Analysis of Howard Nemerov's "The Town Dump"

Howard Nemerov's, "The Town Dump" is a veritable midden of metaphors, which allow the poem to transcend the surface meaning of its parts, and conceive of a more overarching statement on human nature. Though the entirety of the poem focuses on images typically considered to be ugly, or unpleasant, Nemerov manipulates them in such a way that the reader may find beauty in something so obviously fetid as a dump, and from it, glean insight into life itself.

At the poem's outset, Nemerov employs a quote from King Lear: "The art of our necessities is strange / That can make vile things precious" (187). This quote encapsulates the overriding theme of "The Town Dump" and illuminates the sense of irony that pervades the piece. Through this brief introduction, Nemerov succeeds in tinting the reader's subsequent perception of his poem, and provides some insight into the nature of his message. The quote from King Lear implies an intrinsic irony, and a glimpse at human nature. By calling mankind's lifestyle and needs "the art of our necessities," (187) Shakespeare (and consequently, Nemerov) implies a sense of artificiality, or unnaturalness in human nature. It implies a straying from the path of what is natural and harmonious with our truest selves. This concept is bolstered by Shakespeare's assertion that this artifice renders "vile things precious" (187). Humankind has so abandoned its truest, most natural character, and surrounded itself with things trivial, material, and ignominious; and, according to Nemerov, all things find their way into the town dump.

The Town Dump is a work ringing with the sonorous tones of inexorability. Nemerov is conscious of and utilizes the truth that all things, living and material, eventually cease to be, at least in their original state. In fact, he references the Platonic concept of Being vs. Becoming, calling the dump "the city / Which seconds ours ... / ... / Where Being most Becomingly end up / Becoming some more" (187). In the Platonic tradition, essentially, all living things are in the state of Becoming. They are ever changing, and are therefore never simply Being, or existing in one, final state. A typical opinion the reader might hold is that a dump is a static place; when things end up there, they are in their final state at rest. Not so, Nemerov asserts, as evidenced by the idea that when objects, always in the state of Becoming, end up in the dump, they are "Becoming some more" (187). The town dump is rife with change, and with life.

The concept of the dump being a dynamic, ever-changing entity, full of life, is one that Nemerov expands upon throughout the poem. Rather than focusing exclusively on the artificial refuse of mankind, he chooses instead to establish a marine theme:

"...the angry mackerel eyes

Glare at you out of stove-in, sunken heads

Far from the sea; the lobster, also, lifts

An empty claw in his most minatory

Of gestures; oyster, crab, and mussel shells

Lie here in heaps, savage as money hurled

Away at the gate of hell" (187).

By contrasting the remains of these once-living, natural marine creatures with the purported unnaturalness of man, or the "art of our necessities" (187), Nemerov further emphasizes the discord between man and nature. If mankind relies upon "vile things," or material goods that distract from the simplest nature of life, then the dump is a testament to and symbol of that dichotomy between what is simple and natural, and the needless complexity, the junk, that it surrounds itself with. Nemerov's description of the remains of shellfish as "savage as money hurled / Away at the gate of hell" underscores the ignominy with which he associates man's reliance on the material. This simile between shellfish refuse and money echoes a well known passage of scripture: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). Nemerov illuminates the folly of mankind's reliance upon the material and frivolous, suggesting that in the end, all our pursuits are as the hulks of cast-off shellfish: useless as money to the damned.

However, the tone of the poem is not entirely bleak and without hope. Nemerov also suggests that there is something to be gained from the waste of the dump, as evidenced by the antique dealers that peruse through the dump at night, hoping to find "objects of virtue" (187) that are at times to be found, however rarely.

Also, the poem concludes upon a positive and uplifting note, in contrast to its earlier, dolorous tones of inevitability. By ending the poem with the image of "wild birds ... their wings / Shining with light, their flight enviably free, / Their music marvelous, though sad, and strange" (187), Nemerov completes the overarching, bittersweet tone of the piece, suggesting that despite mankind's folly and reliance on the material, it is possible to escape the cycle, and free oneself as the wild birds do.