Writing Urban Landscapes in Ai Ogawa's 'The Man with the Saxophone'

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe discuss Ai’s ‘The Man with the Saxophone’, a city poem that captures connection in the quiet streets of New York before sunrise.

After Maiya’s reading, they talk about Ai’s background and her remarkable voice as a poet. Born Florence Anthony in 1947 in Texas, she later chose the name Ai, meaning “love” in Japanese. With ancestry that included Japanese, Native American, Black, and Irish roots, she wrote with honesty about identity and humanity. Her major works include Cruelty, Sin, and Vice, which won the National Book Award in 1999.

Joe and Maiya describe how the poem begins at 5 in the morning. The city is silent, the sidewalks empty, and the speaker walks down Fifth Avenue until meeting a homeless saxophonist. This brief encounter becomes a moment of shared stillness and warmth in a cold and lonely setting. Through music, two people who might never meet again find a kind of wordless understanding.

They also reflect on Ai’s portrayal of New York as fragile and human rather than grand or glamorous. Snow is described as brittle, the city compared to an old man with a white beard, and the towering Empire State Building becomes a quiet backdrop instead of a symbol of power. The hosts consider how Ai turns the city into a space of reflection, where loneliness and beauty coexist.

The saxophone itself becomes a powerful image. It represents art, memory, and survival. The man plays not for money but because the music itself gives life meaning. Jazz, deeply tied to African American history, becomes a language of resilience. For the speaker, listening to that sound brings freedom and breath, a way to feel alive again.

Maiya and Joe look closely at the closing image: “each note, a black flower opening into the unforgiving new day.” The flower becomes a sign of hope pushing through the cold, a moment of grace that refuses despair. When the speaker imagines rising like a bird and then falling back to the ground, Ai shows the balance between freedom and reality, dream and endurance.

The episode ends with reflection on how Ai reclaims the city as belonging to those often unseen. Her poem listens to what happens in the quiet, reminding us that art can give voice to those who seem forgotten.

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Transcript

Episode 9. Ai Ogawa's New York: Dreams, Music and The City in 'The Man with the Saxophone'

Maiya: [00:00:00] if only I could turn myself into a bird like the shaman I was meant to be. But I can't. I'm Earthbound and solitude is my companion. The only one you can count on.

Joe: Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast, brought to you by the team@PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Joe, and I'm here with my co-host Maiya, who just wonderfully read a short extract from today's poem, Ai’s ‘The Man with the Saxophone’. We're gonna be discussing the poem today, including a range of themes such as music, as metaphor, solitude, and companionship, and writing urban spaces. But before we get into the poem itself, Maiya, can you tell us a little bit more about Ai as a poet and who she was?

Maiya: Yes, I would love to. So I was actually born Florence Anthony in 1947 in Texas as we'll go on to discuss this poem is rooted in American landscapes, particularly New York City. So this follows an American tradition. She [00:01:00] actually adopted the name Ai later in life to reflect her Japanese heritage.

It means love in Japanese, but she had a hugely mixed heritage. So she identified as having Japanese Choctaw and Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, Comanche ancestry. You know, I personally find from her work that this mixed heritage, this mixed ancestry massively her write. Some incredibly complex characters. And as we'll see, there's a real focus in this poem and many of her others in. the inner world of these other characters.

She focuses on the unfortunate. You know, we have a homeless man in this poem, a saxophonist on the street. We have people who grow up in poverty and she was publishing kind of throughout her lifetime. Her works include cruelty In 1973, killing Floor 1979.

The poem we're talking about today came from her collection Sin in 1986, and actually in 1999 she won the National Book Award for one of her other collections of Vice New and selected poems. Ai only died in 2010, so [00:02:00] she's a very contemporary poet, and that will massively help with some of the explorations we're having, especially around urban landscapes, as Joe said at the start.

But Joe, give us a kind of broad overview of where this poem situates us right at the start.

Joe: I’d love to. So Ai actually gives us a really explicit description of where we are and the time of day. the very first line of this poem, we know that we're in the city of New York and it's very early in the morning. It's 5:00 AM and effectively what we have is a first person narrator moving through these quiet, empty streets until they encounter this saxophonist that Maiya mentioned, who based on the description, we believe to be homeless, perhaps a busker. And effectively the poem becomes this kind of. Celebration of this brief shared experience they have. As the saxophonist begins to play the saxophone, we learn that the speaker begins to play one of their own. Now, whether or not the saxophones are real, or whether they're metaphorical, or whether one is real and the other's metaphorical, we'll explore as we go on.

