Homo Suburbiensis

One constant in a world of variables
-- A man alone in the evening in his patch of vegetables,
and all the things he takes down with him there
	
Where the easement runs along the back fence and the air
smells of tomato-vines, and the hoarse rasping tendrils
of pumpkin flourish clumsy whips and their foliage sprawls
	
Over the compost-box, poising rampant upon
the palings ...
                He stands there, lost in a green
confusion, smelling the smoke of somebody's rubbish

Burning, hearing vaguely the clatter of a disk
in a sink that could be his, hearing a dog, a kid,
a far whisper of traffic, and offering up instead

Not much but as much as any man can offer
-- time, pain, love, hate, age, ware, death, laughter, fever.
		

Stanza 1

• Constant is a poisitive comment, he is alone with his thoughts, static and unchanging, while the world outside continues on oblivious.
• Patch of vegetables is his territory - a place where he can vent his frustrations by gardening, a place where he has total control, with things he has grown himself.
• evening - ie, the man cannot be alone with his thoughts while doing the day's work, he is only free after the work is complete.
• It is interesting to note that the mark of a civilisation in the old times, was the fact that they had mastered agriculture, in order to feed the people through people specialising into different fields. This implied different classes, eg an educated class, a farming class, and this eventually led to civilisation. Some ancient civilisations, eg Babylon, paid a lot of attention to gardens.
• Also note the parallel to the Garden of Eden.
• All the things he takes down with him there - although not specified, "all the things" can be the things he carries in his head - thoughts, feelings, emotional baggage, anything that needs to be though about and solved - the man can use his garden for tension release.
• The garden is a place for contemplation, meditation and working things through. We see an emphasis in the poem on the man's thoughts and feelings.

Stanza 2

• Where the easement runs...: Easement is a piece of land between properties.
• We can smell, see, touch and hear the garden through various descriptions in this stanza and the following one. Note thtat the description is slightly detached - we are observing the man like a specimen in a tank. This is reflected in the title, a Latin-sounding (but invented) word to describe this type of man.
• The pumpkin is almost alive - it is "clumsy" and it "sprawls", like the progress of human civilisation, very slowly expanding, and expanding clumsily. Contrast the action usually associated with whips (ie, the whipcrack) with "clumsy whips" of the pumpkin: the sprawly of civilisation may be slow, but it will progress as inexorably as if it were driven with a whip.

Stanza 3

• The Rampant is significant in heraldry, where heraldic animals pose rampant on shields. Suggests the way the vines are curled back on themselves - strong, proud, and potentially dangerous.
• the palings ... - the way the sentence trails off is important. It trails off like the plant itself, and also suggests the end of the physical description of the garden - the man's focus has drifted elsewhere: he was possibly daydreaming while standing in his garden.
• The pace picks up again - the indentation before He stands makes us focus back on him, and the poem now focuses on him too, and what he feels and sees.
• The idea that he is deep in thought is further brought out in Stanza 4 with the use of the words "lost" and "vaguely".
• The "green confusion" is like a buffer against noise - the garden's potential is seen, but at the moment it is only slighly tamed. We can see the wildness of the garden - the plants are wild and confused, similar to his thoughts before he arrived.

Stanza 4

• Our senses are aroused here. Smelling, hearing, seeing, gfeeling the things the man does. Somebody's rubbish / Burning, Hearing vaguely, Hearing a dog, a kid, whisper of traffic. These sounds are the only things which intrude on his refuge and remind us that the garden is in suburbia. However, he is lost in his thoughts and only hears "vaguely". A sink that could be his shows that he has taken the sound in, but not thought over them enough to recognise them.

Stanza 5

• offering up instead / Not much - he is "offering up" perhaps to a deity. He can't offer up great or corageous deeds, but he can as much as any human can offer - his life, his experiences.
• time - the time he has spent being a father, and his experiences. Time he can still give before dying.
• pain, love - what of pain and love he has already experienced, and what he will experience in the future.
• hate, age, war, death - all these things we go through and give to the world in the form of experience, even though we may not know it.
• laughter stands out from the rest - it is two syllables long, unlike the list so far - it implies joy and peace. We can see at this point that the poem is a song of praise to the ordinary person, giving what small things they can to the world.
• fever is not necessarily a negative word - it could represent intense emotion of any sort, and perhaps could sum up the rest of the list. However it also suggests sickness and death, and is unpredictable in nature.
• The poem is celebrating that although this man may be ordinary, the very act of being alive can be a celebration, like the growing of plants: it is not the quantity of what you give, but the quality.

General Notes

• The garden represents the mind - chaotic when wild, but when structured, of surpassing beauty, like a well-kept garden. The man's thoughts, as represented by the garden, may seem chaotic but there is order there - in the compost box, etc.
• The title, Homo Suburbiensis, is a parody of scientific classification methods: Man of the Suburbs, and generally the poet views the man as the scientist would a specimen: interested, but with detachment, and perhaps a quiet joy in the beauty of it all.