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In the Suburbs | Introduction

“In the Suburbs” can be considered a representative poem of Louis Simpson’s, both in subject matter and style. Following in the footsteps of his literary idol, Anton Chekhov, Simpson has fashioned a career of chronicling the mundane lives of ordinary people. However, his descriptions of middle-class life are not without thorns. Undergirding his poems about suburbia and small talk lurks a pervasive sense of gloom and despair. The very collection in which the poem appears, At the End of the Open Road, published in 1963 by Wesleyan University Press, is itself an extended and complicated evaluation of American society in the middle of the twentieth century. The title is a response to Walt Whitman’s vision of America as a place of endless possibility, described in his poem “Song of the Open Road.” Simpson considers the country a hundred years after Whitman wrote, when its geographical, and by implication spiritual, frontiers have been exhausted. Simpson asks, what’s next?

“In the Suburbs” is the second poem in the collection, following “In California,” a dark piece about what happens when a dream has gone bad. “In the Suburbs” is only six lines long and comprised of just three sentences, each a separate statement about the emptiness of suburban life. Using the second person “you,” Simpson pronounces both the meaninglessness of this existence and the futility of attempting to escape. In its evocation of a life that needs to be changed, it echoes both Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo” and James Wright’s poem “Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” Statement poems like these are frequently anthologized because they are short and considered “easy” to understand. “In the Suburbs” is no exception, having appeared in a number of introductory poetry texts, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry and Michael Meyer’s Poetry: An Introduction.

In the Suburbs Summary

Lines 1–3
“In the Suburbs” is a small poem about a big topic. Its title announces its subject. For Americans, the idea and image of the suburbs is mixed. On the one hand, many consider it a welcome refuge from the congestion, noise, and crime of the city. On the other hand, it has the reputation as a place marked by conformity, conservative values, and stodginess. In the first stanza, the speaker adopts the latter point of view, presenting the suburbs as a prison of sorts. The tone is harsh and accusatory, as the speaker equates the suburbs with middle-class life, both of which he sees as meaningless. The important word in this stanza is “born.” Being born into a situation or identity suggests that one has little or no choice in the matter, that he or she acts according to a path already laid out. By using the... » Complete In the Suburbs Summary