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Me Lookin' at You Lookin' at Meby Carol Kanar and Donald Tighe
Every poem is a play--tells a story, presents a drama, if you prefer. In "The Performers," Robert Hayden presents a cast of three (two window washers and a first-person narrator whom we'll call "the executive") on two stages (an office seven stories up that houses the executive and, outside the office, the "wintry ledge" on which the window washers balance to play their roles). All three characters watch the action through the plate glass windows framed on both sides by the same procenium arch, which separates, perhaps joins, the two stages. As the poem ends, the reader may safely infer that s/he is a fourth performer watching this multi-stage performance through a second but different proscenium arch, the octet and sestet of the sonnet (sans rime scheme) form. The plot appears to be simple: From behind his office desk seven stories up, the executive watches two window washers. Leaning back on straps attached to the wall of the building, the window washers perform. The executive identifies with the men, imagining himself doing their job on the precarious window ledge. As he plays their part, however, he imagines himself plunging to the ground, impaling himself on the "stalagmites below." Snapping out of his day-mare, the executive finds himself safely back at his desk as the two men, finished with the windows, crawl through an open window to exit through the office. As they leave, the executive thanks them for performing such dangerous work on a "rough day." One of the men, in turn, thanks the executive--apparently for his thoughtfulness in thanking them but more likely for his performance (for them) as they watched him through the window watching them. The poem's meaning, however, is not so simple. It depends on two allusions, a concatenation of images, and the popular fictions concerning work. Let's start with work. Most of us have misconceptions about the work others do. Either we think they have it easy compared to us or that their job is much harder than it actually is. Often we romanticize others' work, thinking it more difficult than it really is, and regard our own, no matter how difficult, as routine. We also have false notions about the relative worth of our positions. We assume, for example, that an executive has higher status and pay than does a window washer. We also assume that executives hire high-rise-building window washers to perform a dangerous job for a modest paycheck. In short, we create the complications that make for drama in the workplace. The cast members of Hayden's poem, the executive and the window washers, are separated by plate glass--a real barrier, however transparent, that symbolizes the artificial barriers we erect between ourselves and others whose performances are different. The poem's title reinforces the notion of hierarchy, for upon our first reading, the executive is the sole audience for whom the window washers perform. As their superior, and playwright, it is the executive who writes the script for the window washers. Thus, he can endow them with whatever thoughts, feelings, or significance he chooses. He, therefore, designs the action for their pantomime. As he watches them, it doesn't occur to him that they, playwrights in turn, are watching, and silently scripting, him. In short, it doesn't occur to him--or to us at first--that he is playwright, director, stage manager, protagonist, supporting cast, and audience. As the poem begins, the executive is impressed by how "easily, almost matter-of-factly" the window washers do their work despite its hazards. From the middle of the octet and through to its end, he imagines himself on the ledge "with them," another worker harnessed and "leaning back into a seven-story angle of space." But rigid (ironlike, inflexible) and inept, he imagines himself falling. Thus, for a day-marish scene, he identifies with the window washers, takes his place in their play on their stage, shares their dangers, and, lacking their stage presence, their skills, plummets "onto stalagmites below," perhaps the tines of an iron fence surrounding the building or even pedestrians passing. The sestet brings him back inside, "safely" at his desk, where once again he is the audience and they performers. Fresh from the knowledge he has gleaned from his own, though imagined, performance, he calls their work "risky business" and assumes that they have had a "rough day." The executive now knows that he couldn't do their work himself without falling. The allusions and images tell us what the narrator thinks. He sees the window washers as "minor Wallendas," a high-wire circus act. The Flying Wallendas were (perhaps still are) a skilled Polish family of high-wire circus performers. A toy of the 1950's called "The Flying Wallendas" featured a set of wooden dolls with interlocking feet and hands that enabled children to arrange the figures in various acrobatic positions. As a child might manipulate the dolls, so the executive has arranged these performers on the stage of his imagination. "Minor" in the second line suggests that at first the executive thinks the window washers a good act but relative amateurs compared to the Wallendas. However, as the play develops, these "minor" performers impress the executive with what his daymare performance makes clear is their "hairline" walking, "high-edge" balancing. After all, he now has shared the difficulty and dangers of their "center-ring routine." The images "wintry ledge," "leaning back into a seven-story angle of space" and "high-edge balancing" suggest mountain climbers, similar performers, balanced