But the poem is very simple. It's very, Fluid in the way it describes this encounter. And [00:03:00] Maiya and I are gonna talk about what it means to be alone, but sharing something with somebody else at the same time. And the relationship, as I mentioned earlier, between solitude and kind of union, but that's the entire scene as it plays out.

Effectively, it's this very simple meeting between these two figures who presumably have no prior knowledge of one another, but as Maiya and I are gonna explore, there is real depth to this poem exploring many, many different things. But Maiya, I bet I know the answer to this question, but where would you like to begin with the man with the Saxophone. ?

Maiya: I feel like if you were going to pull the most said words from me in this whole podcast, it would be, let's start with the title. I actually would say this time, let's start with the title and that positioning, the specificity of where we are and what purpose that serves in the poem. Because it's very rare in poems that you don't start in the middle of the action.

You don't start with a kind of slightly looser understanding of where you are and you gain that knowledge as you walk through the poem here. We are told [00:04:00] explicitly that we are in the city of New York and it is 5:00 AM you have a physical location, and you have a temporal location too.

Now, I fundamentally believe that what this serves to do in the poem as Joe, you so aptly put it, Explore this poem in a slightly looser way. You wander the streets with the speaker, but as a result, because you have a very concrete understanding of where you are in time and place, it allows you to be more introspective as a reader.

It allows the speaker a little bit more of an inner world whilst walking through the outer world. New York, of course, has a wonderful reputation for being one of the busiest cities in the world. It is constantly bustling. It is known as the city that never sleeps. And yet in this poem, we are introduced to a New York that is quiet and offers solitude and doesn't have a population of people interrupting the speaker as they take this walk. I know full well that in depictions of New York, in films from people who I know who have visited New York. I've never been myself, but it is a city [00:05:00] that never sleeps.

5:00 AM would absolutely have people coming back from nights out clamoring to their jobs in the morning, and yet the way that. New York is fantasized, at least in this poem, is something that is much more removed from the understanding that we have of New York as a cultural icon. And I really love the way that from the outset of this poem, and you know, it's one of the words you use all the time, Joe, is that it wrong foots you.

You think that New York at 5:00 AM is going to be busy, it's going to be bustling. And yet instead, the first line of this poem tells us that the sidewalks are empty. There is nothing going on here other than the speaker being there. And what I think that does is it draws attention to the people that are in the scene.

And of course, the people that we have in the scene are one, the speaker who is, rendered anonymous in this. We don't get any details about them other than their relationship to the man with a saxophone. But the way that we come to understand the speaker is through how they are reflected by the man with the saxophone, who is the titular character [00:06:00] of this poem?

The Man with the Saxophone is a character in himself. He is an icon of this poem, but it is about how he allows the speaker to understand themself. In this cityscape, and I think it is such a wonderful way to start a poem to Wrong foot you so immediately. But Joe, I'd love to know what you think about the, dichotomy between the New York that we think we know and the New York that we come to know in this poem.

Joe: Well, I think the word dichotomy is a really crucial one, and you're absolutely right. I, often talk about how the openings of a poem can sometimes establish the framework that the poem is going to go on to subscribe to, or in this case, I agree with you, I think it wrong foots the reader completely, because you're right, we have this image of New York as a bustling, busy urban environment here.

It's defined by the absence of those people, not their presence. But I'm interested in that first line as well. Very, very simple. New York 5:00 AM and the way in which that offers hints but doesn't confirm anything because again, 5:00 AM we [00:07:00] associate, you know, people who grew up or spend time living in urban spaces.

You might associate with being a time where you are asleep or you are. Coming back from somewhere. Maiya mentioned the party a night out, whatever it is. But what I think is really interesting about this poem is that actually the figures that populate this poem, few as they are, are implied to be people for whom the streets are their home 24 hours a day.

the saxophonists that we encounter seemingly is a homeless man. And what I love about The poem is, the streets of a city are a place that we think of as being innately public spaces. They are places where the whole of society can interact. There are no limits to who can go out on the street. And yes, of course, for the homeless population of any big connotation, that space also has to function as their private space.

