Aaron Starck

http://poemhunter.com/poem/aaron-starck/

Many times we gain a distant familiarity with someone that we often see but not oft have interaction with. Based on our limited interactions with them we create our impressions, but rarely do we actually askourselves, “What past events led to this person’s current lifestyle?” or, “Are they happy?” (We usually just assume they couldn’t be).

Edwin Arlington Robinson writes many poems about the fictional Tilbury Town and it’s many residences. I imagine that many of these poems begin in Robinson’s head with a single idea for a characteristic of a person, then travel backwards to create a back-story that only Robinson knows. At this point Robinson fully knows the person he’s writing about (more than any of us could). He then writes a poem about the person completely from the outside, from the reader’s perspective, telling us only what we would see if we were to encounter Aaron Starck walking the streets of Tilbury Town. The reader then has two choices: 1. We can read the poem from the outside and create a superficial opinion or, 2. We can examine and create our own back-story to understand the person in our own way.

Upon first reading, it may seem a simple, pointless poem about a haggard old man, similar to the many homeless you may see around Los Angeles or anywhere else. When closer attention is paid to the few characteristics given, outside of appearance, we see a man who has little to be proud of, save his reputation. Albeit a “poor” reputation, it is something he is known for and through his own delusions of grandeur (we all have those to some extent) this is his “claim to fame”, if you will. The only thing that made Aaron Starck happy was to know he was on the towns-folk’s tongues and moreover that someone would have strong enough emotion to verbalize their pity to him.