This month I’m going to discuss a very short poem by Robert Hass from his poetry collection Time and Materials (2007). I’m a big fan of short poems; if done right, they can be incredibly powerful and memorable. Robert Hass, being the masterful poet that he is, is obviously very good at writing short poems. I was first introduced to Hass’s work as an undergrad when my advanced poetry workshop professor recommended I read him along with Louise Glück and Tony Hoagland—which I did. The first book I bought by Hass was Praise and then I eventually got a copy of The Apple Trees at Olema. When I was in grad school, I was introduced to Hass’s essays, so I bought What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World and Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry. However, it wasn’t until after I left grad school that I really developed a love for Hass’s work. As a student, he felt like a contemporary poet I was required to read and appreciate. But as I became more of a poet and less of a student, my perspective on his work changed. He started to feel like a poet I could read because I wanted to read him. At this point, I have read a good portion of his work, minus a few books. I reviewed his last book of poems: Summer Snow, which in my opinion, is probably the best book of poems he’s ever written, and I highly recommend it. I’d also recommend Time and Materials as a good introductory book for those who have never read Hass; I think it truly encapsulates his evolved style of poetic writing. Also: I briefly met him in 2016 when I was a fellow at a poetry retreat in Round Top, Texas. He was one of the featured poets and it was after the one and only time I have ever read my work aloud to a live audience. All the fellows got to read a couple of poems and after the reading was over, he patted me on the back and said he liked my poems, which was immense for me, and still is. The poem I want to discuss is called “Iowa, January” and here it is in its entirety:

In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.

I want to make note of the fact that this is the first poem in Time and Materials. This feels very intentional, not just because it’s a short poem, but because of the subject matter. The poem is about a farmer, probably one of the most significant lost subjects in contemporary poetry. Hass’s usual poetic topics are nature, war, politics, literature, art, and personal experiences. He is both a good lyrical and narrative poet. But I think he’s also a good rhetorical poet, another style that is hard to find in contemporary poetry. And this poem feels rhetorical as much as it feels poetic.

Farming has always been the backbone to any functioning society; people need food to live. However, it has become incredibly industrialized, and the role of the small farmer has faded from public consciousness. Because most food is mass produced, the process of farming and the relationship between the farmer and the land is what would be considered “antiquated.” In addition to that, poetry itself has become incredibly professionalized. Heavy emphasis is now placed on publishing in literary magazines and publishing books, winning fellowships and professorships—being a “professional” poet. This poem reminds me very much of a deep image poem by Robert Bly or James Wright, two midcentury American poets who went back to nature, went back to common life, and wrote from that perspective. The case could be made that Robert Hass—because of his skillfulness and authority as a poetic master—is the rare poet that could get away with making a poem like this be the first poem in the collection, and I wouldn’t argue that. This poem has more to do with implication than poetics, although I could spend a good amount of time breaking it down in terms of image and sound and metaphor. What this poem essentially describes is the farmer being all about his farm—dreaming of it and working repetitively to prepare it for the next season in the middle of a midwestern winter. But because it’s the first poem in the collection, it’s more about passion and process and dedication—things that both the farmer and the poet need in order to flourish. And this is why I love the poem, aside from the fact that Hass is giving the small farmer his/her due, making him/her visible in a modern world that has rendered all farming (industrial and small-scale) invisible.

