The Farm vs. The City (a creative essay)

The Farm vs. The City

by Sheri Grutz

Everyone remembers the first time they read James Wright's lying in the hammock poem, with the last line: “I have wasted my life.” It's such a shocking admittance, that grips a young person to the core, when you are just setting out on your own life. I was told, and had read, that what that line means, is that Wright feels that he should have stayed on the farm, instead of spending his time in cities, but growing up rural Iowa, I took it completely opposite, and I couldn't understand how anyone could feel that way.

There is major depression on the farm life, with the wind blowing the corn dust around, and the silence and boredom of watching the sun shadows, you can really get down into a deep state of tired and weary afternoon waiting for something, anything.

But consider the Elton John song:

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough

Could I have been too safe sitting out in my grandparents screened in front porch, feeling so old, older than the house and the history of this land, plus my grandfather was dead, always there was something missing out there, not about to put my finger on it.

Then there's Frank O'Hara, the lover of the city. Consider this line:

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

Could he have experienced that depression pressed into him even out with someone he cared about, roaming the city, stopping in here and there, seeing a show, taking it all in, and his love for Lana Turner set him on the stage for success. Could it have really mattered, if you spent your time in the country, or in the city?

Consider John Berryman's poem with the opening line, Life my friends, is boring:

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving

behind: me, wag.

He had not always gotten along well in workshops, and rumor has it, he may have gotten kicked out of them, just the phrase, “look like a drag” shows his time in current culture with Dylan, and the Rolling Stones. I do not believe he ever made a distinction, or took pleasure in farm life.

Just one more, Kenneth Koch's line, in “To Marina”:

Read Anatole France. Bored, a little. Read
Tolstoy, replaced and overcome. You read Stendhal.
I told you to. Where was replacement
Then? I don’t know. He shushed us back in to ourselves.
I used to understand

The highest excitement.

He even goes on say, How can I read this book when I know I lost you forever? So, to conclude with Koch in this essay, the importance is with the people you are with, and not necessarily your surroundings. I've also never thought that I needed to be in a beautiful setting to write great pieces. The farm can be pretty, stretching green for miles with that thich layer of sky pulled up tight, and the city too, is built strong as its people. I cannot decide. And I will not.