Frances Garren
Honors AP English IV
Mr. Jennings
1/24/13
In the poem Elegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young, the speaker immediately indicates that it is “For
Kenneth Koch” (1). The way this line is presented firstly to the reader in its own separate line as
opposed to the rest of the poem which is separated into stanzas may show that it is the most important
to know that it is for someone in particular. If it wasn’t separated from the rest of the lines, the reader
may take a different meaning from it.
As the poem opens into the first stanza “You don’t need a pony/to connect you to the
unseeable/or an airplane to connect you to the sky.” (2) (3) (4) the speaker uses objects which would be
used to normally connect someone to things that one wouldn’t normally be able to connect to. The
word pony is claimed to connect one to the unseeable, saying that you don’t need an object to see other
objects. The next stanza suggests that one must love in order to live, but they also suggest that in order
to live you must love the act of living. (5) (6) The next couple of lines may be interpreted differently “but
in all important ways one is on one's own. (7) (8) One may interpret that you create your own life, but
one also may suggest that the meaning is to live according to how you, yourself would like to live.
As the next stanza continues the poem, many extremes are brought up: the act of cutting off
your arm or your tongue, and the claim is that you don’t have to do these things in order to be aware of
your own existence. Once also may claim that this stanza is saying that you subject yourself to putting
on a show for others instead of presenting yourself to others as a means of pleasing their eyes, as
opposed to displaying who you actually are. The best way for one to interpret this is the second
explanation I claimed, because they are remembering a person as an object and presenting a piano as
an object with which someone was always remembered.
In the 4th stanza, a quote “necessary it is to die” (16) brings us to fully believe that the point of
the poem is to reminisce objects which bring back memories of those who were once living, as well as
show that one must die in order to show that they lived. “The injured gazelle falls behind the
herd. One last wild enjambment. “(20) (21) This line shows the thrill of death and how it is linked to the
way that one has lived. Their last “wild enjambment” is the last time that one has made a display of
what they have done during their living days. I believe this stanza is separated and only 2 lines to
symbolize the last plea of being alive before the time of living has ended.
The next stanza once again reiterates the point of the struggle that death brings upon someone
who is trying to showcase living accomplishments. “Because of the sores in his mouth, the great poet
struggles with a dumpling. His work has enlarged the world but the world is about to stop including him.
He is the tower the world runs out of. “
This stanza shows clearly that the voice of the one who is living must come to an end and this poem is
their last place to display their living. The sad day is when the world can no longer benefit from the one
who is dying no longer being in the world to share his objects and his own self.
The last line the poet refers to someone becoming ash, and that is a symbol of how someone is
dead and can no longer contribute their creative objects to the world, and that there is no way for
someone to turn back the clock of death. In the last line “diamonds do not lie’” the poet is suggesting
that the one who was once living was a value to the world.