Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Self Reliance" is a sharp, darkly humorous meditation on perspective, environmental self-destruction, and the absurdity of human ambition. The title, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist essay, immediately signals an engagement with themes of autonomy and self-sufficiency, but in Hicok’s hands, self-reliance is reframed as an ironic commentary on humanity’s ability to destroy itself without external interference. The poem oscillates between whimsy and biting critique, using planetary imagery and a self-aware voice to explore the human tendency toward both awe and hubris.

The poem begins with an ordinary, almost childlike observation: “I have a picture of Earth on my wall.” The simplicity of this statement sets up a contrast between personal scale and cosmic scale—between the speaker’s interior space and the vastness of the Earth itself. The next question immediately destabilizes this perspective: “Would lice keep a photo of me?” The inversion is startling and comical, shifting the focus from human self-importance to a microcosmic world where we might be the subject of curiosity or worship. The answer is immediate: “I am their world after all.” This acknowledgment collapses the assumed hierarchy of existence—just as humans marvel at Earth, lice might (hypothetically) revere or at least depend upon the speaker’s body. The absurdity of the comparison forces the reader to consider how relative notions of significance really are.

The poem then takes a playful turn: “The green parts are trees / or where Leprechauns blew up.” This moment of surreal humor undercuts the scientific grandeur often associated with images of Earth from space. The phrase suggests a vision of the planet shaped as much by mythology and imagination as by ecology. The humor continues with “The offices of squid are blue.” The phrasing turns oceanic life into a bureaucratic entity, as if squid go to work in underwater corporate towers. These lines skew perspective, making the world seem at once familiar and entirely alien.

The speaker then acknowledges the source of the image: “A satellite took this photo / as it jogged around the world.” The verb “jogged” anthropomorphizes the satellite, transforming it from a cold, technological instrument into something casual and almost playful. This choice of diction softens the image of surveillance and scientific detachment, making it seem as though the satellite, rather than being a symbol of human control, is simply an observer caught in perpetual motion.

Then, another shift in scale: “Beside Earth I’ve hung Mars. / They look like testicles / keeping each other company.” This crude, irreverent comparison grounds the cosmic in the bodily, reminding us that even celestial bodies can be subject to the absurd lens of human interpretation. The humor is underpinned by an implicit critique of how we impose our own forms onto the universe, reducing vast, lifeless planets to something familiar and almost trivial.

The description of Mars continues: “The red planet’s really brown, / you could color it in / with crayons made of dirt.” This observation cuts through the grandiosity often associated with Mars exploration, presenting it not as a mysterious frontier but as a dusty, barren place. By reducing it to “crayons made of dirt”, Hicok strips it of its mystique, making it seem almost mundane. The following comparison—“It’s Earth minus the recipe / for everglades and cows.”—emphasizes what is missing rather than what is present. The world, in this framing, is defined by its living things, its recipe for biodiversity. Mars, by contrast, is lifeless, a planet without the ingredients necessary for ecosystems.

The poem then moves toward a darker tone: “Scientists are interrogating Mars. / They slap it around and deny it / the famous phone call.” The act of scientific inquiry is reframed as an act of coercion, as if Mars is being subjected to an aggressive interrogation, expected to confess its secrets. The “famous phone call” alludes to the legal right to communication for the accused, casting Mars in the role of a prisoner being denied due process. This metaphor suggests an inherent violence in exploration, a human impulse to force nature into revealing its mysteries rather than allowing it to exist on its own terms.

The interrogation has a specific goal: “They want to know if anything / ever lived there, small or large. / So far it’s held its tongue.” This personification of Mars as silent and uncooperative reinforces the idea that scientific discovery is often framed in terms of conquest, of something that must be made to yield answers. The phrase “held its tongue” suggests resistance, as if Mars has something to say but refuses. In reality, the silence is not defiance but the absence of life itself—a truth that humanity struggles to accept.

The poem then recalls past fears: “Not long ago we were afraid / that Martians would come / and destroy the Earth / with bad breath and ray guns.” This reference to early 20th-century sci-fi anxieties (such as War of the Worlds) highlights the shift from paranoia about invasion to our current, more sobering reality. We once feared extraterrestrials would destroy us; now, we realize that we are fully capable of destroying ourselves.

This realization leads to the poem’s devastating final turn: “Have you kissed a river lately? / We can kill the world fine / on our own.” The question “Have you kissed a river lately?” is poignant, urging an intimacy with the natural world, a physical connection to what sustains us. But it is immediately undercut by the brutal truth that follows: humanity does not need Martians, asteroids, or external threats to bring about catastrophe. We have proven ourselves more than capable of environmental destruction, pollution, and climate devastation. The irony of "Self Reliance” is thus fully realized—not in Emerson’s sense of individual strength and autonomy, but in the tragic certainty that we, alone, are responsible for our own undoing.

Hicok’s "Self Reliance" is a masterful blend of humor and critique, using absurdity and shifting perspectives to expose human arrogance and self-destruction. By juxtaposing the grand scale of space with the microcosm of lice, and by moving from whimsical observations to an indictment of environmental neglect, the poem highlights how small and ridiculous our ambitions can seem in the face of planetary fragility. It leaves the reader with a question—not just about Mars, but about Earth itself: are we interrogating the right things, or should we be listening more closely to what our own world is already telling us?

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