Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry" begins as a satirical jab at corporate environmental hypocrisy but quickly unspools into a self-examination of complicity, personal responsibility, and the grand futility of small ethical acts against the backdrop of systemic destruction. The poem’s form mirrors its content, beginning with a controlled, repetitive structure before breaking down into a free-associative spiral, enacting the very loss of focus and certainty that the title suggests. In doing so, Hicok crafts a poem that is both darkly comic and deeply unsettling, interrogating not just corporate ethics but the speaker’s own place in the machinery of environmental degradation.

The opening line immediately sets the poem’s tone: “Never before have I so resembled British Petroleum.” This absurd yet cutting admission positions the speaker not as an outsider critiquing BP, but as someone aware of his own resemblance to the oil giant. The question lurking beneath this declaration—how much of my own life mirrors the corporate behaviors I claim to despise?—frames the poem’s deeper inquiry into moral responsibility.

The next few lines establish a parallel between corporate greenwashing and individual environmental consciousness: “They—it?—are concerned about the environment. / I—it?—am concerned about the environment.” The stumbling syntax—the uncertainty over whether BP is they or it, an entity or an individual—mirrors the larger moral confusion at play. Corporations present themselves as responsible entities, much like individuals do, but the distinction between their real motives and their messaging is slippery. The speaker mocks BP’s commercials—“in which a man talks softly about the importance of the Earth”—while recognizing his own ineffectuality: “I—doodad?—convey my concern through poems.” The contrast is painfully ironic: BP feigns care while continuing to drill, while the speaker acknowledges his care but does little beyond writing. The implication is clear—both are participating in the same farce, just on different scales.

The next set of lines presses deeper into the question of responsibility: “Isn’t a corporation technically a person and responsible? / Aren’t I technically a person and responsible?” Here, Hicok highlights the absurdity of corporate personhood, the legal fiction that allows companies to claim rights and protections while evading moral accountability. But by flipping the question onto himself, the speaker forces an uncomfortable recognition—if corporations can evade responsibility by dispersing it, do individuals do the same by claiming powerlessness? This parallel is the poem’s most damning moment of self-awareness, positioning both BP and the speaker as figures who express concern while continuing to consume.

The poem then swerves into exaggerated satire: “To give you a feel for how soft his voice is, imagine a kitty that eats only felt wearing a sable coat on a bed of dandelion fluff under sheets of the foreskins of seraphim.” This grotesquely lush description mocks the calculated gentleness of corporate messaging, which disguises violent environmental destruction with soothing imagery. The hyperbole underscores the absurdity of BP’s efforts to sound compassionate while continuing to drill into the earth. Yet, in the next breath, the speaker admits: “And let’s be honest, we mostly want them to.” This is the poem’s pivotal confession—not just that corporations are deceptive, but that people, in their daily lives, benefit from and enable their actions. The speaker aligns himself with the general public, acknowledging the widespread preference for convenience over ethics.

From here, the poem moves into a sequence of rhetorical questions, shifting from global concerns to a more immediate, personal critique: “How far would you walk for bread? / For the flour to make bread? / A yard, a mile, a year, a life?” This questioning implicitly asks how much effort we are willing to put into our principles—how far we would go to live differently, to reject reliance on the very systems we condemn. The questions, however, remain unanswered, suggesting that the speaker (and perhaps the reader) does not have an easy response.

The self-recrimination sharpens as the poem turns toward transportation: “Now you ask me, when are you going to fix your bike and ride it to work?” Here, the speaker anticipates an imagined interlocutor calling him out for his own small-scale environmental negligence. The list that follows—describing the path he would take to work—becomes a rapid, almost frantic sequence of images: “Past the plain horses and spotted cows and the spotted horses and plain cows… past the tattoo parlor and the bar and the other bar and the other other bar and the other other other bar and the bar that closed.” This breathless accumulation mimics the mind’s desperate search for distraction, for something to focus on other than the uncomfortable question at hand. The list moves from the pastoral to the urban, from nature to human consumption and excess, creating a microcosm of the larger contradictions the poem explores.

The final lines return to a broader, existential crisis: “Since I’m wondering, what is the value of the wick or wire of soul, be it emotional or notional, now that oceans are wheezing to a stop?” Here, the poem’s humor dissolves into despair. The speaker shifts from his small, personal choices to the planetary scale, invoking the slow suffocation of the oceans as a symbol of ecological collapse. The phrase “wheezing to a stop” personifies the oceans as if they are dying organisms, emphasizing the speaker’s growing sense of helplessness. Against this vast destruction, the earlier questions—about bikes, bread, personal responsibility—seem almost laughably small, yet they remain the only choices within reach.

Hicok’s "Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry" is ultimately about the futility of moral purity in an interconnected world. It starts as a critique of BP but turns into a self-indictment, forcing the speaker to confront his own complicity. The poem acknowledges the absurdity of corporate greenwashing but does not allow the speaker to escape into righteous indignation. Instead, it forces him—and us—to wrestle with the uncomfortable reality that we are all entangled in systems that harm the planet. The brilliance of the poem lies in its refusal to offer easy answers; instead, it leaves us with a lingering, unresolvable question: What does responsibility truly look like when everything is already compromised?

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