Cracks in the Sidewalks

Beneath the Sidewalk
Stephen Dunn

Whispers collect there, the bad news
from our subconscious,
tears that have dripped down
the insides of faces,
apologies that have gotten lost
in all of our throats.

So much has been held in,
so much has seeped through
the soles of our shoes,
that half our lives are beneath the sidewalk.
We sense the deep riot
that is always going on.

In spring there are small explosions.
Signs.  This why
the sidewalk must be repaved.
We hire someone to do it for us,
our tight bodies watching from windows

If the walls could talk.  If the walls could talk they would share memories of family dinners, heated arguments, and passionate nights.  Sidewalks are like walls.  Day after day countless people with countless stories travel across them leaving their stories beneath the pavement.  The little moments of joy and anger and sadness are what come together to weave the fabric of lives.  Stephen Dunn approaches poetry with honesty, capturing the raw beauty of the everyday human experience.  Dunn's poem Beneath the Sidewalk utilizes imagery and metaphors to convey a widely relatable idea in the context of a deeply personal experience.

From breakups to makeups to joyful reunions, the sidewalk experiences a wide range of emotional events.  Conversations that occur on sidewalks are merely "whispers" (line 1) and fragments of a deeper conversation. Dunn captures the image of "tears that have dripped down the insides of faces" (lines 3-4) creating a knot in the stomach of anyone who has ever felt sadness.  The word 'dripped' is important in this image as it conveys a certain emotion.  The tears are not pouring or streaming as in the case of intense momentous emotion.  Dripping implies that the feelings have been pent up for a while and slowly are making their way to the surface.  Following the image of tears is that of "apologies that have gotten lost in all of our throats" (lines 5-6).  More so than a visual image, this is a powerful emotional image.  By using the pronoun 'our', Dunn pulls the reader into the narrative and stirs up memories and images of those times in everyone's lives when apologies were left unsaid. The first stanza is relatively general forcing readers to look into their own sidewalk conversations but the next two stanzas are different in nature.

As Dunn was writing this poem, it seems as though he had a particular person in mind.  Perhaps it was a lost love or someone who was slipping away from him sidewalk conversation after sidewalk conversation.  This sidewalk is a seemly critical place in the context of Dunn's life.  He says that "half our lives are beneath the sidewalk" (line 10).  This phrase indicates that perhaps the sidewalk is located outside of Dunn's longtime home.  Dunn then introduces the negative image of a "deep riot" (line 11) and "small explosions" (line 13).  The words 'riot' and 'explosions' indicate an argument or an upheaval of the pattern of everyday life.  Due to the fact that these upheavals occur, "the sidewalk must be repaved" (line 15).  The word 'repaved' feels temporary.  Pavement, not matter how many times it is redone, always cracks.  In this, Dunn offers an image of the fragility of life and relationships.  He looks into the fragility of his own relationship.

Dunn works with the personal.  He talks about the perfectly imperfect and seemingly insignificant events that shape and create life.  Beneath the Sidewalks invites readers to explore the conversations they have lost beneath the sidewalks while simultaneously providing Dunn a place to look at his own sidewalk stories that make up his life.