Daytime and Starlight by James Applewhite

First of all, Daytime and Starlight by James Applewhite was in the North Carolina Collection at Wilson--which made me assume that there were a number of North Carolina connections and references in the volume. From what I have read of it so far, this is true. Not being from North Carolina, though, I am wondering if I am missing a good deal of the references, and consequently, if I am not getting the full impact or enjoyment of Applewhite's work.

For example--when I saw the poem titled "Replacements, Ltd." I immediately knew what it was referring to--a large warehouse somewhere around here where they have all sorts of discontinued china patterns that they buy from estate sales, etc. and then resell to the public. How do I know this? My mother has bought discontinued pieces that we have broken from them. Now, if my mother didn't just happen to put plates from Replacements, Ltd. on her Christmas list, would I have any idea what the title of the poem was referring to? Not at all. Which makes me wonder (1) what other title-references I completely missed because I’m not from North Carolina, and (2) how much our poetry should reference things that only a small portion of people recognize?

Here's the poem:

Replacements, Ltd.

On the fast food highway, lives are thrown away.
But a warehouse remembers our china. Gravy boats
navigate the breakups, bottoms virgin, to find

this harbor--if cracked imperceptibly in a rim, still
more whole than the marriage. Yet hopes can't all
be lost while hierarchies of women, seraph-watchful,

track one's pattern: the cups and saucers of Turquoise
poised to enter one's cabinet, long-lost sisters.
The pourings of coffee and tea assembled here

create a little heaven: this industrial-looking
haven for propriety beside the eighteen-wheelers.
A computer's nunnery-humming counts crystal glasses:

a lyric of addition and subtraction, the comings
together and apart, makings of generations--
those who'll receive their Wedgewood Wellesley from

Replacements, Ltd., if without other heritage. Here
glazes shoot their winsome glances, plates halo
the showroom with a preciousness not subject to decay.

A delicacy coalesces in the brilliant evening,
illuminating us as we exit. My wife and I feel
we've been married a thousand times, been ferried

over conceptions, miscarriages, trials of conscience,
tears and deliveries, on a boat of porcelain,
its fragile pallor enduring like the moon.

Would this poem be understandable without knowing what Replacements Ltd. is? Parts of it, yes. I suppose that you could infer what Replacements Ltd. is by the context, but a lot of the impact of the poem is lost without knowledge of the subject.

The lines in the first stanza--"lives are thrown away / but a warehouse remembers our china" are great because of the irony and inconsistencies that they propose: dishes are more enduring than people? This seems illogical, but in many families, the china endures far longer than relationships and even lives. The concept of Replacements, Ltd. is important here, because the company buys up china even after its original owners--and the family--do not care about its fate. In the third stanza, Applewhite continues to connect dishes and family when he writes "the cups and saucers of Turquoise, poised to enter one's cabinet, long-lost sisters." Personification suggests that dishes have more of a relationship than a lot of actual relatives.

Applewhite uses personification to make the dishes seem living, so that the reader finds their valued role believable :

"glazes shoot their winsome glances"
"plates halo the showroom"
"gravy boats navigate the breakups"

In the final stanza, Applewhite draws similarities between china and family relationships when he compares the speaker's relationship experiences with a "boat of porcelain." In this line, the reader feels assured that both china and relationships are fragile...and if china can endure, then relationships have the ability to as well.

Using Replacements, Ltd. as the subject of a poem--and as a means to discuss the longevity of family relationships--is creative and fresh. But the poem loses much of its impact if the reader does not know what Replacements, Ltd. is. Now, I know that Prof. White has said that it is the reader's responsibility to look up unfamiliar allusions, terms, etc.--but this is not something that can be found in the dictionary. Did Applewhite assume that his readers would all be familiar with the company? Did he think that the poem could be understood without familiarity? Obviously, if an author is limited only to subjects that all potential readers would understand, this is a severe handicap: creativity, by nature, involves things that are not so prosaic that every person has considered them. Therefore, I think that it's the poet's prerogative to include things that few people have heard of; those who either take the time to research the reference or those with the knowledge are rewarded.