Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Charles Harper Webb’s "To Prove That We Existed Before We Were Born" is an intimate meditation on memory, legacy, and the strange, elusive way parents exist before their children know them. The poem weaves between nostalgia, personal history, and the inevitable separation between generations, revealing how a child will always see their parents? past as something distant, almost mythical. Through vivid storytelling, Webb captures the paradox of remembering what is both real and ephemeral, asserting that existence is not merely biological but also rooted in the stories we tell.

The poem opens with an assertion—"we’ll tell you how your mom worked at the hospital, treating people like the tattered, gray-faced man who shoves his shopping cart down Verdugo, muttering to the czar." The reader is immediately immersed in a world before the child’s birth, a world where the mother is not just "Mom" but a woman with a career, a history of interactions with strangers and suffering. The specificity of Verdugo—a real street in California—grounds the memory in a concrete reality, even as the muttering man seems to drift like a ghost, a remnant of a world the child can never truly enter.

The father’s reminiscences unfold alongside: "How, between bouts at my desk, I’d bumble barefoot through the house, feeding our fish, or patting Marvin, the cat." These small, domestic images create a contrast between the mother’s public work and the father’s private, meandering routines. The casual mention of Marvin, the cat, adds an element of warmth, hinting at a life once unburdened by the responsibilities of parenthood. The mother’s past emerges more sharply when Webb recounts her first job at Baskin-Robbins, a moment of youthful defiance: "she found a dead mouse in Baskin-Robbins’ hot fudge, called the manager at home, and when he didn’t believe her, dropped the chocolate-covered Mickey on his big desk blotter, and never returned." This anecdote is darkly humorous, showcasing a rebellious streak, a willingness to assert herself—character traits that, by implication, may shape the child’s own existence.

The father’s past follows, tinged with the romance of music and lost loves: "I’ll resurrect my sunburst Stratocaster from its coffincase, and show how I played at The Catacombs, and clubbed a Bandido who rushed the stage." The electric guitar, lying dormant like a relic of youth, becomes a symbol of a life once filled with adventure and music. The image of "clubbing a Bandido" adds an almost cinematic quality, a larger-than-life memory that will inevitably seem unreal to the child. The past, full of youthful bravado and heartbreak, is inaccessible to the child except through these retellings.

The most poignant moment arrives when Webb describes leaving past relationships behind: "I might even tell how, my red pickup sagging with band gear, I’d pull away from girlfriends in Portland, Billings, Coeur d’Alene, and barely see the road for tears until, in a few miles, the clouds lifted, a surge of freedom picked me up, and, surfing on its crest, I’d start to sing." This passage captures the duality of love and loss, the bittersweet nature of moving forward. The places—Portland, Billings, Coeur d’Alene—suggest a past filled with movement, restless searching, and fleeting romances, all of which predate the child’s existence. The child, by contrast, exists in a more stable world, one where their parents? adventures are reduced to "fairy tales from olden days." The phrase emphasizes the generational divide—what was once visceral and painful for the parents is now as distant as Jack the Giant-Killer and Snow White to the child.

The poem pivots toward the present with a reflection on how sensations—"the musk of narcissus on a March day made us feel sexy, just as it will you." This line serves as a quiet revelation: despite the child’s inability to understand their parents’ past, some experiences are universal. The inevitability of desire, attraction, and longing will bridge the generational gap, even if the details of past lives remain obscure.

The poem’s final moments shift into a delicate moment of transition—the pregnancy, the child’s presence as an unseen force shaping the parents’ relationship. Webb recalls: "You’d never guess that, when you were a neural tube, an ember trying to make a flame, your mom felt sick, so we went walking on the street we were leaving to find a better place for you." The poetic image of "a neural tube, an ember trying to make a flame" renders early life fragile and ephemeral. The act of "finding a better place for you" speaks to the unspoken sacrifices parents make, the shifts in their lives that children will never fully comprehend.

The final lines capture the couple’s last moments of being just two before becoming three: "we started laughing, and stopped on the sidewalk (cracked by the last earthquake), and kissed as long and desperately as if we were saying goodbye—kissed the way our parents may have (since we’re both eldest children)—kissed as if we didn’t need you, one last time." The cracked sidewalk, damaged by an earthquake, suggests the inevitable upheaval of parenthood. The "long and desperate" kiss is both a farewell and an affirmation—a final grasp at the intimacy they once had before their identities became tied to someone else’s existence.

In "To Prove That We Existed Before We Were Born," Webb explores the tension between past and present, between the lives parents lived before their children and the world they now share. The poem grapples with the reality that children will never truly know the fullness of their parents’ lives, just as the parents themselves once failed to grasp the depth of their own parents’ histories. Through anecdote, humor, and profound reflection, Webb constructs a narrative that is deeply personal yet universally resonant, illuminating the invisible threads that connect generations, even if they remain unseen.

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