on a sheer outcropping. Obviously, the executive gets aesthetic pleasure from watching the men work. His enjoyment is heightened by the sense of danger implicit in the last four lines of the octet. He imagines the straps breaking and his falling through "plateglass wind" onto "stalagmites below," an image that rounds out the mountain climber image begun several lines earlier. The combined images of circus performer/mountain climber come together in the line " ... iron paper apple of iron I fall." The image of iron suggests the executive's lack of the necessary agility (his inflexibility, his rigidity) to perform on the ledge. Both the words and their order are important: "iron" (the building's structural components are iron and steel); "paper" (the papers on the executive's desk); "apple of iron" (a paperweight perhaps with which the executive identifies); and "I" (the last to fall after the straps break, pulling down the scaffolding and, presumably, part of the building as well). In this image we see the executive, objects on the desk, and shards of glass in a free fall to the street below. The iron like, inflexible, unskillful executive falls. The narrator says nothing about the two window washers falling. In short, despite his cameo performance, the executive is not one of the "hairline walkers, high-edge/balancers," for he, having fallen in his dream, cannot compete with them as they "end their center-ring routine/and crawl inside." His inflexibility makes it impossible to adjust to the dangers they face. In other words, only the inflexible executive, stiff and iron like as an "apple of iron," plummets from their stage. The word order and the absence of commas in "iron paper apple of iron I fall" makes clear that these are not items in a series but nominatives of the executive himself--I am no more than these, he imagines. The "apple of iron" could also be a metaphor suggesting the artificiality and rigidity of all created things, whether they be man-made objects or roles we play in life. In any case, Hayden's images and allusions destroy the notion of hierarchy: The drama of decay and ultimately Death makes us all--stars and supporting cast, administrators and support personnel--equal. The realization "I fall" brings the executive down to earth. Momentarily, whatever notions he has of his own superiority are deflated by his ineffectuality. By the end of the poem, everything is back to normal--the play (both plays, in fact) is over. Safe "behind his desk," the executive resumes his place as a one-person audience. The actors in the executive's drama make their exit. Their play over, they "crawl inside" to the applause of the executive. He acknowledges the danger and difficulty of their work, the "risky business" on a "rough day." He offers them "many thanks" for the job they did so well--and for the aesthetic pleasure their performance has afforded him. To this point, we might think that the window washers alone are the performers in their single-stage drama--were it not for the last line: "Thank you, sir, one of the men replies." By italicizing you, Hayden forces readers to do a double take: from their position on the ledge outside the windows, they have watched the executive behind his desk performing for them; they have been his audience. They have been watching him watching them. We can imagine the window-washer watchers carrying on their own imaginings about the executive's job, perhaps even joking about his easy life, answering calls, going to meetings, then realizing that the executive, too, might be engaged in a "risky business," one neither of them could or would do. To the window washers, the executive has provided entertainment. He, too, is a performer. The reader cannot, however, know whether they have had a daymare or merely a daydream. So what does Hayden's poem mean? On one level the poet may be saying that no matter how important or unimportant we think we are, each of us is only a performer in someone else's play. Our status and achievements are illusions that enable us to forget for a moment that this is not a world without end. The barriers that separate us are as insubstantial as "plateglass air" in the face of life--and ultimately death. Hayden invites us to examine this reality; then, like the executive, breathe a sigh of relief that we have only imagined falling. Or have we only imagined falling? Taken together, the "apple" image and the clause "I fall" may suggest that we are all fallen men and women, cast out of Eden to walk life's precipice and, ultimately, die. That the executive is sitting calmly at his desk is the illusion, the reality being that he is free falling to his necessary end--as are we all, all the time. On another level, Hayden, as poet, is also performer. His poem is his performance for the reader who in the act of reading becomes an observer of the artist at work. The poem acts both as a barrier between Hayden and reader and as a window into the poet's mind: The reader is both outside the poem and in it. By reading the poem and imagining himself as either executive or window washer, the reader, too, becomes a performer. In that instant, the reader and the poet connect and are one. On this level, "The Performers," as all poems, is a comment on the act of writing. The poet is a minor god in his own bright universe where object and illusion are accorded the same status. "The Performers" is a mirror that invites us to watch Hayden's private circus from both sides of the glass. The poem becomes the proscenium arch through which the poet looks at the reader and through which the reader looks at the poet.
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