‘1968’ presents a snapshot of the Hollywood scene in the 1960s. Despite the poem’s neutral – even indifferent – tone, and the absence of any too-obvious value judgments, one can hardly call the picture it paints anything less than scathing.
Summary
The poem ‘1968′ begins with the sight revealed as the sun rises over an unnamed rock star’s Bel Air residence.
In the aftermath of a fundraiser for Robert Kennedy, a party has turned into – we are given to understand – something of an orgy. Now, as the dawn breaks on the scene, yesterday’s benumbed revelers face the new day under the speaker’s merciless eye.
This poem was published in The New York Review of Books in 1978 and was later included in Seidel’s award-winning collection Sunrise (1980). It opens the collection.
Structure and Form
The poem is written in free verse. There is no rhyme, and the stanzas, like the lines themselves, are of variable length. There are several straightforward and rather striking iambs (for example, the opening verse: “A football spirals through the oyster glow”) but no regular metrical pattern. Overall, this is a form typical of much Anglo-American modernism.
Literary Devices
There are several instances of alliteration in this poem – instances of both assonance (“A rising starlet leans her head against the tire”) and, more notably, of consonance (“out of focus in the fog,” “serves on a silver salver”). Metaphors and similes are also used (“a bonfire of red hair,” “exposed as snails”), though sparingly.
One can wonder, nonetheless, whether it is possible to argue that these elements are employed strategically and with evident purpose. The one figure in the employment of which such intention is easily discernible is synecdoche – the use of a part to denote the whole.
The most striking example of this is the stoned foot taking the kick in the opening stanza. Also striking are the “herds of breasts” and the “Shining eyes,” which, as stand-ins for their barely-mentioned and bovine owners, turn at the sound of the bodyguard’s entrance. There are also other instances which, while not strictly speaking synecdochic, manifest a similar focus on the physical to the expense, as it were, of the whole.
We have the boy’s hands plucking the guitar and the guests’ sprawled “famous bodies” that have filled so many dreams – and which, indeed, as already seen, are likened to snails. Seidel’s use of perspective, whereby individual personality is consistently displaced by the anonymity of simple flesh, effectively demonstrates the voluntary dehumanization to which the persons in the poem may be said to have succumbed.
Detailed Analysis
Stanza One
A football spirals through the oyster glow
Of dawn dope and fog in L.A.’s
Bel Air, punted perfectly. The foot
That punted it is absolutely stoned.
As the poem starts, the first thing one sees is a football flying in the air. One then learns that the person who shot it is stoned.
The stanza is only four lines long (this is called a quatrain) but already gives most of the essential information – such as the time, the location of the action, and the state of the actors. It is cogent and, with its unexpected viewpoint, a rather cinematic opening.
Stanza Two
A rising starlet leans her head against the tire
Of a replica Cord,
(…)
Vascular spasm has made the boy’s hands blue
Even after hours of opium.
In this stanza, the boy serenades a “rising starlet” (the description is an interesting twist on the cliché of the “rising star”) who leans her head against the replica of an antique car.
Bel Air was enough to evoke it for most, but here one gets a further sense of luxury (the Cord). The theme of disease that permeates the poem is reflected in the boy’s hands. The patriotism of the song he “plucks” on the guitar is mocked by the state he and his auditor are in.
Stanza Three
Fifty or so of the original
Four hundred
(…)
Out on the paths, and in the gardens, and the drive.
Many dreams their famous bodies have filled.
In the next stanza, we learn more about the occasion for the party, and the participants, whose current state is not too flatteringly depicted.
The picture is one of near-perfect dissolution, with the guests sprawled out pell-mell around the estate. While, again, it is important to note there are no judgments on the part of the speaker, it is certainly possible to argue that these are left for the reader to make. The celebrity status of the plastered party-goers, the fact that they populate many an ordinary person’s dreams, adds an extra touch of irony.
Stanza Four
The host, a rock superstar, has
A huge cake of opium,
Which he refers to as “King Kong,”
(…)
Except the fuzz,
Sticky as far, the color of coffee,
A quarter of a million dollars going up in smoke.A quarter of a million dollars going up in smoke.
In this stanza, the host – described as a superstar – appears and serves his friends, dishing out portions of a huge lump of opium.
The fact that the host’s friends are “all mankind apparently” may imply that he has no actual friends and also reflects, sarcastically, that period’s belief in a vague concept of universal love. This isn’t taken any more seriously by the speaker than is the stereotypical hatred of “the fuzz” which – we are to conclude – is one of the host’s silly affectations. Finally, the evaporation of a quarter million dollars in a matter of minutes puts this fundraiser for a worthy cause in a certain perspective.
