On Taking the Subway

Now that I live in "the boonies" (as I affectionately call my East Toronto 'hood) my morning ritual includes a commute downtown. Never much of a fan of commuting, I went in search of poetic depictions of taking the subway to burnish my dull vision of this urban rite. Unfortunately, poets and painters are about as optimistic about taking the subway as they are about taking the greyhound bus.

Mark Rothko's series of subway scenes paints a familar picture (above, 1936). His subway station is banal and industrial. Its occupents are obscure, faceless forms. The scene hovers between listless melancholy and Orphic fantasy. Are these commuters nameless cogs in the mechanics of the modern capitalist machine, or shadowy spirits doomed to wonder the underworld?

The poet Carl Sandburg captures something of the former in his compact "Subway" (1916). Here the subway is a yoke of the modern man, bearing down on him, weighting his shoulders and his soul. It is a bleak picture of the subway as transport of the working man.

DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.

The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
Throw their laughter into toil.

Hart Crane captures something more of the Orphic descent in "The Tunnel," part of his celebrated poem, "The Bridge." In it, Crane contemplates a walk, but instead decides to take the underground because "The subway yawns the quickest promise home." That famous line, I think, makes a much better slogan that the TTC's over-eager "Ride the Rocket." Though, the marketing department would be disappointed with the rest of the poem. Crane's ride is no pleasure trip. In his East River Hades he even runs into Edgar Allan Poe and his "retching flesh." But he does manage to capture something of the hectic plunge into the underworld.

Elbows and levers, guard and hissing door.
Thunder is galvothermic here below. . . . The car
Wheels off. The train rounds, bending to a scream,
Taking the final level for the dive
Under the river—
And somewhat emptier than before,
Demented, for a hitching second, humps; then
Lets go. . . . Toward corners of the floor
Newspapers wing, revolve and wing.
Blank windows gargle signals through the roar.

But despite the cramped quarters, blank stares, and irritating use of old pre-H5 subway cars on the Bloor-Danforth line (I love those orange benches!), I still enjoy the commute for one simple moment. My route takes me across the Bloor Viaduct. The windows are suddenly ablaze with the morning sunlight and a valley of green stretches out in either direction. The vision is quickly dashed as we speed underground again. But each day, for $2.75, the subway car is my Charon, ferrying me across the Acheron to my workday and home again each night. I know this image implies that work is hell, but that's for another post...