I also love the poem because of how it calls attention to the dedication to craft as an intensive and powerful experience. Like farming, writing poetry is a very tangible and intense experience, and with the professionalization of it, and the roles of editors and literary agents and publishers taking center stage, the actual art of sitting alone and working intently on poems day after day, has been lost. But it still happens. Any poet who is serious dedicates their entire life to it, and often finds themselves alone, composing poems on a consistent basis, much like the farmer. The farmer doesn’t simply plant seeds and walk away; farming is labor-intensive. Poetry is similar. Poetry books are the final result of a long, intense process of writing. Much like how shoppers go to the grocery store and buy produce—the final product of a harvest—readers go to the bookstore and buy a book of poems—the final result of the poet’s hard work. They don’t see the difficulties and the failures and the struggles the poet went through to complete that book—and I think Hass is pointing to that experience, but from the perspective of a farmer. I could take it further and say that the farmer in “Iowa, January” is actually a metaphor for the poet and I wouldn’t be entirely wrong because Hass’s work is literary in nature and political in nature. And this is why I have come to admire Hass’s work from a poet’s perspective—his work is intentional and mindful. His work accounts for what’s beyond the page; politics, art, life, etc. And process. When I read “Iowa, January,” I don’t simply think about the farmer, and what it means to be a farmer on a small scale, I think about what it means to be a poet, writing poems on a small scale, which is something I do in my daily life, and that’s also why I like Hass as a poet: the flexibility of his work lends to multiple meanings depending on the reader; it’s specific in its subjects, but it’s always open to interpretation.

The song I’m discussing this month is the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man,” off of their sixth album Rubber Soul (1965). In the little bit of light research I did, “Nowhere Man” is one of the first songs the Beatles wrote that was not related to romance. The reason I’m picking this song to talk about has more to do with the fact that I hadn’t listened to the Beatles in a long time. As I was getting reacquainted with their music, this song stood out to me. Maybe that’s why—precisely because it was different from their previous songs. The Beatles are obviously the most significant rock band in the history of rock and roll; they influenced just about every band that came after them, regardless of subgenre. I’ve always admired the Beatles’ music; I remember hearing them as a kid and loving them and then returning to them as a young adult and still loving them. I think what makes the Beatles truly special is that, for me, I can listen to heavy punk rock, heavy metal, heavy hip hop, and then I can turn on the Beatles and their music can still sound great. That’s rare, especially when it comes to classic rock bands. The reason the Beatles still sound great in that way is because their songs are unique but incredibly flexible, which sets them up to be very adaptable. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, aside from being the most important songwriting duo in rock music history, knew how to write songs that captured a larger consciousness while still keeping the music and lyrics incredibly personal—and because most of the successful bands (in a variety of subgenres) were influenced by the Beatles, they adapted similar writing styles, which also helped the Beatles to remain relevant through the decades.

“Nowhere Man” is also unique because Lennon, McCartney, and George Harrison all sing the lyrics and Lennon and Harrison play lead guitar together. This creates an interesting collective sound where it isn’t one band member’s song—it’s a song that embodies all four members, and enhances the subject matter. Lyrically and musically, the song is incredibly simple. It’s written in tercets and includes multiple verses and two bridges. Here is the bulk of the song:

He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man, please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man, the world is at your command

He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all?

Nowhere man, don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry
Leave it all ‘till somebody else lends you a hand

Because the song isn’t sung by one member in particular, it’s hard to pinpoint a dominant voice, and this is partly why I like the song so much. The subject of the nowhere man could apply to any member of the band. Another reason I love the song has to do with the intro. The first two lines of the song are sung without the accompaniment of instruments: “He’s a real nowhere man / Sitting in his nowhere land.” It could be classified as a vocal harmonic beginning, but it also has that trippy edge to it that the Beatles excelled at in later songs. When the first two lines are sung, the words are drawn out, especially the world “real”: “He’s a real nowhere man.” It feels like slang when it’s sung that way, but it also feels natural, more conversational than musical, which grounds the song, makes it feel more relatable. That lyrical tone is maintained all throughout the song even as melody is incorporated, which again, gives the song a spoken word vibe, which is very sixties and very counterculturesque. The bridges are where the more melodic singing happens, which creates a nice contrast to the subject matter, which is a song sung to a man who essentially doesn’t exist. And it’s not that he isn’t alive (he makes nowhere plans for nobody, doesn’t have a point of view, doesn’t know where he’s going, and he’s figuratively blind), he’s just not taking charge of his life, which renders him a nobody. The bridges are also where the lyricists encourage the nowhere man to apply agency (“the world is at your command”) but to also be patient and wait for the right kind of help (“take your time, don’t hurry / Leave it all ‘till somebody else lends you a hand”).