Stanza Five
This is Paradise painted
On the inside of an eggshell
(…)
Voityck Frokowski, Abigail Folger and Sharon Tate
Sit together without faces.
The poem turns to rhetoric, memorably describing this not-too-appealing microcosm enfolded in its cocoon as a painting of Paradise within an eggshell. It also introduces three faceless ghosts. “Frokowski” (actually Frykowski), Folger, and Tate were three of the six victims of the so-called Manson murders.
The reference is an anachronism, for the latter were committed in 1969. At the time, they were seen as a sign that the swinging culture of the 60s, which the poem describes, had gotten seriously out of control. Hence, the idea of the eggshell suggests, perhaps, that the protective layer separating wealth and privilege from the outside world is flimsy.
Stanza Six
This is the future.
Their future is the future. The future
(…)
It is 68, the campaign year—
And the beginning of a new day.
The poem’s narrative element is still in suspense at this point as we are offered a few somewhat ambivalent musings.
“The future” is, of course, the politicians’ stock-in-trade, as are clichés about the dawning of a new day. Robert Kennedy, specifically, was promised a moral revolution and regeneration, so the idea that this is the future trumpeted is deeply ironic. We are immediately told, however, that this is not the future as such but its “afterbirth,” that is to say, the membrane following the expulsion of an infant: the placenta. What this metaphor exactly signifies is a matter of conjecture, but the image proposed is (appropriately) unappetizing.
There is also, here, an interesting development of the synecdochic movement prevalent in the poem. Instead of the substitution of the whole by the part, there is an attribution of the part’s physical attributes to the inanimate, even an admixture of the two.
The “acres” seem to measure not only land (“flowerbeds”) but also people (“stars”), and the flowerbeds themselves are, in turn, described as “bloodshot” and “blue,” a color previously used to describe the hands of the boy playing guitar, but which of course can also denote a melancholy state following immoderate revelry. The excess of signification is intriguing, if somewhat perplexing.
Stanza Seven
People are waiting.
When the chauffeur-bodyguard arrives
(…)
Shining eyes seeing all or nothing,
In the silence.
The host’s chauffeur/bodyguard comes to work. His entrance into the recording studio is followed by the gaze of a group of women. It is not too clear who these are, but one could assume they are fans waiting for the rockstar’s appearance.
Seidel hasn’t hidden his admiration for Baudelaire – himself a chronicler of decadence – and there is here an echo of the opening of “Damned Women,” which runs: “Like musing cattle lying on the sand / They turn their eyes to the sea’s horizon.” The unflattering designation “cattle” is, in both cases, meant to convey the passivity of those so described.
Stanza Eight
A stranger, and wearing a suit.
Has to be John the Baptisit,
(…)
Self-consciously, meeting their gaze.
That is as sensitive as the future gets.
The bodyguard returns the women’s gaze in this stanza, and the poem ends. It is ludicrous, of course, to describe the bodyguard as “at least” John the Baptist, which would make his employer “at least” Jesus (though this is perhaps a hint as to the given superstar’s identity).
This momentary exchange of glances, with the man’s “self-conscious” gesture presumably meant to emphasize his position of authority and thereby impress the assembled harem, is described as the height of sensitivity of which “the future” is capable. The future is obviously not very sensitive.
FAQs
The tone of ‘1968’ is reserved but unmistakably mordant. Indeed, the poem gains its effect by carefully evading anything resembling a moralistic attitude, even though the reality it portrays might appear a prime target for moral condemnation.
The political and social preoccupations of ‘1968′ are certainly not alien to Seidel’s larger body of work. In addition, the poem is, in various ways (such as in its use of unexpected and original perspectives, for example), typical of the collection in which it appears.
‘1968′ is a satire, even though its frigidity may tend to conceal the fact. The satirical intent is obvious in the way Seidel portrays his characters and the way they relate to the world.
In a broad sense, ‘1968′ is concerned with the often sordid reality behind glittering surfaces. More concretely, it contains a fairly savage attack on the presumptions of what journalist Tom Wolfe called the “radical chic” of the 1960s.
Similar Poetry
The highly critical attitude, to put it mildly, of ‘1968‘ may invite comparison to poems like:
- ‘America‘ by Allen Ginsberg – is one of Ginsberg’s most famous poems and a great example of modern American verse.
- ‘A Supermarket in California‘ by Allen Ginsberg – is a unique poem that is addressed to Walt Whitman.
- ‘High Windows‘ by Philip Larkin – discusses the way that relationships, sex, and societal standards change from one generation to the next.