A place where they sleep, the place where they eat, the place where they, try to wash. All of those things happen in the public sphere and that conflation of the public space for the majority of the population. And the private space of this, [00:08:00] unfortunate few is a really, really interesting way of framing the poem, I think.

But back to that opening line, New York 5:00 AM what I love about it is that it's so matter of fact, it's so rooted in things that are measurable, things that are, quantifiable. The place and the time, it almost reads as though it's the beginning of a crime report or the beginning of some kind of diary entry.

And I love the way that. Wrong foots the reader because actually what we're going to go on to explore is something deeply abstract, deeply metaphorical. Maiya and I are gonna talk later on about whether or not the instruments being described are real, or there are kind of metamorphoses that happen in the speaker's mind about transforming into an animal.

We're gonna explore later on, and I love the way that we begin the poem. In a place that is strictly real physical, tangible, only to have the poem take us in directions as a really abstract and metaphorical, and obviously that is a reflection of our experience of the real world. Every great abstract idea ever had by anybody was had in a particular physical place. sitting down, standing up, wearing clothes in the bath, [00:09:00] what, whatever it is our. Ability to, expand and to think about abstract things is nevertheless tied to our physical reality. So I love the way that the poem begins in that regard. And back to the title. 'cause like Maiya, I have an interest in, perfect titles. What I like about this poem is that we get a sense of the man with the saxophone as somebody unique, as somebody distinct. And yet it's a reminder that so much of our. Knowledge about people around us, particularly homeless people, is nevertheless quite impersonal. This man is defined by a single possession.

He doesn't have a name. He doesn't really have much in the way of physical description, certainly nothing identifiable. We learned later on that he has, dirty fingers and he's wearing fingerless gloves, but that's not something that could identify him or differentiate him from somebody else. The only differentiating factor is this object he has, and obviously objects are things that are transient in our lives.

You can lose things, you can break things, things can get stolen, things can be given away, and ultimately. This man who probably occupies the same street [00:10:00] corner every day for weeks or months or even years in this city, is nevertheless defined only by something that he might not have tomorrow. And that rendering of a homeless person as somebody without identity, I think is really, really powerful.

Maiya: I think it's really timely, Joe, that you bring up the item that actually differentiates this person, and it is the saxophone. For listeners who aren't aware, a saxophone is an incredibly expensive instrument. It is in, at least in the UK, thousands of pounds to purchase when you first buy it.

And that's not even including things like upkeep, all the reads and the like carry cases and things like that. So the person that we're talking about here. Is identified not only as owning this instrument, but having the skill to play it beautifully. Things like that naturally would likely come with lessons.

So this is very likely a person who hasn't always been in the position that they're in currently. They may have been someone who had wealth and access to things like music lessons to buy the saxophone, to [00:11:00] keep it. And yet it's the one possession now that whilst they are, you know, we interpret it as them living on the street.

They hold onto it and it's the one thing that keeps them grounded to their past life. I think it's important to note that one of the avenues that we walk down in this poem is Fifth Avenue, which is a cultural epicenter in New York. It's full of luxury shops and our speaker walks past them considering whether they might shop or not.

So you have this real contrast between the luxurious life that's portrayed by, you know, these cultural icons like Fifth Avenue set against the life that you can potentially lose. I think loss lingers quite strongly in this poem and offers the reader a sense that not everything is as it should be.

New York being quiet speaks to that kind of dissatisfaction or the disconnect from what usually is happening, and I really find that sets the reader on a bit because I never feel comfortable in this poem. And I [00:12:00] think that's one of the things that I actively tries to do.

Joe: Yeah, I think definitely. And I think. I would talk to the beginning about this notion of writing urban space and there are few urban spaces that have been rendered in literature more often than the city of New York. You know, obviously in novels you have the likes of the opulent setting of, The Great Gatsby in the 1920s. You have Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, much of which occurs in New York. Regular listeners will know that I'm obviously gonna name Drop Federico García Lorca, who's the collection of poet in New York, presents, the city as this kind of unsettling, surreal barrier to creativity. This concrete, metropolis where you can't reach the earth and you're cut off in the natural world.

