock figure that danced around in their scripted parts of their lives.  I feel that the author had time to observe these figures, that they were specific individuals that he ran into at some point in the city.  I'll take a guess and say this poem is done in the style of abstract poetry.

  While there are definite figures the descriptions come across in a way one sees a Salavador Dali painting.  I feel as if these events all some how make the author comment bleakly on their existences.  The things they do don't entirely make sense, the subjects and objects are disjointed from reality, even though they are apparent facsimiles of city life.  The final stanza of the poem paints the figures as self absorbed, oblivious, and alone.  I think the author would have preferred to live in the countryside.