Telephones Pole, By: John Updike

Original
They have been with us a long time.
They will outlast the elms.
Our eyes, like the eyes of a savage sieving the trees
In his search for game,
Run through them.
They blend along small-town streets
Like a race of giants that have faded into mere mythology.
Our eyes, washed clean of belief,
Lift incredulous to their fearsome crowns of bolts, trusses, struts, nuts, insulators, and such
Barnacles as compose
These weathered encrustations of electrical debris¬
Each a Gorgon’s head, which, seized right,
Could stun us to stone.

Yet they are ours.
We made them.
See here, where the cleats of linemen
Have roughened a second bark
Onto the bald trunk.
And these spikes
Have been driven sideways at intervals handy for human legs.
The Nature of our construction is in every way
A better fit than the Nature it displaces
What other tree can you climb where the birds’ twitter,
Unscrambled, is English?
True, their thin shade is negligible,
But then again there is not that tragic autumnal
Casting-off of leaves to outface annually.
These giants are more constant than evergreens
By being never green.

First Impression
- Telephone Poles by John Updike is a poem about telephone poles and how they impacted our lives visually. While he is preaching about telephone poles, Updike admires the inventors of the telephone pole. Finally, Updike “challenges” Nature by stating that our telephone poles are better than Nature’s “telephone poles.”

Paraphrased
They have been with us our whole lives.
They’ll be here a long time
Our eyes, like a beast looking for his
Prey
In search of a game.
Run through them. They blend along
the streets
Like a race of giants that have been mentioned in mythology.
Our eyes, washed of belief
Life incredulous to their heads of
Bolts, trusses, struts, nuts, insulator, and such
Barnacles as compose
These rusty poles filled with electrical
wires—
Each a Gorgon’s head, which, if used correctly,
Could blind or stun us

Yet we are their creators
See there, where the men
Has roughened a second bark
On the bald trunk. And these spikes
Goes sideways to help
The human legs
The way we create is in every way
Better than the way nature created
What other tree can you climb where the birds
sing,
in clear English? It is true that their
shade is unimportant,
But then again there are no signs of autumn on it
Shaving off leaves annually.
They are more frequent than trees themselvesBecause they are not green.

Syntax and Word Choice
- The poem is written in two stanzas; the first stanza talking about the many features of the telephone poles, where the latter one is about why telephone poles are far more superior to trees. As far as word choice goes, Updike uses modern English and is clear and concise.
Imagery
- Updike uses visual imagery when describing the nature of telephone poles and trees. In addition to visual imagery,
Figurative Language
- Updike uses similes in his poem to describe how humans see telephones everywhere they look. This simile can be found in lines 3-4:” Our eyes, like the eyes of a savage sieving the trees/ In his search for game,”
Tone
- Updike seems to use a relaxed yet persuasive tone. In the first stanza, Updike uses a relaxed tone to describe the nature of the telephone pole. In the second stanza, Updike uses a persuasive tone to persuade the reader to choose telephone poles than trees.
Theme
- The overall theme of Telephone Poles is that people should take more time to appreciate nature. In the poem, Updike states that: “The Nature of our construction is in every way/ A better fit than the Nature it displaces.” This is a clear example that people are adapting to a more industrialized world where trees are becoming “obsolete.”

Conclusion
- After re-reading and analyzing the poem, I was able to see Updike’s viewpoint on telephone poles versus trees. In a way, humans are becoming more technology-dependent and are slowly forgetting the simpler forms of resources. Humans need to advance forward but at the same time, remember where our original source of energy came from.