But, not many poems that I can recall. Really situate the city through the eyes of, The people who probably see it at its most based people on the street, people there at late at night. And another important detail to remember here is that this is a very, very cold morning. we get this description that last week's snow has turned, brittle, and, That fragility expressed by that word, brittle, I think is really important. 'cause obviously the [00:13:00] experience of people living on the street, in the winter, incredibly difficult, incredibly dangerous, thing to do. And I think that one of the descriptions I really love is in the opening of this poem, the city is personified, is having this white beard, as referenced by the snow. And again, what we have there is a sense of. The city as somebody unshaven, unkempt, possibly an embodiment of homelessness itself, but also fragile, older 'cause of the whites obviously implying this, bearded figure is, not particularly young. And what I love about the poem is it's ability to render the city as a manifestation of the people that occupy it. And the people who occupy this poem are fragile, are older, are. unkempt and it stands in real opposition to the very. High energy, high octane, wealthy, opulent portrayals of the city that we've come to expect. you know, I guess another example would be something like American Psycho, where once again we have, scenes of expensive restaurants and high rise apartments, that would, which overlook the park. And what I [00:14:00] love about any portrayal of any city is that depending on where you situate yourself, the city can appear very different.

I think Ai does a brilliant job of showing us the New Yorker exists as viewed from the street in the cold in the morning, and it's, not as beautiful as you might expect. It's a lot more fragile, but there is beauty in that fragility nonetheless. The image of New York as a bearded old, a gentleman who hasn't shaved, is kind of beautiful in a completely different way to the description of the city that Fitzgerald might well have written in Great Gatsby, for example .

Maiya: it's really interesting to me, Joe, that you bring up the aged gentleman figure as something kind of brittle and fragile because of course in society we also have the understanding that with age comes wisdom. That's why we get depictions of God, we get depictions of Zeus in the. In the Greek pantheon of Gods as older male figures with long white hair. This is exactly the image we're getting here. But what Ai does is she offsets those expectations because not only does she ignore any sort [00:15:00] of Christian based faith, in the intro I read earlier, she refers to a shaman, which is more spiritual way of looking at faith. this is very adverse to any sort of of Christian ideology, but she also negates the power that figures like that would have, because we talk about the fragility and the brittle nature of these older age gentlemen and instead. Of having the wisdom and the power that comes with being a God-like figure that's taken away. And again, I think this reduces the power of the city because New York is seen as this kind of living, breathing embodiment of what it is to be American. And instead by reducing that power, we really have a New York that is portrayed as weak and quite fragile, I think is the perfect word for it.

So. I love the way that Ai is playing with traditional expectations here because, you know, we're only a couple of lines into the poem at this point, and we already have so many of these expectations and barriers that have been broken down.

Joe: I think the comparison with, the bearded figure and, a God-like [00:16:00] figure is a really interesting one. And, of course, the connection between a kind of God-like figure and somebody homeless is, very much drawing upon biblical tropes. The idea of that line from, Matthew, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This notion that actually, if you're looking for that, the best representation of God on earth, it is unlikely to be. In, the places where the rich members of society are, that other famous line in the Bible, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven.

If you want to feel closer to God, you have to go, to where the homeless people are, to where, the meek and the humble and the hungry are. 'cause that's where, true Christian values tend to reside. So I think that connection is, a really interesting one, another thing I'd like to just go back to maybe would love to talk about this with you more, Maiya, is this image of the saxophone and what it might represent. Because obviously, your analysis of saxophone earlier on is an expensive instrument is a really crucial one. But there are other associations as well. Of course. Obviously it's a portable instrument, it's not a piano. You can actually take it with you, you can carry it with you. But it's particularly associated with certain types [00:17:00] of music, especially jazz.

And this brings me on one of my other points, which is why does the type of music matter in this poem? Well, while we don't get a huge amount of description about this homeless gentleman, I think it's reasonable to, view them as representative of perhaps, an impoverished African American community.

it's worth noting that the African American community is massively overrepresented. When it comes to homelessness stats in New York, right up to this day, I think as recently as a couple of years ago, 58% of people who are homeless in New York were African American. And of course, the saxophone is associated with jazz, a form of music very much associated with the African American community. So when I first read the poem, I was thinking, okay, we have a busker here, somebody who's using their, music to make money, to survive on the street. But as we've already discussed, it only occurred to me later that. The time of day is really important here. This is 5:00 AM there are no people on the street.

