Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Charles Harper Webb’s "One Story" is an exuberant, sprawling meditation on the nature of narrative, memory, and identity. It presents the life of "C"—a character whose details resemble Webb’s own—in a fluid and shifting structure, blending past, present, and multiple possible futures into a single composition. The poem is a testament to the complexity of a life, suggesting that no single story can fully contain or define an individual’s existence. By interweaving disparate moments—family history, childhood influences, personal struggles, artistic triumphs—Webb constructs a portrait of a life as layered and unpredictable as the act of storytelling itself.

The poem’s opening lines refuse a singular starting point: "It starts in Philly, where the maternity nurse loves Connie Mack’s Athletics, who usually lose and will soon move to Kansas City..." or "It starts on a Maryland dairy farm, where mornings smell like flapjacks and manure, sausage and hay—where, of six children, one dies of scarlet fever, one of whooping cough..." or "It starts in New Zealand: A boy, fourteen, ships out as a deckhand on a steamer bound for London, where in three years, he’ll meet his future wife." These openings offer multiple genealogical and geographical origins, reinforcing the idea that any individual life is the product of intersecting histories. The details are rich with sensory impressions, grounding these stories in distinct places—urban, rural, maritime—while resisting the notion of a single definitive beginning.

Webb employs an associative structure, where memories and images accumulate rather than follow a conventional narrative arc. Turtles appear as recurring figures—*"Agamemnon, a box turtle, is in the story"—joined by "Inspector because he cranes his head to stare at C, and one named Goof-Off because he bites, and one named Churchy after the turtle in the comic strip C’s mother reads to him." These named animals form part of the speaker’s personal mythology, linking the specific (his mother’s storytelling) with the broader process of naming and interpreting the world.

The poem moves seamlessly between the personal and the universal. "One day the thunder sounds like God is pounding on the hull of a huge battleship. One day the wind sounds like a python sliding through the trees." These images elevate childhood sensory experiences into cosmic significance, turning weather into something mythic. Similarly, the poem’s descriptions of adolescence evoke moments of sudden transformation: "A rock-and-roll band is involved, a smart kid—scorned by the Cool Dudes—crowned overnight as the curtain rises on him, gripping a red Gibson guitar, hamfisting through Freddie King’s ‘San José.’" Here, the classic narrative of the outsider turned hero is sketched in broad strokes, positioning personal experience within the larger archetypes of self-discovery.

The poem is also deeply attuned to the act of seeing, a theme reflected in its painterly references: "The story has the swirl and turmoil of van Gogh, the thrust and drive of Beethoven, the palette of Matisse—cherry, coral, plum, indigo, saffron, amber, lime, jade—though C will call them red, blue, yellow, green." Webb acknowledges the grandeur of artistic interpretation while juxtaposing it with the simplicity of everyday perception. This contrast highlights the tension between the elevated and the mundane, between artistic ambition and the straightforward experience of life.

Moments of triumph and catastrophe appear in rapid succession: "Highlights include a week’s fishing outside Kamloops, three-for-four with a home run that wins the Oaks Dads Club pennant, a divorce urged by a bitter therapist, a wedding interrupted when a helicopter crashes in orange flames on the church lawn." These events—some seemingly ordinary, others wildly dramatic—are given equal weight, emphasizing how all moments, large and small, accumulate to form a life. Webb’s willingness to include elements of humor, tragedy, and absurdity underscores the unpredictability of existence.

The poem presents multiple possible endings: "The story ends in a hospital: an explosion of blood as C’s son, daughter, and wife sob. The story ends in a nursing home when C’s ninety-year-old heart mercifully stops. The story ends in Moorea, tenth anniversary of C’s second wedding: riptide, panic, unconscious drifting, sea-mouths wearing him away." These alternate conclusions reinforce the idea that a single life can contain multiple trajectories, that the future remains open-ended until it is finally resolved in death.

Yet, the poem resists finality. The last passage extends beyond human life, returning to the recurring motif of the turtle: "The story ends—its best parts still unconceived—with an engine roaring up a hill, the author putting down his pen, rushing to trundle out his big green garbage can to meet the fuming, beetle-browed black truck twenty years before Agamemnon, who scaled C’s chicken-wire turtle pen during a summer thunderstorm, and lived in a vacant lot for years, is found by another red-haired boy, dropped into White Oak Bayou, and floats all the way to Galveston." The movement of Agamemnon the turtle—a creature surviving long beyond its original context—suggests continuity beyond personal mortality. The poem asserts that stories, once set in motion, do not truly end; they ripple outward, carried forward by those who inherit them.

"One Story" is, ultimately, a meditation on the way lives are shaped by memory, interpretation, and the unpredictable forces of chance. By presenting life as a collection of overlapping narratives, Webb dismantles the notion of a singular defining event. Instead, he offers a rich tapestry of experiences, recognizing that meaning is not contained in any one moment but in the accumulation of many. In doing so, he invites the reader to reflect on their own life as a complex, ever-evolving story—one whose best parts, like those of "C," are "still unconceived."

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