Levine's Another Poem Lights, I Have Seen Before
Levine’s another poem “Lights, I Have Seen Before” probes social isolation and social terror with tremendous eloquence. It opens with daybreak and closes at dusk, and firmly locate at urban life. The children are “off somewhere,” the speaker is isolated, the television and refrigerator provide only muffled and inhumane- perhaps even deathly sound: I hear only the buzz of current in the TV and the refrigerator groaning against the coming day. (3-8)
This sound makes him remembers the sound of factory, his despondency or the feeling of depression is transposed onto domestic appliances such as the fridge, seen “groaning” in response to the break of day. This poem registers the sterility of the speaker’s suburban life and his vulnerability
to external forces that he seems unable to control. Only the machines can speak, and even their utterances are indecipherable (the refrigerator groans, the water pipe cries). The human himself is oppressed into silence, left longing but unable to communicate. Repetitions throughout the poem (of “wanting” and “trying”) affirm the urge to speak and frustrations of that desire: Wanting to say
Something to someone, Wanting to ease
Myself away from the face that is faintly familiar. (15-19)
He wants to escape from the frustrating routine work which do not allow him to think, nor pace or control the motions of his body. He turned into robots and extension of machine. The factory strips him of his humanity.Levine senses the wholeness of human experience interlocking with, inseparable from, the physical world in which one live. In the civilized hell, evil adopts the most varied guises. Levine describes the hopeless toil in his poems and beings out the state of Dormancy.
Man is a social animal, but in the society that Levine pictures, the word “social” becomes obsolete. Man remains only an animal, struggles to survive the onslaughts of an ambitious generation. Levine portrays the breakdown of communication between individuals is the result of the absence of the all-encompassing human compassion. Levine’s attempts to restore the dignity of his fellow human beings, who constitute the society, continue to find expression in almost all his poems.
This sound makes him remembers the sound of factory, his despondency or the feeling of depression is transposed onto domestic appliances such as the fridge, seen “groaning” in response to the break of day. This poem registers the sterility of the speaker’s suburban life and his vulnerability
to external forces that he seems unable to control. Only the machines can speak, and even their utterances are indecipherable (the refrigerator groans, the water pipe cries). The human himself is oppressed into silence, left longing but unable to communicate. Repetitions throughout the poem (of “wanting” and “trying”) affirm the urge to speak and frustrations of that desire: Wanting to say
Something to someone, Wanting to ease
Myself away from the face that is faintly familiar. (15-19)
He wants to escape from the frustrating routine work which do not allow him to think, nor pace or control the motions of his body. He turned into robots and extension of machine. The factory strips him of his humanity.Levine senses the wholeness of human experience interlocking with, inseparable from, the physical world in which one live. In the civilized hell, evil adopts the most varied guises. Levine describes the hopeless toil in his poems and beings out the state of Dormancy.
Man is a social animal, but in the society that Levine pictures, the word “social” becomes obsolete. Man remains only an animal, struggles to survive the onslaughts of an ambitious generation. Levine portrays the breakdown of communication between individuals is the result of the absence of the all-encompassing human compassion. Levine’s attempts to restore the dignity of his fellow human beings, who constitute the society, continue to find expression in almost all his poems.