So when we are later told that this homeless man begins playing music, the natural question is why? Because it [00:18:00] cannot be for any kind of material gain. 'cause there is nobody there to give him any money. So what we have here is music for its own sake. And this music that, as I mentioned, is very representative of the African American community in America and in New York. As being played for no other reason than it brings the musician themselves, joy and perhaps that musician, the homeless man has an awareness that it will bring the speaker in this poem, joy as well. And what it reminds us, I think, is that music has an ability to transcend boundaries, whether geographical boundaries, economic boundaries, boundaries related to people's backgrounds. Music is presented in this poem as a unifying force and a force that is more important than any kind of financial rewards. It might yield. He's not playing to better himself financially. He's playing because it helps him feel part of something bigger than just himself. What would you think about that?

Maiya: I think you've touched on something in this poem that really, really resonates towards the end, and I'll just read a few lines before I, I delve [00:19:00] into why I think it's important. The final three lines of this poem are each note, a black flower opening, mercifully opening into the unforgiving New Day. I think you have absolutely hit the nail on the head concerning the racial identity of the saxophonist because this description is so beautifully put.

You have the impression that music has the ability to create cultural progression? I think the flowers color is incredibly important as set against the bleak cold winter that we've been described. The note itself, the music that is created when the two of these characters play together has created a flower, a, new opening, a spring mercifully opens into an unforgiving landscape.

I think that couldn't be more critical to the message of this poem. And as you say, Joe, you know, rightfully the way that music has the ability [00:20:00] to. Bridge divides to cross cultures and to create new opportunities is absolutely beautiful And as I say, so resonant in this poem, you are left with this feeling of community.

We have been introduced to a speaker who feels nothing but solitude until she meets this other person in the landscape. She realizes that she's not the only person also experiencing that same solitude. So it's that sense of being alone together. They may not ever see each other again. They may not know each other other than the bare bones of, visualizing that person in front of you and then walking away.

But. The idea of community and progression that we get towards the end of this poem is just wonderful. And I think there is something to be said as well about the, the physical act of music throughout this poem. you get a feeling that the city is encroaching a little bit on the speaker.

It's, it's becoming a little bit claustrophobic, and yet when the music is played, there's a line where the speaker physically breeds in. You get a sense of the. [00:21:00] input of the music into their lungs, and that is the thing that frees them. There's almost a, turn to positivity as soon as the air is sucked up into the diaphragm.

And I find that moment is one that really stands out as something that tonally shifts the poem, I suppose. What do you think? I mean, is there something to be said about the, difference between that day, the cold day, and this kind of new morning that's beginning?

Joe: Well, I think you're absolutely right and I think. That notion of the flower representing obviously spring, as you've mentioned, and we know this is a winter scene. Snow in New York gets bitterly cold in New York City over the winter. And that notion of the first flower breaking through, signifying a new dawn, perhaps, the passing of winter and all the hardship that winter represents, especially for homeless people.

Again, without wishing to go too far back to Lorca, because it's not a Lorca episode, but when, Lorca writes about New York, he writes about these layers and layers of concrete that prevent us feeling grounded to [00:22:00] the earth. We are, cut off from the soil,. We're cut off from the grass. We are disconnected from the natural world. And he found that to be an awfully, unsettling feeling. He was in New York for several months and he found it very, very difficult. What we have here is this image of a natural, item, a flower breaking through not only the snow, but we can imagine through. These physical layers of concrete. And what we then have therefore is a kind of grounding. There is a way to feel like you are getting back to your roots in a literal sense. Of course, the roots of a flower, but also, you know, clearly the speaker feels connected to something by the end of this, poem the act of joining in this musical act makes her feel. Both grounded, but also liberated and able to fly. And we're gonna talk about this later on, about how the act of playing music allows her to feel like a bird. She almost transforms into something that can fly. But I'm interested in one more thing about this image of the saxophone, because the other thing we have with jazz is that it's a genre of music that is deeply improvisatory. You can go to watch the same jazz band play 10 nights in a row and you will [00:23:00] never hear exactly the same thing because each performance is unique. And I think that uniqueness is really interesting here because. Again, I'm interested in the way in which Ai is able to take the image of a homeless gentleman on one of New York streets and off New York is a block system. So many of the streets resemble one another, and unfortunately there is a very large homeless problem in New York. There are far too many people living on the streets, so. What she's able to do is take something that might feel over familiar. So I mean, people can often switch off, you know, they're on their phones, not at the time this poem was written. Of course it's written pre mobile phones, but, you know, people are having conversations or they're thinking about work or they're thinking about their family. People get quite distracted as they pass through the street and the image of. One more homeless person might not even really compute. They might not even notice it. And yet, what this poem does by, using the kind of associations of jazz and by affording the homeless gentleman, that uniqueness, that improvisatory, spontaneous nature, that jazz [00:24:00] music has, she makes him entirely distinct from the homeless person on the next street or the street after that.

