Dec 22, 2009

Starlight | Introduction

"Starlight" first appeared in the journal Inquirey and was reprinted in Ashes: Poems New and Old in 1979, a collection that won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the American Book Award. This short 31-line poem, written in free verse, opens the second half of the book. Like the book's first and last poems, "Starlight" marks an attempt by the poet to come to terms with memories of his father. As the title of the collection itself implies, the primary subject of Ashes is loss. Like much of Levine's work, "Starlight" is a confessional poem, describing an experience from the poet's past. The narrator recounts a brief discussion from his childhood between himself and his father about happiness. Though the meaning of the experience was not clear to the narrator as a child, it is as an adult. The speaker obviously has grown emotionally and now has perspective on his past. He empathizes with his father, which makes sense when we understand that although Levine writes the poem from the viewpoint of an adult remembering himself as a child, the real change in the poem happens to the father. It is worth noting that Levine himself has three sons and may well be thinking of his own current relationship with them. Exploring ideas of innocence and experience, the poem suggests that regardless of how tired one may be, emotionally, psychologically, or physically, it is always possible to renew oneself through the experience of another, especially if that other person is a child. Levine presents his poem as a comment on the human condition, rather than merely an adult's memory of a childhood experience.

Starlight Summary

Title:
Titles of poems can be deceptive. Their relationship to the writing they name is as varied as the writing itself. They can function to sum up a particular theme of the poem by providing an image which embodies that theme, or they might simply be named after a character or event in the poem. "Starlight" prepares us for a poem which involves revelation, as the image of light traditionally symbolizes insight or the achievement of wisdom.

Lines 1-3:
These first lines identify the speaker's point of view as an adult looking back on his childhood. The "warm evening" and the fact that the speaker's father is standing "on the porch of my first house" create a domestic scene and invite readers to see the same things that the speaker sees. The third line echoes both the world weariness felt by the father in the poem and that of the speaker himself. The line also tips us off that the memory might be more of an imagined event rather than an actual one. How many people can remember with such detail events that happened when they were four years old?

Lines 4-9:
The younger version of the speaker looks up at his father. That he sees his head "among the stars" is both literal and symbolic. From the perspective of looking up at someone much taller than himself, the child could literally see stars in back of his father's head. This image also captures the awe a young child feels for his father. By comparing the glow from his father's cigarette to the summer moon, the speaker conflates the romantic image of the moon, with the prosaic image of a cigarette, presenting an almost noirish scene of father and son. The moon, and all the romance and... » Complete Starlight Summary