The guitar solo happens after the first bridge (“Nowhere man, please listen…”), reflects the overall mellow vibe of the song, and is punctuated by a cool-sounding high harmonic note. It doesn’t impose; it contributes to the steady rhythm and melody of the music. One could make the case that this is one of the more relaxing Beatles songs precisely because lyrically and musically it’s not charged with love in a romantic sense. It hits a different emotional register and it feels more directed to the counterculture audience. It’s a song that has more to do with identity and personal evolution, which are ideas that the counterculture movement definitely embraced. It also feels like the lyricists in the song are also speaking to those who are in need of a personal revolution, one that is more internal than external. It’s less about going out into the streets and enacting change and more about making deeper, internal changes in regards to the self. The song ends with the first verse and first bridge being repeated, and then the first verse is repeated one more time with the final line “Making all his nowhere plans for nobody” being sung three times. This is interesting because it creates lyrical tension between the brutalness of the lyric and the melodic vibe of the song. It’s not a traditional lyric someone might want to sing over and over again, and yet it works precisely for that reason. It has a bit of irony to it, too, especially because it’s being sung by the Beatles—which consisted of four men who were highly visible in the sixties. It’s almost humorous in that sense, but it still maintains its emotional edge.

This is what I like about the Beatles, the fact that they were able to hit upon deeper registers even during a time when their music was being written for and consumed by an overwhelmingly large number of starstruck female fans. They achieved this more and more in the late sixties to the point where they were finally able to express themselves authentically as an artful rock band full of cleverness and creativity. “Nowhere Man” could be seen as a springboard for the band beginning to express itself more authentically and so that’s also one of the reason I like it. It feels like a true Beatles song. I can also imagine someone hearing this song in the mid-sixties, being affected by it, and then being surprised to find out that it’s the Beatles. It could’ve been perceived as being a little tricky back then that they would write a song like this because it was such a departure from what they had been writing. But I don’t think it was just the fact that the song opened up lyrically which allowed for the possibility of their music being opened up to a broader audience; it was the mere fact that the band itself was opening up lyrically that also makes it appealing. Listeners can see the seeds of evolution sprouting within the band in “Nowhere Man.” And although John Lennon is the principal writer of the song; the energy of “Nowhere Man” feels collective. Because everyone was singing the song, it was everyone’s song, not just Lennon’s. So, it’s especially significant for that reason, for the collective vibe it captured and still contains to this day.

I could make the case that Robert Hass is kind of a superstar in the poetry world much like the Beatles are superstars in the rock world. However, it would be more accurate to say that Hass is heavily read and admired by mostly poets, so it’s safe to say that he’s more of a poet’s poet than a mainstream poet. The Beatles, however, have the biggest fanbase that has ever existed in the music world. And yet, I could still classify them as a band with a cult following because they evolved and became more nuanced, which allowed fans to experience them on a sliding scale—from casual to intricate. What I think truly connects the poet with the band is the openness of “Iowa, January” and “Nowhere Man.” Both the poem and the song have very specific subjects: the farmer and the nowhere man. But the implications that exist within the poem and the song lend them to wider perspectives. The farmer could be a metaphor for anyone who is intensely dedicated to their passion; the nowhere man could be a metaphor for anyone struggling with the self. I also think the poem and the song transcend time and place, like all excellent art does. Hass published “Iowa, January” in 2007, but it feels like it could’ve been written decades before that; the Beatles released “Nowhere Man” in 1965, but it still sounds like it just came out yesterday. There is a sense of timelessness to the poet and the band that isn’t as easy to accomplish as they make it seem. Hass is a tremendously dedicated poet and “Iowa, January” is a perfect example of the fruits of his poetic labor. In the research I did on “Nowhere Man,” Lennon wrote the song after struggling to write a song for several hours. It wasn’t until he gave up that the idea for the song came to him. It was also written during a time when the Beatles were beginning to feel like they needed to move beyond what they had been doing lyrically and musically and achieve something different, which they absolutely did with this song. In that sense, the poet and the band are great examples of the results of the artist’s relationship to craft—the difficult work that happens behind the scenes to create the final result: a two-line poem about passion; a simple melodic song about identity.

July 3, 2023