And she reminds us that all of these people whose lives might seem. obscure to us, and they might seem to kind of blend into one another. Are all unique human beings just as a, non-homeless person is they all have, hopes and dreams that are distinct from one another. They all have stories that differentiate them from other people, and they might be nameless to us as we pass them by, but that doesn't mean their lives are any less varied and rich than our own.

Maiya: Absolutely, and, there's definitely something to be said about the freedom that the music provides. I think the bird image you mentioned a moment ago really kind of critically demonstrates that because of course when we enter this poem, we are told that the speaker wishes she could turn herself into a bird, but she can't because she's earthbound.

There is a, a sense of absolute concrete belief in that singular moment and that nothing is changeable. And yet when we come to the close of the poem. music has [00:25:00] allowed her to break out of the kind of circles and the music has allowed her to break out of that more imprisoning chain of thought, and she's now the unencumbered bird of my imagination rising only to fall back towards concrete.

And as Joe's mentioned throughout this episode, jazz music is all about improvisation. It is about the rise and the fall, and none of those are scripted. So this absolute sense of freedom we get, you know, very much in contrast to the New York image of the huge skyscrapers and the, the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped within this like gray.

I mean, what the concrete jungle. instead you have. A kind of open, expansive sky is insinuated because the bird, rises up to the sky, falls back towards concrete, and then goes up again. So you have this push and pull between the open expanse and the closed concrete nature of the city itself.

And I really [00:26:00] enjoy, actually, in this poem that I think it would've been very easy to leave the poem by physically leaving the city, by flying up into that expanse and staying there and having this very hopeful and open element. But instead, what Ai does is she offers an option because you can see it as depressive.

You can see it as the bird falling back. You can see it as the unforgiving New Day. Or you can see it as an opening, as an opportunity. And I think she leaves that opportunity there to grasp or to nearly reach, but not quite get there. And it's very much up to the reader's interpretation. And I think that's a really unique way to end a poem.

I really enjoy that. It's not as kind of set and defined as maybe you would expect as you leave this poem.

Joe: No, I think that's a really good point, and I'm, I'm really glad you mentioned, those skyscrapers because, you know, the New York skyline really is this defining image that many of us have, whether we visited the city or not.

And there's a line earlier on in the poem that I know, you know, Maiya enjoyed as much as I did, which is this mention of how the speaker is walking [00:27:00] down Fifth Avenue toward the thirties. And what I love about this is obviously, as I mentioned, New York is a grid system, so the Thirties are simply at face value . You know, the streets between 30 and 39, obviously. However, the ambiguity of that is so interesting to me because as Maiya mentioned, this poem was first published in 1986. Ai was born in 1947, so she was 39. when this poem was published, but we don't know, she may have written it some years earlier, but she's in her thirties anyway, so is actually, she embodying a speaker. Perhaps a few years younger than her, who is themselves in their late twenties or early thirties, and is contemplating as they move through the city the way in which they're also moving through the passage of their own life. Is this a t aging? And of course, New York is a city that. countless writers and artists have grown up in, worked in, written in, and every time you walk through the city, you're also walking in their footsteps.

