“The Newsagent”, a deceptively understated poem by Paul Farley, juxtaposes small, simple images and gestures against movements, activities and influences much broader in scope and implication. Doing so, what does Farley achieve in the poem’s economical 12 lines?
The narrator’s alarm clock opens the poem, waking him before sunrise. That the narrator is forced to…
“The Newsagent”, a deceptively understated poem by Paul Farley, juxtaposes small, simple images and gestures against movements, activities and influences much broader in scope and implication. Doing so, what does Farley achieve in the poem’s economical 12 lines?
The narrator’s alarm clock opens the poem, waking him before sunrise. That the narrator is forced to rise so early suggests a demanding, menial, unnoticed and unappreciated vocation, but that plain declaration also has an element of pride to it. Not only does the narrator choose to be up before dawn, but it’s almost as if he and his clock purposefully have the jump on the sun.
While the narrator convinces himself he can beat the sun, he also observes that it’s his employer’s actions that unleash the news. When the newsagent snips the binding around the newspapers, that brings forth the world’s “strikes and wars, the weather’s big seize up, runs on the pound.” The conundrum is that what the newsagent is setting free are forces that the narrator surely doesn’t welcome. If he has control, why isn’t he releasing wonderful and benevolent things?
But the narrator doesn’t allow himself to get dismayed. He picks up his papers, that cascade of woe unbundled by the newsagent, and makes his way out on his rounds. The changing colour of the sky hints that the sun will rise for another day. Till it does, the narrator’s armband offers illumination.
From a dimly lit, perhaps bleak opening, has Farley left us with some defiant optimism after a mere and modest 12 lines?
