Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "The Ongoing" is a surreal, recursive meditation on identity, performance, survival, and the fluidity of memory. The poem is structured like an absurdist fable, borrowing elements of metafiction and theatricality to explore how reality is shaped by repetition, chance, and the stories we tell ourselves. It centers around an imagined Bertolt Brecht play, The Hammer Throwers, a brutal spectacle in which performers hurl hammers at one another until only a handful—or, in one infamous case, none—remain standing. Through this framework, Hicok examines the nature of endurance, selfhood, and the thin line between memory and dream.

The poem opens with a question, immediately drawing the reader into its fabricated premise: “Do you know Bertolt Brecht’s The Hammer Throwers?” This invitation to familiarity is deceptive—no such play exists. Yet the poem presents it as real, treating its mechanics and consequences as unquestioned fact. The description is both absurd and violent: “One hundred men divide on right and left sides / of a stage and throw hammers at each other / for half an hour.” The violence is theatrical, yet it suggests deeper political and existential themes, evoking Brecht’s own interest in conflict, class struggle, and the staging of human brutality.

Hicok plays with the idea of unpredictability in performance: “Every performance, a different number / of men are standing at the end, twenty-nine / or three.” The varying outcomes suggest that survival is a matter of chance rather than skill, reinforcing the arbitrary nature of existence. The most remarkable performance, however, is one in which “one hundred and one men took a bow”—a contradiction that introduces the poem’s central act of creation. A new man, previously nonexistent, has somehow emerged from the violence. This impossible birth within a theatrical framework echoes themes of artistic self-generation—how art, through performance and repetition, can create reality rather than merely reflect it.

The surreal recursion intensifies when Brecht confronts his doppelgänger: “When asked his name, / the man replied, I am Bertolt Brecht.” This existential doubling destabilizes identity. If two men claim to be Brecht, which one is real? The repetition of “I am Bertolt Brecht” recalls classic existential dilemmas about selfhood and authorship—does identity belong to the person who claims it, or is it something that can be reproduced indefinitely? The response “then we / are Bertolt Brecht” suggests a dissolution of individual selfhood into a collective identity. Brecht, the historical playwright, becomes plural, an ongoing entity rather than a fixed individual.

Hicok deepens the fable’s absurdity by giving Brecht’s fictional journal an epilogue: “According to Bertolt Brecht’s / last diary, Bertolt Brecht survived / two more performances, until a splendid flurry / of accuracy hammered the cast down / to a single man.” Here, survival is temporary, and identity remains contingent. The idea that Brecht could document his own demise while still being subject to it introduces a paradox—his writing outlives him, continuing his presence even as he is eliminated. The phrase “a splendid flurry / of accuracy” makes death sound like choreography, reinforcing the theatricality of the poem’s universe.

The survivor of this final performance, newly alone, rushes home to tell his wife: “this evening, I was the star / of the show.” This moment brings the narrative back to the personal and intimate. In contrast to the chaos of the stage, this declaration is ordinary—he is simply a man who has endured, returning to the domestic sphere seeking recognition. His wife’s response, however, is quietly profound: “She looked in his face / for the night sky, and told him that loving him / was a decision like breathing.” This declaration collapses love into necessity, as unconscious and automatic as respiration. The fact that she has “never said anything / like that before and never said anything / like that again” gives it the weight of an eternal truth, one that does not require repetition to be valid.

The wife’s knitting becomes a symbol of continuity and persistence: “She returned to knitting / the red scarf she’d been knitting since they were wed, / it ran out the door, where it was joined by the other / red scarves so busy existing.” This surreal image suggests that her act of creation has taken on a life of its own, extending beyond the domestic realm into a communal, ongoing process. The scarves, independent and uncontained, mirror the play’s recursive identity crisis—the way something can be made and then keep going beyond its maker.

The final lines return to the theme of memory versus dream. The man touches his wound, “it felt warm, / like sleep feels right before sleep / and right after sleep, when he sometimes wonders / if he’s remembering or dreaming.” This in-between state, the liminal moment before full consciousness, reflects the instability of identity in the poem. Has the play ended, or is it continuing in another form? The wife’s final response—“Yes, his wife said / the one time he asked if he was remembering / or dreaming, yes you are.”—is both ambiguous and affirming. Yes he is remembering, yes he is dreaming, but the lack of distinction between the two suggests that remembering is itself a kind of dreaming, and vice versa.

Hicok’s "The Ongoing" is a meditation on survival, performance, and the recursive nature of existence. It transforms the violence of The Hammer Throwers into an absurd, almost mythical event, where identity is fluid and reality is negotiable. The poem suggests that life itself is an ongoing performance, one in which we might be replaced, replicated, or erased. Yet amidst this uncertainty, there are small, stable truths—love as an unconscious choice, the persistence of creation, and the ability to return home even when nothing is certain.

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