And you are aware of the passage of your own life is occurring in the same place where [00:28:00] countless other lives are being played out before your eyes. And I think that's one interpretation. But the other thing I really, really love is towards the thirties, we could almost read that as a way of going back in time. We're going back to the 1930s and again, 1930s. New York is so important because not only is the 1930s a period of the Great Depression in New York and the rest of America after the Wall Street crash of 1929, a period of immense inequality, where homelessness increased, where people really struggled. It's also conversely this period of immense growth of the city. I mean, so many buildings that now make up. That skyline were constructed in this period, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building. these symbols of the wealth and influence of New York life were constructed in the same decade as the kind of lower sector society Were. That had their lives defined by inequality, defined by struggle, by poverty, and again, i's ability to tussle with the identity of this [00:29:00] city. And, and the question about who owns this city, because of course of. The homeless of New York, like the homeless of every city, own virtually nothing. They barely own the clothes that they are wearing.

In fact, in this poem, the homeless gentleman described as having his clothes practically welded to his skin. The suggestion being that he has changed them so rarely, that they're almost an extension of, his body rather than something external, as a reminder of how little he actually owns. And yet, when it comes to the kind of cultural ownership of a place so often in. New York and in terms of the culture of different cities, it is the impoverished classes that actually give a city its character. I mean, it's why the issue of gentrification is such a big problem in the West and in cities around the world because it's actually the places where. Impoverished people lived, made their lives made art the place that actually middle class people want to then go and appropriate later on.

So this question of who owns New York, who does New York truly belong to, is constantly at play here and that [00:30:00] reference to the thirties. Is an allusion to a period of time where those divisions between the rich and poor were never starker because the poorer percentage of the population of New York was getting poorer every year as the economy suffered.

All the while the buildings of New York were growing taller every year. 

Maiya: Well, Joe, thank you so much for bringing up those buildings because I think scale is something that I really want to address here because we get a very specific mention of these streets and where our speaker is walking. They end up on the corner of 34th and fifth. That's Fifth Avenue. When I first read this poem, I thought it was 34th and 35th, but it's not the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th is the Empire State Building. You have a sense of immense scale. The Empire State Building as set against this homeless gentleman who's playing the saxophone, who in my view is, standing right in front of the building.

I really cannot impress how [00:31:00] important that differentiation is because we are told explicitly that the music that is made by the man playing the saxophone takes the speaker away from the city. We get the line. I think I must be somewhere else, not here, not in this city to feel like that. When you are set against one of the most important buildings in the city.

Is just an absolutely unbelievable assertion for me. I think the way that Ai has managed to really create an environment that is so removed from the New York City we know and understand is such a wonderful skill. So I think it's great that you managed to bring that up, Joe, because that Empire State Building is so important.

It's an icon. Everyone who knows New York knows that building and yet to feel like you are not even there when you're standing right in front of it is magical.

Joe: That was brilliant, Maiya, I, I really could have talked about that more and I'd love to do more poems in the future where maybe we could almost do an episode on. [00:32:00] Poems about a particular place, and we could do three or four different poems about a city or about something like that. And if, any listeners are interested, if you live in a particular city and you feel there's been, brilliantly rendered in literature, you know, maybe you could suggest that city and we could do an episode on poetry of a particular place.

I mean, I'd love to do Dublin at one stage or, maybe another city. That'd be brilliant. And we have a means by which you can communicate with us. You can tell us where you'd like us to discuss. In future episodes because as you mentioned in a previous episode, we have launched the Poetry+ Community page, which will put the link in the description of this episode, and that is the best way.

If you wanna get in touch with Maiya and I with questions, suggestions, if our discussion today or in another episode made you think of a particular poem, we'd love to hear from you there. And on that note, next week is actually our final episode of season three. It's gone by like an absolute flash, and we really hope you've enjoyed it.

And as always. If you have enjoyed it, please do like rate and review the podcast and continue to recommend it to friends and family. But for our 10th episode next week, we really want to get that [00:33:00] community vibrant and going. So do post your questions. We're gonna be answering some in next week's final episode, but.

Go onto the community page. We're gonna set up a forum there where you can ask questions, whether about something you've enjoyed this series or something completely different about the poetic world. It can be contemporary, it can be old, it can be about an award, it can be about particular poem, a particular poet, a particular movement.

Do challenge Maiya and I to really think deeply. when we answer your questions, we can't wait to see them, but for now, that's all we have time for. I really enjoyed that conversation today on Ai’s ‘The Man with the Saxophone’. As always, you can read more about it. On the website, but for now it's goodbye for me.

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team@PoemAnalysis.com . Until next time.